Writers at the Washington Post use contemporary political science analysis to look at the impact outbursts from the leaders of one party (like recently between Boehner and Reid) to the other have on political polarization and, not a big surprise, they find a effect. John Sides at The Monkey Cage comments on it as well.
Some recent research suggests that when politicians engage in PDA – public displays of anathema – Americans’ attitudes toward the party they don’t identify with grow increasingly negative, contributing to mass polarization.
Political scientists for years have debated whether the American public is polarized along ideological lines. On one hand, some research portrays the vast majority of Americans as centrist on most issues. Other work has argued that Republican and Democratic voters’ policy views are far more divided.
But Shanto Iyengar, Gaurav Sood and Yphtach Lelkes suggest in a new article that “affective polarization” may better describe the divide between party identifiers. Instead of focusing on ideology and policy positions, Iyengar and his colleagues draw on a psychological concept called social identity theory.
They argue that simply identifying with a political party, as most Americans do, is enough to generate unfavorable attitudes toward the other side, or the “out-party.” (This idea should feel pretty familiar to Red Sox and Yankees fans.) And a variety of survey evidence shows that in recent decades Democratic identifiers have come to view Republicans increasingly negatively, and vice versa.
Differences between party identifiers transcends ideology and policy. They just don't like each other regardless of ideology or policy. As we continue hammering on a general theme - Is government broken? - it might be worth wondering whether government is fine as far as it goes. The real root of the problem may be personal animosity between party identifiers in the general population. That may translate into and cause political and governmental gridlock. Its a reasonable hypothesis.
