Moving Away From Partisanship: Diversifying the Motives Behind Political Polarization
| Published date | 01 November 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920921650 |
| Author | Tianru Guan,Yilu Yang,Tianyang Liu |
| Date | 01 November 2021 |
| Subject Matter | State of the Art |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920921650
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(4) 656 –667
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1478929920921650
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Moving Away From
Partisanship: Diversifying
the Motives Behind Political
Polarization
Tianru Guan1, Tianyang Liu2
and Yilu Yang3
Abstract
Most current academic work on political polarization treats partisanship as the dominant
motivational driver behind social cleavage and mass polarization. This essay engages in the debate
by moving beyond the conceptual straitjacket of partisanship-driven polarization, recasting the
primary motives behind political polarization into the three situated and interrelated ideologies
that drive the phenomenon of polarization at a mass level, namely, populism, system-justifying
attitudes, and state-sponsored ideologies (including religiosity and other cultural identities).
By signposting more open-ended, processual, and ambivalent conceptions behind polarization,
this article attempts to systematically map the alternative motives of polarization, and in doing
so supplement our understanding of the deep ideological divides present not only in Western
democracies, but also in many (semi-)authoritarian contexts. The article offers a point of departure
for appreciating the coexistence, coevolution, and mutual constitution of the different ideological
motives behind polarization, and suggests ways to develop paths to depolarization through a
grounded, processual–relational analysis of the world.
Keywords
political polarization, incentive, populism, system-justification attitude, state-sponsored ideology
Accepted: 1 April 2020
Introduction
The study of political polarization is in a rich period of theoretical and empirical advance-
ment (e.g. Abramowitz and Saunders, 2006, 2008; Fiorina and Abrams, 2008;
Hetherington, 2001; Iyengar et al., 2012; Levendusky and Malhotra, 2016; Mason, 2015).
Although the existence of political polarization at a mass level remains an open question,
1School of Journalism and Communication, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
2School of Politics and Public Administration, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
3Asia Institute, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Corresponding author:
Tianyang Liu, School of Politics and Public Administration, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
Email: tianyangl1@student.unimelb.edu.au
921650PSW0010.1177/1478929920921650Political Studies ReviewGuan et al.
research-article2020
State of the Art – Review Articles
To continue reading
Request your trial