Transformations through Polarizations and Global Threats to Democracy

Polarization, Democracy, and the Focus of this Volume

Anxieties are growing over the future of democracy in the world, and many democracies have already undergone serious erosion or, worse, breakdown (Diamond 2015; Bermeo 2016; Foa and Mounk 2016; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). Polarization and democratic erosion—the gradual deterioration of the quality of democracy from within, such as the weakening of institutional checks and balances, electoral processes, and/or civil liberties—are clearly interrelated. But the causality may work in several different directions (Somer and McCoy 2018), and the causal mechanisms linking polarization and different outcomes for democracy need to be uncovered (McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018).

One of the most troubling effects of pernicious polarization on democracy may be that, as polities become perniciously polarized, to the disbelief of both sides, the opposing blocs of electorates fundamentally disagree on whether ongoing substantive and procedural transformations of their country advance or undermine democracy. Take the United States, still the world’s most sizable economic and military power, under the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Arguably, the dominant sentiment prevailing in recent years among the social, political, and economic elites, including the “learned classes” and the academy inside and outside the United States, has ranged from despair to growing concerns over the quality, sustainability, and future of American democracy. These democratic anxieties were present before Trump became president, but they have been elevated to a new and alarming level first by his election and thereafter by his policies, discourse, and governing style.

However, to the chagrin of Trump-skeptics, this viewpoint does not represent the whole of American society, not even necessarily the majority. In fact, Abramowitz and McCoy in this volume report findings indicating that Trump approvers view the quality of U.S. democracy under the Trump administration as improving. This viewpoint is not easy for Trump disapprovers to understand. It is a sign of growing polarization when people find the other bloc’s views not only objectionable but also unintelligible and threatening. Such mutual incomprehension is evident today in the United States; for example, a person from the Trump-disapproving side may express how uncomfortable they feel when they hear others say things like Trump is “the best president in a long while.” ¹ Such anecdotes are commonplace not only in the United States but also in widely different polarized countries around the globe.

In Poland, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, or Venezuela, many people find it incredible that others vote for the party or president—frequently a relative newcomer to the political system or an existing one that adopted a new and heterodox style—that they find deeply unacceptable. Often, they attribute the others’ political choices to apathy, ignorance, benighted self-interest, or, worse, treason. Meanwhile, the supporters of the actors in question feel upset, typically labeling their critics as arrogant, self-righteous, corrupt, and pro-status-quo.

Why is this happening in so many otherwise dissimilar countries? How does polarization turn pernicious, and how does this affect democracy as we know it? This volume addresses these questions in a large comparative analysis of eleven countries that come from many different regions of the world. The contributions to a previous special issue addressed these questions based on theoretical, conceptual, and individual-level and large-N empirical studies (McCoy and Somer 2018). In this volume, we pursue these issues by presenting eleven country case studies of polarization that are, or had been, an electoral democracy. Hence, we bring together and comparatively examine—as we also do in the concluding article—a relatively large number of theoretically informed and in-depth studies of specific polities. By doing so, we aim to have a closer look at the conditions and causal pathways that help to determine when and how polarization becomes pernicious and harms democracy. While we do not directly take up the question of policy implications in this issue, the conclusion to this volume discusses the insights gained from our analysis vis-à-vis remedies. Finally, Nancy Bermeo’s contribution offers reflections about the implications of this analysis for the United States.

Polarization, difference, and a certain dose of agonistic competition are part of the democratic game and can even have democratizing consequences at times. They can do so for example by clarifying the choices facing citizens and helping political party systems to institutionalize (Campbell 2016; Carlin, Singer, and Zechmeister 2015; LeBas 2011, 2018; Stavrakakis 2018). However, our main concern is the pernicious consequences of polarization for democracy. For reasons we explore, polarization is a risky political tool even when intended as an instrument of democratization. Some potential by-products of polarization, such as political party institutionalization, that are normally thought to be assets for democratization, can become a liability depending on the nature of polarization (Enyedi 2016). Thus, in addition to developing policies to better manage and contain severe polarization, an additional benefit of studying and theorizing the dynamics of pernicious polarization may be to better specify to what extent and under which conditions polarization could serve democratization.

