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The Polarization Paradox

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DOI: 10.1353/jod.2020.0030

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 The Polarization Paradox
M. Steven Fish, Neil A. Abrams

Journal of Democracy, Volume 31, Number 2, April 2020, pp. 182-185 (Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2020.0030

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 The Polarization Paradox

M. Steven Fish and Neil A. Abrams

Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization.
Edited by Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue. Washington,
D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2019. 280 pp.

Thomas Carothers, Andrew O’Donohue, and their collaborators have

produced a volume of depth and erudition on the global challenges posed
by political polarization. Essays on nine countries analyze the roots, his-
torical trajectories, and consequences of polarization around the world. The
coeditors draw on rich and nuanced case studies to identify common cross-
national patterns and attempt to isolate the key drivers straining a diverse
set of democracies. The volume succeeds in its central mission of deepening
our knowledge about political polarization. But it raises questions about the
fruitfulness of the polarization framework for understanding and combat-
ting the illiberal onslaught.
Polarization, it turns out, is not of a single stripe. The chapters by Se-
nem Aydin-Düzgit on Turkey and Gilbert Khadiagala on Kenya illustrate
how severe polarization contributed to democratic breakdown. Essays by
Carothers on the United States, Niranjan Sahoo on India, and Joanna Fomi-
na on Poland show how severe polarization has placed democracy under
stress but not yet knocked it out. Andreas Feldman’s chapter on Colombia
and Naomi Hossain’s chapter on Bangladesh depict elite-centric polariza-
tion that has not penetrated society deeply. The chapters by Eve Warburton
on Indonesia and by Umberto Mignozzetti and Matias Spektor on Brazil
showcase countries where democracy-endangering polarization has largely
been avoided. Taken together, the contributions paint a panoramic portrait

Journal of Democracy Volume 31, Number 2 April 2020

© 2020 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press
Books in Review/M. Steven Fish and Neil A. Abrams 183

of polarization and its potentially devastating implications for democracy

around the world. While polarization can vary in intensity, the authors con-
clude that “severe polarization,” meaning the division of society into clash-
ing “us” versus “them” identities, imperils democracy.
In contrast to some other accounts, Democracies Divided highlights cul-
ture and not economic insecurity as the main source of polarization and
democratic backsliding. As the contributors point out, Poles, Turks, Indi-
ans, Kenyans, and Bangladeshis actually realized dramatic economic gains
in the decades preceding their growing rifts. Nor is polarization rooted in
flawed formal institutions. While some contributors identify aspects of their
countries’ electoral rules and constitutional systems as aggravating factors,
the broader take-away is that polarization is happening under every sort of
constitutional system and electoral regime.
The exception seems to be Brazil’s much-maligned combination of pres-
identialism and open-list proportional-representation voting for the legis-
lature. Mignozzetti and Spektor argue that this setup checks polarization,
but only by fostering other ills such as patronage politics, corruption, and
a general lack of partisan accountability to the governed. Indeed, as the au-
thors suggest, a system based on elite cartels designed to fatten politicians’
wallets and campaign coffers only abets democratic dysfunction. Nor is
it necessarily a reliable barrier to polarization. Public dissatisfaction with
elite collaboration and rot led to the election of Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right
populist president. In the view of Mignozzetti and Spektor, Brazil has not
yet succumbed to severe polarization, but Bolsonaro’s rhetoric and policies
threaten to bring it about.
So what does cause polarization? The drivers are numerous, complex,
and multifaceted. Among them are waning elite control over politics and
rising popular involvement in political parties. In the United States, Caroth-
ers argues that the push for inclusion by marginalized groups during the
1960s and 1970s pulled the Democratic Party to the left. This, together
with the conservative backlash it sparked, set the country on the path to-
ward polarization. The authors also point to social media, which extend
the reach of extremists, sort citizens into opinion silos, and allow populist
leaders to communicate directly with their followers. These insights present
a paradox: A richer, more engaged and influential citizenry often makes for
a more polarized one, putting democracy at risk.
What can be done to stop polarization? While the contributors catalogue
the various remedies that have been tried in their countries, none of these so-
lutions are actually working. In the final chapter the editors offer their own
suggestions, including reforming the media, political parties, and electoral
systems. But they admit that such measures are extraordinarily difficult to
achieve. The volume reports that corruption can limit polarization, while
rapid economic development and the rise of social media can accelerate it.
But nobody wants to encourage rot or slow economic advancement, and
social media are here to stay. Carothers and O’Donohue also recommend
184 Journal of Democracy

