Jansen, Benjamin and Stutzer, Alois. (2024) Affective Partisan Polarization and Citizens' Attitudes and Behavior in Swiss Democracy. WWZ Working Paper, 2024 (04). Basel.
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Official URL: https://edoc.unibas.ch/96384/
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Abstract
There is a concern that citizens with different political positions and party affiliations increasingly dislike each other. We examine this affective polarization (AP), which is often associated with a weakening of democracy, in the context of Switzerland's multiparty landscape with proportional governmental representation. Evaluating the long-term development of AP in Switzerland with both historical and newly gathered data for 2023, we find hardly any considerable change in AP over the last three decades, except for a substantial jump between 1999 and 2003 and a generally lower level of party sympathy in 2023. Complementary, our analysis of split-ticket voting behavior in national parliamentary elections with continuous data back to 1983 does not support any trend in partisan polarization from a voters' revealed preference perspective. We further find that more affectively polarized individuals report, on average, lower satisfaction with democracy but show a higher willingness to participate in politics across a wide range of different forms of political engagement, even when controlling for individuals' general sympathy towards political parties.
Faculties and Departments: | 06 Faculty of Business and Economics 12 Special Collections > WWZ Publications > WWZ Discussion Papers and Working Papers |
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UniBasel Contributors: | Jansen, Benjamin and Stutzer, Alois |
Item Type: | Working Paper |
Publisher: | WWZ |
Number of Pages: | 67 |
Language: | English |
Identification Number: |
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edoc DOI: | |
Last Modified: | 15 May 2024 14:50 |
Deposited On: | 15 May 2024 14:50 |
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