[EAI Online Seminar] Democracy Cooperation Series 13.

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=funbpME71m0

Political polarization is a phenomenon that oversimplifies politics, forcing the public into a binary choice. It easily distorts democracy by dividing voters into electoral camps. While it affects both elites and the general public, it is often utilized by government and party leaders as a strategy to consolidate their power.

With this concern in mind, the East Asia Institute (Director Yeol Sohn), as the secretariat of the Asia Democracy Research Network (ADRN), hosted the thirteenth [Democracy Cooperation] online seminar series, "Divided Democracies: Political Polarization in Asia and its Impact." In this online seminar, ADRN member institutions, along with Jennifer McCoy, a renowned scholar of political polarization research, will examine cases of political polarization in India, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea, and discuss the role of civil society and institutional reforms in mitigating political polarization.

• • Date: March 25, 2022 (Friday) 17:00 – 18:30 (KST)
• • Panelists:

Jennifer McCoy, Professor, Georgia State University

Suk-Jong Lee, Professor, Sungkyunkwan University; Senior Fellow, East Asia Institute

Jeong Kim, Associate Professor, Graduate School of North Korean Studies

Niranjan Sahoo, Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation

Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, Assistant Professor, Chulalongkorn University

Francisco A. Magno, Senior Fellow, De La Salle University, Manila

Video Transcript

Good morning, good afternoon, and even good evening wherever you are. This is Suk-Jong Lee, a representative for the Asia Democracy Resource Network and also a senior fellow at the East Asia Institute. And I'm going to moderate this webinar titled "Political Polarization in Asia and its Impact on Democracy." Political polarization is a process of simplifying politics into two camps, us versus them. And usually scholars have found the negative impact, consequences of political polarization. So among Asian countries, of course, there

are more polarized countries. However, this time, we invited four country experts from India, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. Before we discuss the features and agencies of political polarization and its negative impact on the country's state of democracy, I'm glad we invited the keynote speaker, Professor Jennifer McCoy. Jennifer McCoy is an expert in this field. Let me introduce Jennifer. She is a professor at Georgia State University and a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International

Peace. Her specialty is democratization, polarization, mediation, and conflict prevention, election processes, many areas. And as a region, she's an expert in Latin America. In the past, Professor McCoy served as a director of the Carter Center's American Program, and then, uh, from 2019, she became a senior core fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. She's joining us from Budapest, so it must be early in the morning. And Professor McCoy has authored or edited

six books and dozens of articles. And her latest volume is "Polarizing Politics: A Global Threat to Democracy," and she co-authored it with Murat Somer, uh, in 2019. So, as a very well-known, leading scholar in this field, I think we will all benefit by hearing, uh, you know, what she has found in her, uh, studies, uh, comparing many countries which are politically polarized. So without further ado, I will ask Professor McCoy to present her findings. Thank you so much, Professor Lee. I'm really delighted to be here with with

all of you. Um, so I wanted to just present, kind of, a brief overview of the theory that we developed that the panelists will be talking about some of the specifics in, in the countries that they're looking at. So let me just start with this. Um, this does, uh, come from work that I have been doing with Murat Somer and a group of international scholars. So the term that we developed is "pernicious polarization," which Professor Lee already gave this definition, but we, I really want to emphasize that this, this is a severe form of political

polarization. And so we view it as a process that simplifies politics. So there's a range of, you know, polarization as a process begins to simplify politics. So the normally cross-cutting differences that we see in societies, as people have different identities and different interests, and that they may cross over and form different groups in common, instead of that, they become consolidated based on a single us versus them dimension or dividing line. So there's a political dimension and a social dimension. The political dimension

is that people are sorting into like-minded groups. Often the center drops out of public opinion and the, the political representation of public opinion. And the public begins to view, and politicians begin to view politics as a zero-sum game. So if you are winning, that must mean I'm losing, rather than a positive-sum game where we can all win. Normal adversaries that we are facing in elections, in competitions, become instead enemies that must be eliminated. It also then gets extended into the society and into social relationships.

This is when citizens do internalize this partisan divide in their daily life. And so they may start dividing, sorting themselves out spatially where they live, the neighborhoods they choose, the areas of town they go to for restaurants, for parks, for entertainment, and socially, the groups that they associate with. This would of course include, as well, um, media that they would look at. And they begin to view the other, the other side as posing an existential threat to their way of life. Now, in this process, we see a

psychological effect of increasing the level of stereotyping and prejudice. And that is partly because as people start to lose that direct communication, interaction with people of different views, um, then they, they can exaggerate their perceptions of the characteristics of the other group. And they often view them as a very homogeneous group when they're not. And they begin to develop prejudice. And they, they see more negative traits in the other group and they exaggerate the positive traits in their own group.

