IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_7040.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Polarization and Partisan Voting in Representative Democracies

Author

Listed:
  • Dominik Duell
  • Justin Mattias Valasek

Abstract

While scholars and pundits alike have expressed concern regarding increasing social polarization based on partisan identity, there has been little analysis of how social polarization impacts voting. In this paper, we incorporate social identity into a principal-agent model of political representation and characterize the influence of social polarization on partisan voting. We show that social identity has an indirect effect on voting through voters’ beliefs regarding the ex post decision of political representatives on top of a direct effect through an expressive channel. We conduct a laboratory experiment designed to identify the relative effect of the two channels. We find that social polarization causes partisan voting, and that up to fifty-five percent of partisan voting is due to the indirect effect of social identity.

Suggested Citation

  • Dominik Duell & Justin Mattias Valasek, 2018. "Social Polarization and Partisan Voting in Representative Democracies," CESifo Working Paper Series 7040, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7040
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp7040.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Huddy, Leonie & Mason, Lilliana & Aarøe, Lene, 2015. "Expressive Partisanship: Campaign Involvement, Political Emotion, and Partisan Identity," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 109(1), pages 1-17, February.
    2. Hamlin, Alan & Jennings, Colin, 2011. "Expressive Political Behaviour: Foundations, Scope and Implications," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(3), pages 645-670, July.
    3. Lorenz Goette & David Huffman & Stephan Meier, 2006. "The Impact of Group Membership on Cooperation and Norm Enforcement: Evidence Using Random Assignment to Real Social Groups," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 212-216, May.
    4. Shanto Iyengar & Sean J. Westwood, 2015. "Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(3), pages 690-707, July.
    5. Klor, Esteban F. & Shayo, Moses, 2010. "Social identity and preferences over redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(3-4), pages 269-278, April.
    6. Shayo, Moses, 2009. "A Model of Social Identity with an Application to Political Economy: Nation, Class, and Redistribution," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(2), pages 147-174, May.
    7. McLeish, Kendra N. & Oxoby, Robert J., 2011. "Social interactions and the salience of social identity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 172-178, February.
    8. David E. Broockman & Timothy J. Ryan, 2016. "Preaching to the Choir: Americans Prefer Communicating to Copartisan Elected Officials," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(4), pages 1093-1107, October.
    9. Dimitri Landa & Dominik Duell, 2015. "Social Identity and Electoral Accountability," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(3), pages 671-689, July.
    10. Lorenz Goette & David Huffman & Stephan Meier, 2012. "The Impact of Social Ties on Group Interactions: Evidence from Minimal Groups and Randomly Assigned Real Groups," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 101-115, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Duell, Dominik & Valasek, Justin, 2019. "Political polarization and selection in representative democracies," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 168, pages 132-165.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Duell, Dominik & Valasek, Justin, 2019. "Political polarization and selection in representative democracies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 132-165.
    2. Duell, Dominik & Valasek, Justin Mattias, 2017. "Social identity and political polarization: Evidence on the impact of identity on partisan voting trade," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2017-304, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    3. Sanjit Dhami & Emma Manifold & Ali al‐Nowaihi, 2021. "Identity and Redistribution: Theory and Evidence," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(350), pages 499-531, April.
    4. Marie Claire Villeval, 2021. "Group Identity and Social Preferences by Yan Chen and Sherry X. Li," Post-Print halshs-03504258, HAL.
    5. Marie Claire Villeval, 2021. "Group Identity and Social Preferences (chapter X)," Post-Print halshs-03504316, HAL.
    6. Mechtel, Mario & Hett, Florian & Kröll, Markus, 2014. "Endogenous Social Identity and Group Choice," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100307, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Müller, Daniel, 2019. "The anatomy of distributional preferences with group identity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 785-807.
    8. Hett, Florian & Kröll, Markus & Mechtel, Mario, 2017. "Choosing Who You Are: The Structure and Behavioral Effects of Revealed Identification Preferences," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168223, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. Bauer, Kevin, 2020. "How did we do? The impact of relative performance feedback on intergroup hostilities," SAFE Working Paper Series 281, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    10. Bernard, Mark & Hett, Florian & Mechtel, Mario, 2016. "Social identity and social free-riding," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 4-17.
    11. Paetzel, Fabian & Sausgruber, Rupert, 2018. "Cognitive ability and in-group bias: An experimental study," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 280-292.
    12. Erik Lindqvist & Robert Östling, 2013. "Identity and redistribution," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 469-491, June.
    13. Sanjit Dhami & Emma Manifold & Ali al-Nowaihi, 2018. "Prosociality, Political Identity, and Redistribution of Earned Income: Theory and Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 7256, CESifo.
    14. Shayo, Moses & Harel, Alon, 2012. "Non-consequentialist voting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 299-313.
    15. Suchon, Rémi & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2019. "The effects of status mobility and group identity on trust," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 430-463.
    16. Paul Marx, 2019. "Should we study political behaviour as rituals? Towards a general micro theory of politics in everyday life," Rationality and Society, , vol. 31(3), pages 313-336, August.
    17. Bicskei, Marianna & Lankau, Matthias & Bizer, Kilian, 2016. "Negative reciprocity and its relation to anger-like emotions in identity-homogeneous and -heterogeneous groups," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 17-34.
    18. Weng, Qian & Carlsson, Fredrik, 2015. "Cooperation in teams: The role of identity, punishment, and endowment distribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 25-38.
    19. Martinangeli, Andrea F.M. & Martinsson, Peter, 2020. "We, the rich: Inequality, identity and cooperation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 249-266.
    20. Drouvelis, Michalis & Nosenzo, Daniele, 2013. "Group identity and leading-by-example," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 414-425.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social identity; partisan voting; social polarization; political polarization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7040. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.