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How Polarised are Citizens? Measuring Ideology from the Ground up

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  • Mirko Draca
  • Carlo Schwarz

Abstract

We investigate whether the ideological polarisation of citizens has increased in Western democracies. We propose a novel methodology to identify individual ideologies by applying latent Dirichlet allocation to political survey data. This approach indicates that questions related to confidence in institutions play a leading role in defining citizen ideologies, in addition to the questions associated with the traditional left-right scale. We decompose the shift in ideological positions across the population over time and measure polarisation. This reveals evidence of a ‘disappearing centre’ in a sub-group of countries with citizens shifting away from centrist ideologies into anti-establishment ‘anarchist’ ideologies. This trend is especially pronounced for the United States.

Suggested Citation

  • Mirko Draca & Carlo Schwarz, 2024. "How Polarised are Citizens? Measuring Ideology from the Ground up," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(661), pages 1950-1984.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:134:y:2024:i:661:p:1950-1984.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/ueae010
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    3. Marianne Bertrand & Emir Kamenica, 2023. "Coming Apart? Cultural Distances in the United States over Time," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 100-141, October.
    4. Hall, Jonathan & Whitt, Sam, 2024. "Examining affective partisan polarization through a novel behavioral experiment: The equality equivalency test in the United States (2019–2022)," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
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    6. Wani, Nassir Ul Haq, 2023. "Decoding Social Media’s Role in the Resurgence of the Taliban: A Literature Review," MPRA Paper 121874, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 09 May 2024.
    7. Jon H. Fiva & Oda Nedregård & Henning Øien, 2021. "Polarization in Parliamentary Speech," CESifo Working Paper Series 8818, CESifo.
    8. Rob Bauer & Katrin Gödker & Paul Smeets & Florian Zimmermann, 2024. "Mental Models in Financial Markets: How Do Experts Reason About the Pricing of Climate Change?," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2024_569, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
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    11. Christopher Rauh & Laëtitia Renée, 2023. "How to measure parenting styles?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 1063-1081, September.
    12. Ashani Amarasinghe & Paul A. Raschky, 2022. "Competing for Attention – The Effect of Talk Radio on Elections and Political Polarization in the US," Monash Economics Working Papers 2022-13, Monash University, Department of Economics.
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    15. Burnitt, Christopher & Gars, Jared & Stalinski, Mateusz, 2025. "Politics of Food: An Experiment on Trust in Expert Regulation and Economic Costs of Political Polarization," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 744, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    16. Elliott Ash & Daniel L. Chen & Sergio Galletta, 2022. "Measuring Judicial Sentiment: Methods and Application to US Circuit Courts," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(354), pages 362-376, April.
    17. Rauh, C. & Renée, L., 2021. "Parenting Types," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2110, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    18. Szymon Sacher & Laura Battaglia & Stephen Hansen, 2021. "Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for Regression with High-Dimensional Categorical Data," Papers 2107.08112, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    19. Kang, Youngho & Kim, Byung-Yeon & Lee, Dongwon, 2025. "Political polarization, state capacity, and economic growth," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 49(4).
    20. Leonardo Bursztyn & Davide Cantoni & Patricia Funk & Felix Schönenberger & Noam Yuchtman, 2024. "Identifying the Effect of Election Closeness on Voter Turnout: Evidence from Swiss Referenda," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 876-914.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • C81 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access

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