In polarized contexts, people can differ and become divided based on opinions, perceptions, and convictions of a seemingly subjective nature. Thus, they may also disagree on whether democracy is progressing or backsliding in their country. Nevertheless, this does not change that the effects of polarization and of such split opinions on democracy are often demonstrably concrete and should be beyond dispute. Identifying and documenting these lasting impacts is one of the goals of this volume.

Democratic regimes have various dimensions, such as majority rule, minority rights, freedom, and equality, which can sometimes contradict each other and can be supported by different people for different reasons. A variety of different forms of democracy exist, and novel and “non-Western” forms could emerge in the future (Youngs 2015). However, different democracies also share some fundamental pillars and minimum standards that political scientists have long been conceptualizing and trying to measure based on qualitative and quantitative indicators (Dahl 1989; Munck and Verkuilen 2002; Merkel 2004; Tilly 2007; Munck 2016). Through the operation of various causal mechanisms that we explore and discuss, severe forms of polarization tend to undermine these foundations and practices. These include, for example, free and fair elections, a reasonably independent judiciary, and some form of checks and balances in government. They also entail less quantifiable and less understood, but by no means less crucial, informal norms that sustain democracies, such as “mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance” (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). The case studies in this volume analyze and record how severe polarization negatively affects such foundations, norms, and practices of democracy.

The divisions we witness in polarized polities pertain not only to policy, interests, and ideology, which would be an expected and tolerable condition for democracy, but often reflect sharp differences over the formal procedural as well as informal democratic norms. Perhaps most perniciously, they frequently represent disagreements over the interpretation of the founding principles and identities of the respective states and societies. Or worse yet, disagreements over basic material facts that should be beyond questioning whenever supported by material evidence, say, whether a corrupt transaction has taken place or global warming is occurring.

The Empirical Scope and Methodological Approach of this Volume

We bring together and comparatively evaluate “positive cases of” polarized polities, which come from various regions of the world. Thus, technically, we do not investigate any “negative cases” of nonpolarized polities, that is, countries that could have become gravely polarized but have not (Eckstein 1975; Gerring 2004; George and Bennett 2005; Beach and Pedersen 2016). ² By excluding nonpolarized cases, we forsake our ability to offer causal claims with some confidence regarding why polarization has been occurring in these and other cases, but we discuss the probable causes that emerge from our cases in our concluding article.

In return, however, focusing on polarized cases enables us to identify the common, as well as differing, causal mechanisms that lead from polarization to different outcomes for democracy, after a society begins to experience polarization. Even though we did not necessarily select our cases based on suffering democratic erosion, all our polarized cases have experienced some degree of deterioration in measures of liberal democracy, and outcomes that range from political gridlock and careening to democratic breakdown and autocratic takeover.

Accordingly, our first goal is to establish the common characteristics and causal mechanisms that prevail in polarized polities in general. Many of our cases can be classified as “most different cases” (George and Bennett 2005; Beach and Pedersen 2016). That is, they are different in many respects, such as geography, culture, democratic history, and level of economic development, but have in common the occurrence of polarization. This diversity in aspects other than polarization enables us to identify the common causal paths that lead to severe polarization in our cases despite their other differences. Second, we identify the common characteristics and logics of polarization across our cases.

Third, we aim to uncover and distinguish the varying causal patterns and mechanisms that lead to different experiences of polarization and different outcomes for democracy. More specifically, our objective is to understand when and how polarization becomes “pernicious” (McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018), thus taking on a life of its own, and which factors help to explain the consequences for the extent and quality of democracy as a result. We pursue these goals and summarize our comparative findings and the theoretical insights and hypotheses we reach in the concluding article to this volume.

