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Political Polarization

Author

Listed:
  • Dixit, Avinash

    (Princeton University)

  • Weibull, Jörgen

    (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics)

Abstract

Failures of government policies often provoke opposite reactions from citizens; some call for a reversal of the policy while others favor its continuation in stronger form. We offer an explanation of such polarization, based on a natural bimodality of preferences in political and economic contexts, and consistent with Bayesian rationality.

Suggested Citation

  • Dixit, Avinash & Weibull, Jörgen, 2006. "Political Polarization," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 655, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 19 Apr 2007.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0655
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Thomas Piketty, 1995. "Social Mobility and Redistributive Politics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 551-584.
    2. Morris, Stephen, 1995. "The Common Prior Assumption in Economic Theory," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 227-253, October.
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    4. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    5. Paul R. Milgrom, 1981. "Good News and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 380-391, Autumn.
    6. Guarnaschelli, Serena & McKelvey, Richard D. & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2000. "An Experimental Study of Jury Decision Rules," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 94(2), pages 407-423, June.
    7. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1996. "Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts," Discussion Papers 1170, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Sgroi, Daniel & Yeo, Jonathan & Zhuo, Shi, 2021. "Ingroup Bias with Multiple Identities : The Case of Religion and Attitudes towards Government Size," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1374, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    2. Binswanger, Johannes & Prüfer, Jens, 2012. "Democracy, populism, and (un)bounded rationality," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 358-372.
    3. Kamphorst, Jurjen J.A. & Swank, Otto H., 2013. "When Galatea cares about her reputation: How having faith in your workers reduces their motivation to shine," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 91-104.
    4. Drugov, Mikhail & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2020. "How noise affects effort in tournaments," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    5. Dodlova, Marina & Zudenkova, Galina, 2021. "Incumbents’ performance and political extremism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    6. Michaeli, Moti & Wu, Jiabin, 2022. "Fighting polarization with (parental) internalization," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 124-138.
    7. Matthew I. Jones & Antonio D. Sirianni & Feng Fu, 2022. "Polarization, abstention, and the median voter theorem," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-12, December.
    8. Alonso, Ricardo & Câmara, Odilon, 2016. "Political disagreement and information in elections," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 390-412.
    9. Bindewald, Eckart & Atallah, Shady S., 2017. "Achieving multiple goals via voluntary efforts and motivation asymmetry," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 354(C), pages 37-48.
    10. Jean-François Laslier & Jörgen Weibull, 2008. "Committee decisions: Optimality and Equilibrium," Working Papers halshs-00121741, HAL.
    11. Benoît, Jean-Pierre & Dubra, Juan, 2014. "A Theory of Rational Attitude Polarization," MPRA Paper 60129, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Cheung, Man-Wah & Wu, Jiabin, 2018. "On the probabilistic transmission of continuous cultural traits," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 300-323.
    13. Melki, Mickael & Pickering, Andrew, 2014. "Ideological polarization and the media," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 36-39.
    14. Ceren Baysan, 2017. "Can More Information Lead to More Voter Polarization? Experimental Evidence from Turkey," 2017 Papers pba1551, Job Market Papers.
    15. Jeong, Daeyoung, 2019. "Using cheap talk to polarize or unify a group of decision makers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 50-80.
    16. Kim, Jonghoon & Jeong, Hyeong-Chai & Baek, Seung Ki, 2022. "Symmetric Nash equilibrium of political polarization in a two-party system," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 607(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    polarization; voting; information;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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