Dividing lines: drivers and solutions to polarisation in democracy

About the Project

Across democracies around the world, there is widespread partisan polarization. Political conflict is central to democracy. However, democratic functioning is under threat when political identities solidify into polarized groups who are unwilling to engage respectfully with each other. In recent decades, much attention has been paid to the increasing partisan polarization in American politics. Of particular concern is that partisan polarization is not just about voters disagreeing about policy positions, but increasingly in an emotive and interpersonal way. This manifests itself as affective polarization: an emotional attachment to the in-group party and hostility toward the out-group party. Democrats and Republicans do not just disagree about the best welfare or abortion policy, they also increasingly avoid contact with the other side, preferring to work, date and live with people from their in-party. Recent work has shown that affective polarization is not unique to the United States, but is also found in other Western democracies. The negative consequences of such polarization include out-group prejudice and discrimination, a lack of willingness to engage in democratic deliberation, and even reduced trust in democratic institutions and support for basic democratic principles. What drives affective polarization? And how can we reduce it? To work on these questions, the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading seeks to appoint an outstanding and highly motivated Ph.D. candidate for three full years (36 months).

Eligibility requirements - This position would be well suited to candidates who already have some experience using one type of quantitative method (surveys, experiments, machine learning, or text analysis/NLP), and who have a basic understanding of programming in either R, Stata, Python or Matlab.

Funding Notes

The scholar working under the supervision of Dr Katharina Lawall will have the opportunity to develop a research project on polarization using a range of cutting edge quantitative methods, such as - but not limited to - analysis of survey and administrative data, automated text and image analysis, or experiments.