Backlash and Culture Wars: A Political Economy Model

This paper develops a model where cultural conflict in society and electoral competition are jointly determined. Cultural conservatives and progressives choose, ex ante, their level of tolerance in social relations in response to two sources of threat: the probability of interacting with an intolerant cultural outgroup and the risk of unfavorable cultural policy. Political parties compete on both economic and cultural dimensions. The model shows that as societies gradually shift toward less traditional values, this can, beyond a threshold, trigger endogenous backlash and increased societal intolerance. This backlash shifts political competition from economic to cultural issues, further reinforcing cultural conflict. This two-way interaction can generate multiple equilibria and self-fulfilling “culture wars."