Democratic transition and party polarization: A fuzzy regression discontinuity design approach
Abstract
How does democratic transition affect party polarization? While previous literature on party politics in post-transition environments describes a fragmented political system marked by multi-partism and the rise of weakly institutionalized parties, party polarization in young democracies is underexplored. We argue that democratic transition reduces party polarization by introducing a new set of parties which have not consolidated their issue positions yet. The ambiguity of party positions makes ideological attributes less salient and renders a less polarized party politics. To assess the impact of the party polarization in young democracies, we employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD). We use the Manifesto Project data on right-left positions of parties from 58 countries to measure party polarization and the Varieties of Democracy (V-DEM) data on regime transition to identify democratic transitions. Our findings suggest that party polarization on right-left issue position decreases on average, following the democratic transition.
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Biographies
Ubeydullah Ademi is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. He is interested in authoritarian representation and violence. His research also focuses on advancing the use of computational methods in political science.
Fırat Kimya obtained his PhD in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. His research centers on the relationship between party institutionalization and democratic consolidation. Additionally, he conducts research on political parties and the politics of repression.
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