Transformations through Polarizations and Global Threats to Democracy

• Author: Murat Somer,Jennifer McCoy
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716218818058
• Date: 01 January 2019
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Subject Matter: Introduction

8 ANNALS, AAPSS, 681, January 2019

DOI: 10.1177/0002716218818058

Transformations

through

Polarizations

and Global

Threats to

Democracy

By

MURAT SOMER

and

JENNIFER MCOY

818058ANN The Annals of The American AcademyTransformations through Polarizations

research-article2018

This volume collects and analyzes eleven country case

studies of polarized polities that are, or had been, elec-

toral democracies, identifying the common and differ-

ing causal mechanisms that lead to different outcomes

for democracy when a society experiences polarization.

In this introduction, we discuss our goals for the vol-

ume, the comparative logic we apply to the cases, our

overall methodological approach, and the concepts that

ground the analyses. The goal of this volume is to

explore pernicious polarization, i.e., when and how a

society divides into mutually distrustful “us vs. them”

blocs, which endangers democracy. Accordingly, we

discuss the effects of such polarization on democracies,

and start building a foundation for remedies. In this

introductory article, we highlight and explain the inher-

ently political and relational aspects of polarization in

general and pernicious polarization in particular, pre-

sent the concept of formative rifts, and discuss how

opposition strategies should be part of an explanation of

severe polarization.

Keywords: polarization; democracy; democratic ero-

sion; populism; opposition strategies

Our main interests in this volume of The

ANNALS are to explore when and how

societies become perniciously polarized and how

such polarization affects democracy. Building on

previous work (McCoy and Somer 2018), this

collection also starts to build a foundation for

remedies. We depart from a conventional defini-

tion of political polarization that simply measures

the distance between political parties and voters

on policy issues or ideological stances. Instead,

we explore political polarization that divides

Correspondence: musomer@ku.edu.tr

Murat Somer is a professor of political science and

international relations at Koç University, Istanbul. He

specializes in comparative politics and democratization.

His research on polarization, religious and secular poli-

tics, ethnic conflict and authoritarianism has appeared

in books, book volumes, and journals such as

Comparative Political Studies, American Behavioral

Scientist, and Democratization.