Now, I want to make a point that our concept differs from the way that the term political polarization has been studied, particularly in political science and in American political science, which has influenced a lot of scholarship. Um, which had looked simply at the ideological difference or distance between parties or between voters. And we're not looking at this difference or distance. We're looking at the creation of a binary divide that is broader than just ideology. It has an identity basis. We view it as very political. So

political entrepreneurs can choose a polarizing strategy to serve their political ends. Now, I want to note that these ends, their aims or goals, may be to actually transform a democracy or economic structures. It could be transformative. It could have very benign or positive goals, revolutionary goals, or could be simply more, um, self-serving to gain power or to retain power for themselves and their political party. But it's also relational. And we have to recognize that the opposition to a polarizing incumbent or

polarizing political actor, the opposition to them, the other side will react in some way. If the opposition reciprocates the polarizing strategy, which usually involves demonization, discrediting of the other side, that will lock a polity into a downward spiral of obstructionism and ungovernability that's difficult to overcome. So we start, our starting assumptions are that basically some level of polarization is natural and healthy in a democracy because we want to differentiate among the choices for voters. Parties have to show the

differences among them. And it can be constructive if we need a disruption of the status quo. For example, if it's autocratizing or already an autocracy, we want to disrupt that status quo. If there is great social injustice, great inequality, great discrimination against a particular population group, we want to disrupt that status quo. So polarizing can be constructive. The problem is we have to be careful about how we use it as a strategy because it risks turning destructive and self-sustaining if it deepens into this binary division

of society. So I would argue that to be constructive, it needs to focus on values and ideas rather than attacking the identities in a demonizing way, creating, identifying others as an enemy. So therefore, in our work, we have identified these multiple roles. The strategy I was talking about, it can be used as a strategy of gaining political power, gaining supporters by emphasizing an us versus them binary. And the us are the friends, the them is the enemy. But it's also this process. In the process, it is weakening the

cross-cutting ties and creating these two immovable blocks. And then it's a condition or a state. When it gets to the point, the extreme point where where it is this definite binary division, then it can reach an equilibrium of what we call pernicious polarization because it has pernicious consequences for democracy. Now, I want to also note that there's an endogenous nature to it. The very process of polarization changes the political actors themselves. It creates pernicious incentives to reciprocate and continue deepening it

and it emboldens the extremes within each group as they begin to label anybody who wants to be a bridge builder as traitors or sellouts. This endogenous nature also affects the institutions that could be accountability. But as they begin to be politicized or perceived as politicized, then they can no longer play that role of an accountability mechanism. So we see a chain reaction of how it's a harm to democracy. So it starts with an actor with agency, polarizing strategies by an actor creating this us versus them

and the tribal logic, the psychological aspects of mutual distrust, dislike, and bias result. As this happens, then people begin to view the other side as an existential threat to their way of life or to the nation if the other side gains or retains power. And this may lead both leaders and citizens to support the violation of democratic norms because it's more important to stay in power or keep the other people out of power than to protect democratic principles. Now, the relationship, we can see empirically. This is the Varieties of

Democracy Index measure of political polarization, which is one measure, but it relates very much to ours. It asks the question of experts to rate countries around the world to what extent is a society divided politically such that they have hostile interactions with each other. And we can see that the red line is political polarization worldwide, population-weighted, because some of the largest countries are the most polarized, particularly today, like India, the United States, Brazil. And then the blue line is the liberal

Democracy Index. And we see that as these are far apart, that there's a relationship. As polarization declines, we see a relationship with democracy improving. And as polarization increases, we see a relationship with it, with, uh, democracy decreasing. And we have tested this statistically as well with lagged, uh, variables. And we do see that it looks like a lag time polarization and then one, two, and five years after looking at democratic, uh, ranking, uh, ratings, uh, there is a relationship. So a few findings from our comparative case

studies, which is, um, this comes from this article here, um, are first that we emphasize agency over structure. We see this as very elite-driven. Now, there are mass underpinnings, of course, but the structure is not predetermined. We don't find any specific social cleavages as either necessary or sufficient. For example, ethnic cleavages, religious cleavages, inequality, class, we don't see any single one of those as a predetermined causal factor. However, grievances are necessary. The society, there must be grievances for

a political entrepreneur to exploit or to draw on. And so it's most polarizations, most commonly activated when the political entrepreneurs use this Manichean us versus them moralizing, the us are the positive, the good, the them is the evil. When they use this kind of discourse to exacerbate existing social cleavages or grievances, or they can even manufacture the divisions. They can bring an agenda item, you know, to the public's attention, like Donald Trump did with immigration in the United States when he started his