There is a vast and interdisciplinary body of research on polarization and a growing one on polarization, democracy, and development, which draw on either single countries and regions or large-N and experimental research. To our knowledge, this is the first volume that is aimed at addressing the question of polarization and democracy based on a large number of theoretically informed and comparatively evaluated case studies coming from many different regions of the world.

Defining Polarization: A Political and Relational Definition

One reason research on polarization and democracy is inconclusive may be the conceptual definition of polarization. Most extant definitions of polarization focus on ideological distance (see, for example, Sartori 1976; Poole and Rosenthal 1997; Dalton 2008; Fiorina and Abrams 2008). However, even though distancing often goes together with polarization, it may be neither necessary nor sufficient for the type of severe polarization we analyze in this volume.

In response, following McCoy, Rahman, and Somer (2018) and Somer and McCoy (2018), we offer a political and relational definition of polarization. ³ Such a definition is crucial to understand and explain pernicious polarization and its consequences for democracy. Hence, polarization is a process whereby the normal multiplicity of differences in a society increasingly align along a single dimension, cross-cutting differences become reinforcing, and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of “us” versus “them.” Accordingly, we treat the related phenomenon of populism, which attempts to simplify politics by aligning cross-cutting differences along the “elites” vs “people” distinction, as a specific and widely used subtype of polarizing politics.

It is not growing difference itself that produces severe polarization. It is how this difference is interpreted and used by some actors and groups to create an antagonistic “us” vs “them” perception of other groups. Furthermore, it is how these other groups react to this differentiation and how they respond to and situate themselves vis-a-vis the first group(s). Hence, the inherently relational nature of polarization.

What we mean with the political nature of polarization may require some more discussion and elaboration. We note that polarization is frequently triggered by various conscious and deliberate policies and by the discourse of political entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs often activate and reframe societal divisions, and, polarization is used as an effective—yet, as we argue, elusive and dangerous—tool to consolidate supporters and weaken opponents.

Hence, polarization is inherently linked to questions of power and domination, and, in many of the cases of polarized democracies we explore, with struggles of transforming governments and governing elites. This political aim of polarization clearly applies to salient polarizing actors such as political parties, movements, and charismatic leaders, who frequently drive polarized polities. But it is also true for smaller and informal groups and actors, such as peer groups, neighborhood communities, and NGOs, which are part and parcel of the processes of polarization. Thus, arguably, polarization has a political nature at both the macro and micro level.

At a macro level, more often than not polarization is a political strategy that actors employ to achieve wide-scale political ends. We have previously observed a pattern in which “contemporary polarizations often start when a previously disunited or marginalized segment of society becomes politically united and mobilized to achieve social, economic, cultural-ideological, or institutional goals” (McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018, 18). An ensuing backlash from previously dominant groups triggers political conflicts and polarizing dynamics that often reach a “pernicious” level and quality, involving a variety of social, psychological, and political dynamics. These take on a life of their own, regardless of the specific political intentions that prevailed at the beginning. Alternatively, similar polarizing dynamics can be unleashed in contexts of elite struggles, when one set of disgruntled political elites uses polarizing mass mobilization strategies to challenge dominant elites, as exhibited in some of the cases in this volume.

At a micro level, too, polarization can thrive on many dynamics of a political nature. Polarization feeds on people’s fear of being excluded from social and political power structures and concerns with power, security, and hierarchy in groups. These qualities ensure that, when polarization advances in a society, many people feel the pressure to conform with one bloc or the other as their political preferences increasingly shape their social relations.

During this process, we can expect that facts and moral truths increasingly lose their weight, as more and more people begin to conform with the messages and “truths” of their own bloc. To use the famous polemic between two ancient philosophers here, people follow the behavior identified by Glaucon, who argued that people cared about appearances more than they cared about the truth, rather than Socrates, who advised strict adherence to honesty (Haidt 2012). Following Glaucon’s claims, in situations of conflict that involve two sides and moral implications, people often instinctively and instantaneously feel sympathy toward the claim that fits with their interests. Rather than asking which moral response is justified by the facts on the ground, they focus on how they can justify the response that was predetermined by their social and political interests.