reinforcing guardrail institutions and especially the “rule of law and inde-
pendent, impartial election administrations” (p. 268). Yet such measures are
scarcely possible while illiberal leaders are commandeering the courts and
electoral commissions to consolidate their own power.
The shortage of workable prescrip-
tions seems to stem from the authors’
One might argue choice of polarization as the central
that the champions lens through which to view the global
of democracy should crisis of democracy. In the concluding
aggressively propagate chapter, the editors fault polarization
their own potent for democratic degradation and illiberal
narratives about the one-party dominance. But the book’s
nation rather than evidence suggests that both severe po-
leaving patriotism to larization and the erosion of democracy
the illiberals. actually result from the rise of illiberal
leaders. In most cases of severe polar-
ization, a single demagogue is responsi-
ble for activating sociocultural divisions and aligning identities into binary,
“us-versus-them” categories. India’s Narendra Modi, Poland’s Jaros³aw
Kaczyñski, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdo¢gan show “how closely as-
sociated the emergence of severe polarization is with one particular figure”
(p. 263).
What’s more, the emphasis on polarization too easily lends itself to fault-
ing both sides. Carothers’ chapter on the United States argues that the Dem-
ocrats, having swung left by embracing civil rights, played their own part in
setting polarization in motion. Yet Carothers acknowledges that polariza-
tion accelerated even when the Democratic Party was, by his own descrip-
tion, led by moderates. In the United States, as elsewhere, the main driver
of declining respect for democratic norms and institutions has been the rise
of illiberalism on the right. In their chapters on India and Poland, Sahoo and
Fomina respectively show that both twenty-first–century extremism and
the growing threat to democracy emanate from the main illiberal party. It
follows that democracy’s defenders must defeat illiberals before they can
reduce polarization.
The book does not focus on strategies to oust illiberal parties, but its
insights provide intriguing clues. The case studies reveal that beyond divi-
sions based on group identity lurks a larger conflict over the nation. Illib-
eral leaders appear to be succeeding by promoting compelling narratives
about national identity and fate. At the heart of polarization and the rise of
Erdo¢gan, Aydin-Düzgit sees a “conflict over the soul of Turkey” that was
long repressed by secularizing elites (p. 17). As Sahoo observes, Hindu
nationalists began their ascent in the 1980s by reviving the old question of
“the idea of India.” He demonstrates how Modi has thrived by stirring up
controversy over national identity (p. 95). In Poland, argues Fomina, de-
bate no longer revolves around the contentious market transformation or the
 Books in Review/M. Steven Fish and Neil A. Abrams 185

communist past. Politics has become “a struggle to define Poland’s future,”

one that pits “patriots” posing as the defenders of religion and “traditional
values” against “citizens” who seek to preserve Poland’s place among the
democratic societies of the West (p. 136).
In this light, one might argue that the champions of democracy should
aggressively propagate their own potent narratives about the nation rather
than leaving patriotism to the illiberals. India’s Jawaharlal Nehru bran-
dished the Indian tricolor to blunt the appeal of Hindu nationalists, wrap-
ping his iron commitment to liberal ideals in a stirring vision of India’s
global mission. But his successors in the Congress party often failed to up-
hold his example, instead opting, as Sahoo shows, to play defense against
bigots or to pander to them. Poland’s Solidarity movement famously fused
liberal and national symbols to tear down the patriotic pretensions of the
communist regime. But postcommunist liberals seem to have lost sight of
nationalism’s significance. Instead, they became fixated on the economy
and preserving the country’s status in Europe, and they have struggled to
respond to the exclusionary national vision promoted by Kaczyñski and his
Law and Justice party.
Indonesia stands out as the democracy that avoided both severe po-
larization and an illiberal takeover of government. One factor appears to
have been the liberals’ command of a vigorous national narrative. In the
presidential showdowns of 2014 and 2019, Prabowo Subianto played to
Islamic extremism and stoked resentment against ethnic Chinese. The lib-
eral candidate, Joko Widodo (Jokowi), confronted his illiberal opponent’s
national narrative head on, never yielding a square centimeter of the flag.
Warburton does not endorse the Jokowi camp’s “militant pluralism, which
painted any Islamist group affiliated with Prabowo as a threat to Indonesia’s
national identity and the state’s pluralist foundations” (p. 211). Neverthe-
less, it worked. Jokowi beat Prabowo by six points in 2014 and crushed him
by eleven in 2019. His victories were crucial to containing polarization and
sustaining democracy. Had Prabowo won, he certainly would have deep-
ened polarization and weakened democratic institutions just as populists
have done elsewhere.
National identity is the world’s mightiest political force, and Democra-
cies Divided reveals that the capacity of illiberal demagogues to mobilize
and manipulate it has been pivotal to their rise. If democrats fail to harness
nationalism in the service of overcoming the polarized identity politics that
Democracies Divided skillfully analyzes, they may continue to falter at the
polls, thereby forfeiting their chance to tame polarization and halt the de-
molition of democracy.

M. Steven Fish is a professor of political science at the University of Cali-

fornia, Berkeley. Neil A. Abrams received his Ph.D. in political science at
the University of California, Berkeley, and works as a futures trader in the
San Francisco Bay Area.

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