Democratic conflict and polarization

Abstract

Several developments in Western democracies over the past decade have sparked worries about political stability. Standing out are the rise of radical political parties, heated polarization around questions of immigration, nationalism, or social liberalism, and – in some cases – attacks on democratic institutions. However, conflict and choice between clearly distinctive alternative ideas of how societies and economies should be governed are at the heart of democracy. Democracy needs competition and conflict. But where is the line between healthy and harmful conflict and polarization? In this paper, Silja Häusermann and Simon Bornschier explain that an interpretation of today’s state of democratic conflict as chaotic, fragmented, or volatile is misleading. Rather, Western democracies are in a process of a fundamental restructuring of the main political dividing lines. Over the past decades a new social cleavage has been emerging between universalistic and particularistic ideas of social, economic, and political organization, between openness and closure. This conflict is rooted in social groups defined by education, occupation, and territory. It relates to underlying collective identities on both sides, and it will dominate democratic party competition for the foreseeable future. It is not per se harmful to democracy but reflects genuinely different visions of desirable social order. However, under certain conditions, it can turn on democracy itself. The authors thus examine the functional and dysfunctional implications of polarized political conflict for democracy. To what extent is conflict and polarization healthy and under what conditions is it likely to endanger the very legitimacy and institutional stability of democracies? Building on existing knowledge about the dynamics of polarization, they discuss political and institutional means to contain polarization and to protect democratic stability.