None of this is absolute, of course, and individuals often overcome these predispositions whereby individual factors, such as personality and education, and group level factors, such as culture and institutions, presumably play critical roles. What concerns us here is that severe polarization is a major factor that increases the social and political cost of acting on moral principles.

As polarization advances, it will be increasingly more difficult and less likely for people to act in a morally principled fashion. As the middle and neutral ground collapses in a context of partisan polarization, it becomes increasingly difficult to confront one’s group interests by defending the truth and acting in ways dictated by one’s values. Standing up to the group risks being called a traitor or sell-out and can result in social and political isolation.

This helps to explain why polarized societies often witness public controversies over factually provable questions, say, whether President Obama was born in the United States or whether a religious figure’s face appeared on the moon in Bangladesh (Abramowitz and McCoy, this volume; Rahman, this volume). Pernicious polarization often develops hand-in-hand with the ascendance of post-truth politics, whereby more and more social and political actors such as journalists, academics, and politicians either become engaged in partisan truth-making or else incur growing social, political, and economic costs.

Thus, we consider the expansion of polarization from formal politics to the realm of social relations, and vice versa, a major sign that pernicious polarization is becoming self-propagating. When this happens, people will find it increasingly costly to defend a nonpartisan and “virtuous” position.

Formative Rifts

Polarizing actors do not create polarization from tabula rasa. They typically build on already-existing social-political cleavages. We refer to long-standing and deep-cutting divisions that either emerged or could not be resolved during the formation of nation-states, or, sometimes during fundamental re-formations of states such as during transitions from communism to capitalism, or authoritarian to democratic regimes, as formative rifts. Some examples would be the legacy of unequal citizenship rights that were conferred upon African Americans, Native Americans, and women during the foundation of the United States, the claim that political legitimacy is to be conferred only on those with national liberation war experience in Zimbabwe, and whether language and ethnicity or religion should be the basis of national identity in Bangladesh. Similarly, the ambivalent relationship the Greek national identity has to Europe, which goes back to the formation of the modern Greek state in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the wedge generated by the civil war that took place along the Left/Right axis following the second World War in Greece can be seen as formative rifts, even though they are not made the basis of current political polarization in Greece.

We do not limit formative rifts to any particular type of social, economic, or political cleavage because different crises accompany the formation and re-formation of different states. At the same time, we do not include all cleavages that may become salient in a polity during any one specific period in our definition of formative rift. Rather, we denote those divisions that have been a constant undercurrent of politics since the state-formation or reformation and have a particular divisive quality because they cannot be eliminated without fundamentally reconfiguring these states, and because people often find themselves on one side of these rifts or the other by birth.

As a result, formative rifts can have a powerful impact on political attachments when activated. Polarizing political actors typically try to activate them to mobilize their constituencies and thereby build a cohesive and emotionally appealing group identity. Formative rifts typically but not exclusively arise during independence movements, revolutions, and civil wars, and pertain to regional conflicts and race, ethnicity and nationality questions, state borders, national identities, foundational myths and “truths,” fundamental rights of citizenship, and the religion-state relationship. Whenever a polarization is made on the basis of a formative rift, we hypothesize, polarization will have a high potential to become socially and psychologically divisive and enduring, with pernicious consequences for democracy.

Nevertheless, while these formative rifts often play a major role in the occurrence and endurance of polarization, they cannot by themselves explain it. The presence and contribution of formative rifts to polarization differs from case to case and across time. In other words, it is variable and in need of explanation. As we see in the cases that we explore in this volume, while formative rifts or even underlying social cleavages in their respective societies remain constant, polarization took off in certain periods and not others as a result of social, economic, and political developments and purposeful political mobilizations.

