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Social Polarization and Partisan Voting in Representative Democracies

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  • Dominik Duell
  • Justin Mattias Valasek

Abstract

While scholars and pundits alike have expressed concern regarding increasing social polarization based on partisan identity, there has been little analysis of how social polarization impacts voting. In this paper, we incorporate social identity into a principal-agent model of political representation and characterize the influence of social polarization on partisan voting. We show that social identity has an indirect effect on voting through voters’ beliefs regarding the ex post decision of political representatives on top of a direct effect through an expressive channel. We conduct a laboratory experiment designed to identify the relative effect of the two channels. We find that social polarization causes partisan voting, and that up to fifty-five percent of partisan voting is due to the indirect effect of social identity.

Suggested Citation

  • Dominik Duell & Justin Mattias Valasek, 2018. "Social Polarization and Partisan Voting in Representative Democracies," CESifo Working Paper Series 7040, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7040
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Duell, Dominik & Valasek, Justin, 2019. "Political polarization and selection in representative democracies," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 168, pages 132-165.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    social identity; partisan voting; social polarization; political polarization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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