Abstract
There is a growing consensus that the United States is undergoing a period of political polarization, particularly among elites. The causes of this polarization remain under-researched. We argue that shifts in the international distribution of power influence America's polarization. To demonstrate the argument, this article analyzes changes in power and polarization quantitatively and qualitatively from 1945 to 2005. A key finding is that greater relative power on the world stage substantially increases polarization and some of its correlates, like income inequality. The argument also measures the extent of international influence on domestic polarization and makes novel predictions on when and why polarization will fall.
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Notes
Although we are arguing that in times of safety people ‘argue around the flag’, our claims are connected to but distinct from the celebrated and contested ‘rally round the flag’ effect, where recourse to force galvanizes a public behind its leader(s), because we seek to explain polarization, not approval ratings, and our analytical time horizon is longer. See Mueller (1985, pp. 53, 58), cf. Brody (1991, p. 77), Zaller (1992, p. 119), Trubowitz and Mellow (2005, pp. 446, 449).
Gourevitch (1986, pp. 63–65). Second image reversed arguments are outside in; that is, they lay stress on how the international environment conditions internal state dynamics. Second image reversed arguments are typically contrasted with second image explanations that take an inside out view. In second image arguments, internal state traits are the key factors driving outcomes like foreign policy and war proneness (Rosecrance and Stein eds., 1993; Milner, 1997; Trubowitz, 1998; Narizny, 2007).
Congressional representatives face elections every 2 years, while members of the Senate face election every 6 years with a third of the seats up every 2 years.
Regression analyses predicting each of the series by their lagged values shows that we cannot reject the null hypothesis of a unit root.
Variously specified error correction models show similar results.
A model including concurrent changes shows that this is true.
The coefficients cannot be interpreted substantively since neither the key predictor nor the dependent variable has an intuitive metric.
While no parameter estimate achieves conventional levels of statistical significance when Senate polarization is investigated, changes in power at one lag are nearly significant (P=0.11) and inequality continues to perform less well. The explanatory power of the model predicting Senate polarization (R2=0.06) is lower than in the model predicting House polarization (R2=0.41). This is likely due to the greater responsiveness exhibited by members of the House, who are elected every 2 years.
We have also tested our model using income share of the top 10 per cent of earners (Saez's 2008 data archive) and the Gini coefficient of family income (US Census data). All our measures of inequality correlate at over 0.9. Substituting in the Gini coefficient, changes in power continue to be significant at two lags (P=0.023). Changes in the Gini coefficient are significant at one lag (P=0.044). In this equation, the adjusted R2=0.47 and power remains the strongest predictor of polarization. Using the top 10 per cent of earners rather than the top 1 per cent makes no difference in the result.
In some instances, including a third lag improved the explanatory power of the regression, but the substantive result remained the same.
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Acknowledgements
This article was presented at the Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College, 19 October 2007, the University of Miami, 3 March 2009, and the International Studies Association Conference, Montreal, Canada, 16 March 2011. Our thanks to participants of these seminars as well as Kristen Anderson, Richard Betts, Deborah Jordan Brooks, Stephen Brooks, James Brown, Robert Erikson, Linda Fowler, Robert Jervis, Dean Lacy, Ned Lebow, Jennifer Lind, Abigail Parent, Ryan Parks, Daryl Press, Robert Shapiro, Jack Snyder, Kenneth Waltz, William Wohlforth and three anonymous reviewers.
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Bafumi, J., Parent, J. International polarity and America's polarization. Int Polit 49, 1–35 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2011.34
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2011.34