The main challenges and skills of polarizing political entrepreneurs who start a durable process of polarization based on a formative rift lie, we maintain, in managing to activate, mobilize, and bundle the formative rifts together with other cleavages so that they can become the basis of a winning coalition. Thus, many political actors may try to capitalize on the formative rifts in their societies, but not all of them succeed in making them the basis of a successful political mobilization. Some formative rifts, such as those pertaining to a country’s foundational myths and basis of citizenship, may be especially prone to pernicious polarization. We take up this issue again in the Conclusion article in this volume. The more such rifts are pronounced by polarizing actors, the more we expect the ensuing polarization to become pernicious.

Opposition Strategies Integral to Pernicious Polarization

In accordance with the relational definition of polarization, we argue that opposition strategies—what opposition actors do and do not do in response to a polarizing incumbent—are crucial to explain pernicious polarization and its consequences and to develop potential remedies. Thus, a great deal of the sources and remedies of pernicious polarization may lie in the choices, actions, and capabilities of the opposition.

Opposition political strategies include the basic decisions whether to reciprocate polarizing discourse and tactics or try to depolarize politics based on inclusive and unifying platforms; whether to compromise and share power with the incumbent or unite against the incumbent; and whether to use electoral mobilization, popular protest, institutional accountability mechanisms, such as judicial rulings or impeachment proceedings, or extra-constitutional and non-democratic efforts to constrain or remove the incumbent. An additional common phenomenon, though not an intentional strategy, is fragmentation of the opposition in which internal divisions severely hamper its ability to challenge the polarizing incumbent.

Our case studies illustrate these various strategies, sometimes within the same polarizing episode. For example, the military coup attempted against the polarizing incumbent Hugo Chávez in Venezuela failed to remove him and instead generated more support and sympathy for him. On the other hand, a unified opposition following an electoral strategy in Venezuela successfully achieved a stunning victory in the 2015 legislative elections, winning two-thirds of the seats for their first majority in 15 years.

Finally, the balance of power between the poles and the strategic and ideological aims of the polarizing political actors are critical factors in explaining outcomes for the democratic system. A rough balance of power between two poles may entail similar capacities to mobilize people at the polls or in the streets, resulting in alternating elections or clashing street protests, or it may entail an advantage in numbers at the polls or in the streets on one side, and an advantage in institutional control on the other. In the concluding article we examine the hypothesis that the relative balance of power between the poles, and in particular the existence of cross-class parties capable of mobilizing popular electoral support, shapes the strategies of political actors and the dynamics of polarization: where the party system has developed competing mass-based parties, political actors are more likely to engage in electoral competitions, as in Bangladesh; where the opposition is electorally weak, they are more likely to turn to constitutional or extra-constitutional mechanisms to constrain the executive, as in Thailand, the latter with potentially counter-productive outcomes.

Transformative aims of polarizing actors

The strategic aims of polarizing actors also matter. We find in our cases three basic patterns giving rise to the political use of polarization: the more stationary and pro-status quo pattern of intra-elite power struggles and party competition, illustrated by the Philippines case, and the inclusionary versus exclusionary versions of transformative politics in which mass-based popular demands for fundamental change are channeled and exploited by a political entrepreneur able to capitalize on this demand. We hypothesize that the inclusionary polarizing-cum-transformative aim, which begins by arguing that polarizing confrontation is required to achieve democratizing reforms, as in Turkey and Venezuela, is the most likely to end up with pernicious polarization becoming self-propagating and producing authoritarian outcomes under the new elites.

We argue that polarization is potentially transformative in its capacity to disrupt the status quo, thereby helping to address injustice, or an imbalance in the popular vs. oligarchic versions of democracy (Slater 2013; Stavrakakis 2018), or to open up a strong state as discussed by Somer in this volume. Democratic reform to enhance inclusion can be the goal when challengers organize to represent previously underrepresented groups. But such challenges often provoke an elite backlash and counter-mobilization to stymie these transformative attempts, rather than a recognition of their reformist and inclusionary potential in building a constructively agonistic and pluralist, as opposed to antagonistic, democracy (Stavrakakis 2018). This elite backlash, in turn, can motivate the challengers to double down and strive to protect themselves by changing the rules and creating hegemonic power.

