Alexander Lee
Associate Professor of Political Science. South Asia, Historical Political Economy, blueberries.
- A lot has been written on the causes of polarization, but Avidit Acharya, Theo Serlin and I wanted to ask a different question: How Polarization *Ends* Paper link and 🧵 tinyurl.com/jp2pk4rt 1/10
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View full threadThe main lesson for today is that polarization will continue as long as the parties remain relatively competitive in elections Unfortunately, they *have* been very competitive, switching power and control of Congress every two to six years, with no sign of stopping. 9/10
- There are several important caveats about drawing lessons from historical cases, and about the cases themselves. Read the paper for those! 10/10
- What causes one party dominance? Demographic and structural economic factors were important. For example, westward expansion added new voters who were disposed to support the Dem.-Republicans.--no Federalist presidential candidate ever won a state that was added after 1796 7/10
- The declining party, realizing that the trends are working against it, engages in anti-majoritarian tactics to try to slow those trends. The Federalists opposed the Louisiana purchase and proposed a supermajority requirement to admit new states to the union. 8/10
- The second pattern is that when polarization ends, new issues emerge that replace the old issues in importance. You can think of it as losing party finding new things to talk about. The Democrats weren't winning on low tariffs and racism, but they could win on the New Deal 5/10
- At same time, the dominant party factionalizes on the new issues. The Dem.-Republican party factionalized on Andrew Jackson and internal improvements in the 1820-30s, the Republicans split between progressives and conservatives on regulatory issues in the 1900-20s 6/10
- We look at two spikes of polarization that later ended: The First Party System when Federalists and Dem.-Republicans were polarized on the constitution and foreign policy, and the Third/Fourth Party Systems when Dems and Reps were polarized on the tariff and Reconstruction. 3/10
- Our big finding: Polarization will last as long as the parties remain competitive, and end after one party becomes dominant There is no convergence toward the center or the median voter See how DWnominate cong. polarization falls after long periods of unified government 4/10
- This is not the first time American politics have been polarized. Polarization has increased before and has ended before. And the reasons it ends are not necessarily the reasons it begins. 2/10
- Congratulations to @simonchauchard.bsky.social, @sumitra.bsky.social, and Niloufer Siddiqui, who received the 2025 Rajni Kothari Award for best paper on South Asian Politics for "Misinformation and support for vigilantism: An experiment in India and Pakistan" www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- Do you have a recently published book or article on South Asia? Submit your work for the APSA South Asian section prizes! Details below.
- The @apsa.bsky.social South Asian Politics Section is soliciting nominations for the Frankel Prize for best book (last two years) and Kothari Prize for best article (past year). Self nominations are fine. The deadline for both prizes is February 1st. Submission details below.
- Reupping a post that got lost in the holidays: The South Asian politics section of APSA now has prizes for best book and best article on South Asia. Please nominate work you admire (even your own).
- The South Asian Politics section of APSA would like to announce two new prizes. Please send nominations (including self-nominations) to the committee by February 1st. If you’re the author of a book, you can ask your editor to send copies.