campaign. So here, this is a little bit small, but this is a chart showing, um, some examples of what the dimensions of polarization may be. And what I want to point out is that the discursive dimensions, that is, what the leaders are focusing on in their discourse, may be one thing, but the underlying cleavage or a formative rift, which I will discuss in a second, uh, may be another. So they don't always match. So here's some examples. Populism is often seen as a primary cause of democratic erosion, but we view populism

as simply one example of a polarizing discourse. It focuses on elite versus people, us versus them. There's always an enemy from a populist leader, but it's basically an empty signifier. That enemy could be any number of things. The underlying cleavage is not defined by populism, but many countries we've seen this discourse being very prominent. Another cleavage, another discursive dimension of polarization or underlying cleavage is a religious secular or a church and state kind of dimension that divides people

and so we see this for example in Turkey and Bangladesh. This becomes very much a salient discursive dimension, but it's actually an underlying cleavage. In additional countries like the US and Poland, we often see a cosmopolitan nationalist division. So this is prominent in Europe, being pro or anti-EU, or like in the United States, pro or anti-globalist. So how much is nationalism emphasized versus cosmopolitan independence, interdependence, cultural values may be one, traditional versus modern, conservative versus

liberal, communitarian versus universalist, um, geography, the values and interests of place and status, so urban versus rural, center versus periphery. And then the traditional economic ideology or class can very much be a polarizing dimension. But we increasingly see, and I think we'll see in the cases today, the East Asian, the Asian cases we're looking at today, that political ideology, the concept of democracy, and the source of legitimacy of government and authority can be very polarizing. So we see a number of

countries where this is the cleavage. And then finally is the formative rift that we talk about as being the most pernicious. It can be the most entrenched form of polarization when it focuses on citizenship rights and national identity. The formative rift, we say, are the unresolved historic debates at the nation's founding around these questions of citizenship rights and national identity. All right, a second finding is that the opposition matters. So it's relational. And we see kind of basic patterns. Oppositions will

often reciprocate this denigrating kind of language and this winner-take-all polarizing tactics, which then locks the system into this downward spiral. Now, they may try to repolarize, that is, change the axis of polarization, change that line, that dividing line to focus on one that is an inclusionary, transformative effort to address this injustice, um, that that may be occurring, that would lead to this constructive, uh, disruptive polarization I mentioned earlier. And then we also see efforts of another, that an opposition may enter into

depolarizing through promoting democratizing reforms, through mobilizing their electorate to participate in elections, and presenting these kind of pluralistic political representation options. So that might mean electoral reform to provide more choice for voters, better representation. A third is, uh, finding is that we found risk factors that seem to lead to enduring pernicious polarization. I've already mentioned the formative rifts here. And the reason they are so enduring and pernicious is that it's a

it leads to a conflict over who can legitimately represent the polity. So polarization becomes threatening and causes a backlash, a polarizing counter-reaction because it is talking about who can be a member of the community, the political community, and who can represent them. And this can lead to democratic erosion. Also found another risk factor about mobilization capacity. And we found that when a country has a relative balance of power between particularly political parties that have, or political camps

that have equal, uh, electoral mobilizing capacity, then we may see this, you know, kind of balanced alternating in government, uh, kind of a ping-pong or pendulum effect until eventually one side usually asserts hegemony, such as in Bangladesh. And, um, and then we see democratic erosion. But we can also see an imbalance in the mobilizing capacity. Now, I should say there's, uh, so, so when only one party may have this mass mobilization, um, capacity electorally, but another group may control the institutions, such as the

bureaucracy, the military, or the courts. They then allow them to use constitutional or unconstitutional institutions, these institutions, military, courts, bureaucracy, to constrain an executive. We've seen this in Thailand many times, going back and forth. One side had this great electoral mobilizing capacity with the Thaksin movement, and then we see a kind of royalist side using various constitutional times, but then unconstitutional, and finally, you know, military coup. And finally, looking, you know, do institutions determine

or predict polarization? We find that they are facilitating conditions, but they don't definitively predict nor resolve polarization. But two facilitating ones in particular are the majoritarian electoral systems. Systems that give a, a large disproportionate representation to the majority party, as opposed to the pure proportional representation systems, can lead to winner-take-all perceptions and polarization. I want to point out though that PR systems can also have majoritarian aspects when they have compensation back

winner compensation mechanisms, bonus systems, high thresholds. And the second one is whether institutionalized party systems help to prevent polarization. And we find that in fact, the institutionalization of a party system does not predict the rise of polarizing leaders or the outcome for democracy. We see great variety in this. So here are two of the special issues, the collection of work that we did with a number of collaborators where you can find some of this research. And I will stop here and move to the next phase. Thank you very

much.