Thus, whether polarization serves a constructive or destructive purpose for democracy depends on the behavior of both governments and opposition, new political actors, and traditionally dominant groups. Whether these actors and groups pursue polarization or de-polarization, how they pursue these goals, for example, whether they focus on electoral mobilization or street protests, has consequences for democracy, as we discuss in the conclusion article.

Outcomes for Democracy

Our starting point for analyzing the effects of pernicious polarization on democracy begins with a quadruple typology of outcomes that polarization can produce vis-a-vis democracy: gridlock and careening; democratic erosion or collapse under new elites and dominant groups; democratic erosion or collapse with reassertion of old elites and dominant groups; or democratic reform (McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018; Somer and McCoy 2018). Nine of our eleven case study polities currently fit, to greater and lesser degrees, with one of these outcomes.

Bangladesh, Greece, the Philippines, and the United States suffer gridlock and “careening”; ⁴ Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Venezuela are undergoing democratic erosion or collapse under “new” elites and dominant groups; and Thailand moved from careening democracy to democratic collapse with the return of “old” elites and dominant groups. Further, some subperiods of some of our polities partially fit with the fourth outcome of democratic reforms, as in South Africa under Mandela, Greece in the early 2000s, and Turkey in 2002–2006.

However, Zimbabwe and post-Mandela South Africa have more ambiguous statuses vis-a-vis the quadruple classification, where the outcomes could perhaps be described as “precarious prospects of democratic reform.” Accordingly, the relative democratic successes of post-apartheid South Africa are beyond question. However, the dominant party regime of the ANC also threatens to resemble the outcome of “democratic erosion under new elites and dominant groups.” Likewise, the elite compromises in the form of power-sharing in Zimbabwe are actually elite co-optations short of genuine democratization. In both cases, very recent reform attempts within the dominant parties in 2017–18 present some hope for democratization, as discussed by the analyses of Southall, and LeBas and Munemo in this volume.

What is more, some of our cases vary cross-temporally and exhibit different outcomes in different periods. Turkey had careening combined with democratic reforms prior to 2007, which have been replaced by democratic erosion under new elites and dominant groups since then. Venezuela moved from potentially democratizing participatory reforms in the early polarization period to outright democratic collapse in the last few years. Other cases undergoing re-polarization or deepening polarization, such as South Africa, Greece, and the United States, have as yet dynamic and unclear outcomes, with the potential to move in various different directions in classification.

In the Conclusion article, we discuss seven risk factors that seem to be crucial for shaping outcomes for democracy: power asymmetry between the polarized blocs; reciprocal Manichean discourse; societal polarization; transformative ideology of the polarizing actor; institutionalized and mass-based party system; polarization formed around formative rifts; and majoritarian institutions. Within these seven, we argue, the various combinations or absence of two factors—polarization mobilized around formative rifts and mass-based political party institutionalization—are the most critical in helping to determine how enduring and democracy-eroding different types of polarizations will be. We thus highlight that agency—how political and institutional actors choose to act, and not just institutions or structures—is crucial to understanding polarization and its impact. We also acknowledge that additional factors not explored in this volume, such as international dynamics, may play a role in the outcome.

The Organization of the Case Studies

We present the cases in this volume based on our assessment of their current status in the quadruple typology of the outcomes for democracy. In the concluding article, we conduct a systematic comparison and aim to reach insights regarding the causal factors and a more refined typology of outcomes.

