What is affective polarization, and why does it matter? Alexander Ryan, postdoctoral researcher at Lund University, opened the lecture with these two questions.
Polarization can be divided into two main types: ideological and affective. The former concerns increased differences in policy positions between groups of people.
The latter, drawing on social theory, focuses on the distance between positive feelings and identification with one’s political in-group, and negative feelings and identification against a political out-group. In other words, it’s the gap between how much a person loves their own party and how much they hate their opponent.
These two types can be combined in a matrix to categorize countries’ patterns of polarization. For example, a country which is highly ideologically polarized but not affectively polarized has a political climate characterized by respectful disagreement, such as in Norway and Finland.
When this pattern is reversed it is called partisan tribalism, with low ideological polarization and high affective polarization. This is the case in the United States, where affective polarization has increased over time – not because people have developed warmer feelings towards their own party, but because their feelings towards the other party has worsened.
The study of affective polarization is still a growing field, but Alexander Ryan pointed to some of its potential implications. These include attitude formation, partisan gridlock, and effects on the quality of democracy. For example, it could contribute to partisan-motivated reasoning.
Populism and support for Ukraine
In the second half of the lecture, Jonathan Polk expanded on the theme of division by presenting results from an ongoing research project exploring what shapes political party responses within European countries to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While the support for Ukraine remains relatively high among European parties, there has been a slight decrease since February 2022. The research project seeks to understand what this erosion of support comes from, surveying 268 political parties across 29 countries up until the spring of 2023.
The study hypothesized that parties in countries formerly occupied by the USSR would be more supportive, that populist parties would be less supportive, that EU-skeptical parties would be less supportive, and that government participation would induce otherwise populist parties to increase their support for Ukraine.
The results support all four hypotheses, with the strongest findings related to the ideological factors – populism and EU skepticism.
One central implication of this is that geographical proximity to Russia, which has previously been used as a common explanation, is not necessarily the most important factor shaping support for Ukraine. Instead, ideologically driven divides within countries play a significant role.
The lecture was organized by The Association of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with The Centre for European Studies.