In the first two sections of this volume, we have Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela, Hungary, and Poland, whose ruling elites and governments have been very different in terms of their ideological makeup and institutional forms. Nevertheless, these five polities have been suffering severe polarization and democratic erosion combined with drastic shifts of governing elites, as analyzed in the contributions from Kongkirati, Somer, Garcia-Guadilla and Mallen, Vegetti, and Tworzecki, respectively. Relative newcomers to politics, Thaksin in Thailand, Erdoğan and the AKP in Turkey, and Chávez and the PSUV in Venezuela, achieved power by uniting and mobilizing the disenchanted and relatively disadvantaged segments of society based on polarizing politics and the promise of securing wide-scale changes in the political and economic status-quo. In turn, Viktor Orbán and Fidesz in Hungary and the Kaczyński brothers and the PiS in Poland were not newcomers to politics but have been employing similar strategies after reinventing themselves and their parties based on polarizing politics. In all five cases, with the possible exception of Hungary, the tactics and policies of the incumbents threatened and led to powerful backlashes from the state institutions, established elites, and their societal constituencies, who counter-mobilized via mass protests and other public and political campaigns, coup attempts, and judicial activism.

None of these polities has yet been able to democratically manage the ensuing and interactive dynamics of societal and political polarization, whereby deepening legal–political crises, mobilizations, and counter-mobilizations have led to democratic backsliding. However, polarization and the behavior of political actors produced the outcome of authoritarianism under the old elites who returned to power in Thailand, while new dominant elites consolidated their power in the other cases. Moreover, Turkey and Venezuela incrementally transformed to electoral authoritarian regimes, and now outright authoritarianism in Venezuela, whereas Poland and Hungary can be considered illiberal democracies with severe problems of executive degradation.

The third section features four polities where there has not been a decisive shift of the dominant governing elites, even though three of them saw the rise of populist newcomers in their political systems. Instead, in the Philippines, the United States, Greece, and Bangladesh, democracy is troubled and undermined by growing polarization and the resulting tensions, gridlocks, and “democratic careening” between different elite mobilizations and political realignments, and between state institutions and new elites. As the studies of Arugay and Slater, Abramowitz and McCoy, Stavrakakis and Andreadis, and Rahman, respectively, imply, the current polarizations have the potential to produce different outcomes for democracy, depending on the actors’ choices and factors that we discuss in the conclusion to this volume.

Finally, two countries—South Africa and Zimbabwe—represent cases of national liberation elites emerging in state reformulations with unresolved questions over foundational myths, such as the symbols and heroes of national struggles. As discussed by the contributions of Southall, and LeBas and Munemo, respectively, to differing degrees both countries are conflict-ridden polities undermined by corruption, violence, and periodic episodes of polarizing crises and, in the case of Zimbabwe, outright government oppression. However, they each have the potential for further democratization through internal reform of the dominant liberation party, or for consolidation of hegemonic party control and electoral authoritarianism. South Africa more so, but with severe vulnerabilities; whereas in Zimbabwe, the outlook is bleaker.

Polarization is an expanding and disconcerting problem for many democratic polities across the world and has drawn the growing attention of scholars and policy-makers alike. This is not the first time that polarization is threatening democracies; when it has done so historically, as an alarming and thoughtful recent op-ed put it, it transformed politics as well as social and intellectual relations by pulling erstwhile friends and friendly competitors toward mutually antagonistic poles “like a flock of moths to an inescapable flame” (Applebaum 2018). This volume is an attempt to better understand and theorize pernicious polarization by presenting and comparing eleven otherwise dissimilar case studies of polarization. As our cases suggest, too, a multiplicity of different sentiments, rhetorics, and ideologies—such as populism, nativism, nationalism, religious conservatism, anticapitalism, and leftism—underlie current examples of polarization and democratic erosion. While the ideological manifestations, salient social cleavages, and cultural and institutional contexts vary in different examples, the driving causal mechanisms of polarization are quite similar—otherwise cross-cutting differences meld into one overarching division, political adversaries become enemies posing an existential threat, and polarization takes on a life of its own. Being preoccupied with particular ideologies and movements, many ordinary citizens and policy-makers may mistakenly think that the choices they make will not bear consequences similar to periods of democratic decay and authoritarianism in the past. Thus, achieving a better understanding of the causal processes underpinning severe polarization can help to explain and remedy not only pernicious polarization itself, but also related challenges to democracy such as unfettered populism and nationalism.