Polarized pluralism

Last updated

Polarized pluralism is a two-party or multi-party political system which is seen as overly polarized and therefore as dysfunctional. It was originally described by political philosopher Giovanni Sartori to define a system where moderate views are replaced by polarized views. The phrase was used by analyst Roger Cohen writing in the New York Times to describe American politics about energy, [1] but the phrase is not widely used in mainstream newspapers.

In a typical two-party or multi-party system, the distribution of party power looks like a normal curve with a slight skew. In such a condition, most of the country is moderate or moderate-leaning left-wing or right-wing. If the country becomes polarized, then the curve becomes one with two main humps and looks like a bimodal distribution, with the power at the far political left and right ends, and a severe dip in the middle; one side will have more influence than the other, creating a strong trend to follow them. There is speculation that a nation with such a distribution, effectively having two highly separate approaches with no compromise positions in the middle, becomes difficult to govern.

An example of polarized pluralism was politics during Weimar-era Germany. The nation had two power centers, highly split apart; the communists and the Nazis. The Nazis were the stronger of the two parties and won total control of the government, and led to a condition of fascism.

Related Research Articles

Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent and govern with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland to create a nation state. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power. It further aims to build and maintain a single national identity, based on shared social characteristics of culture, ethnicity, geographic location, language, politics, religion, traditions and belief in a shared singular history, and to promote national unity or solidarity. Nationalism, therefore, seeks to preserve and foster a nation's traditional culture. There are various definitions of a "nation", which leads to different types of nationalism. The two main divergent forms are ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism.

A political spectrum is a system to characterize and classify different political positions in relation to one another. These positions sit upon one or more geometric axes that represent independent political dimensions. The expressions political compass and political map are used to refer to the political spectrum as well, especially to popular two-dimensional models of it.

Right-wing politics Political alignment favoring traditional politics

Right-wing politics is generally defined by support of the view that certain social orders and hierarchies are inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authority or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results of traditional social differences or competition in market economies.

In international relations, power is defined in several different ways. Material definitions of state power emphasize economic and military power. Other definitions of power emphasize the ability to structure and constitute the nature of social relations between actors. Power is an attribute of particular actors in their interactions, as well as a social process that constitutes the social identities and capacities of actors.

In political science, a multi-party system is a political system in which multiple political parties across the political spectrum run for national elections, and all have the capacity to gain control of government offices, separately or in coalition. Apart from one-party-dominant and two-party systems, multi-party systems tend to be more common in parliamentary systems than presidential systems and far more common in countries that use proportional representation compared to countries that use first-past-the-post elections. Several parties compete for power and all of them have reasonable chance of forming government.

Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice Political party in Eritrea

The People's Front for Democracy and Justice is the founding, ruling, and sole legal political party of the State of Eritrea. The successor to the left-wing nationalist Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), the PFDJ holds itself open to nationalists of any political affiliation. The leader of the PFDJ party and current President of Eritrea is Isaias Afwerki. It has been described as totalitarian.

Clause IV is part of the constitution of the Labour Party, which sets out the aims and values of the party. The original clause, adopted in 1918, called for common ownership of industry, and proved controversial in later years; Hugh Gaitskell attempted to remove the clause following Labour's loss in the 1959 general election.

Political polarization is the divergence of political attitudes away from the centre, towards ideological extremes.

Rudolf Breitscheid German politician

Rudolf Breitscheid was a German politician and leading member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) during the Weimar Republic. Once leader of the liberal Democratic Union, he joined the SPD in 1912. He defected to the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) in 1917 due to his opposition to the First World War, and rejoined the SPD in 1922. He served as a senior member of and foreign policy spokesman for the SPD Reichstag group during the Weimar Republic, and was a member of the German delegation to the League of Nations. After the Nazi rise to power, he was among the members of the Reichstag who voted against the Enabling Act of 1933, and soon after fled to France to avoid persecution. He was arrested and handed to the Gestapo in 1941, and died in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944.

A plural society is defined by Fredrik Barth as a society combining ethnic contrasts: the economic interdependence of those groups, and their ecological specialization. The ecological interdependence, or the lack of competition, between ethnic groups may be based on the different activities in the same region or on long–term occupation of different regions in the Defined by J S Furnivall as a medley of peoples - European, Chinese, Indian and native, who do mix but do not combine. Each group holds by its own religion, its own culture and language, its own ideas and ways. As individuals they meet, but only in the marketplace in buying and selling. There is a plural society, with different sections of the community living side by side, within the same political unit.

Mainz Microtron

The Mainz Microtron, abbreviated MAMI, is a microtron which provides a continuous wave, high intensity, polarized electron beam with an energy up to 1.6 GeV. MAMI is the core of an experimental facility for particle, nuclear and X-ray radiation physics at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (Germany). It is one of the largest campus-based accelerator facilities for basic research in Europe. The experiments at MAMI are performed by about 200 physicists of many countries organized in international collaborations.

Neue Rechte is the designation for a right-wing political movement in Germany. It was founded as an opposition to the New Left generation of the 1960s. Its intellectually oriented proponents distance themselves from Old Right Nazi traditions and emphasize similarities between the far-right and the conservative spectrum.

Classical pluralism is the view that politics and decision-making are located mostly in the framework of government, but that many non-governmental groups use their resources to exert influence. The central question for classical pluralism is how power and influence are distributed in a political process. Groups of individuals try to maximize their interests. Lines of conflict are multiple and shifting as power is a continuous bargaining process between competing groups. There may be inequalities but they tend to be distributed and evened out by the various forms and distributions of resources throughout a population. Any change under this view will be slow and incremental, as groups have different interests and may act as "veto groups" to destroy legislation. The existence of diverse and competing interests is the basis for a democratic equilibrium, and is crucial for the obtaining of goals by individuals. A polyarchy—a situation of open competition for electoral support within a significant part of the adult population—ensures competition of group interests and relative equality. Pluralists stress civil rights, such as freedom of expression and organization, and an electoral system with at least two parties. On the other hand, since the participants in this process constitute only a tiny fraction of the populace, the public acts mainly as bystanders. This is not necessarily undesirable for two reasons: (1) it may be representative of a population content with the political happenings, or (2) political issues require continuous and expert attention, which the average citizen may not have.

Political ideologies in the United States Ideologies and ideological demographics in the United States

American political ideologies usually align with the left–right political spectrum, with most Americans identifying as liberal, moderate, or conservative. Modern American liberalism is defined by welfare capitalism and social liberalism, developing during the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. Modern American conservatism is defined by social conservatism and economic liberalism, developing as a response to the New Deal and the civil rights movement. Besides modern liberalism and conservatism, the United States has a notable libertarian movement, and historical political movements in the United States have been shaped by ideologies as varied as republicanism, populism, separatism, socialism, monarchism, and nationalism.

Fascism in Asia refers to political ideologies in Asia that adhered to fascist policies, which gained popularity in many countries in Asia during the 1920s.

Nazism, the common name in English for National Socialism, is the ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism. The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the collapse of the Nazi regime.

Political parallelism is a feature of media systems. In comparative media system research, it "refers to the character of links between political actors and the media and more generally the extent to which media reflects political divisions." Daniel C. Hallin and Mancini used the term to analyse links between media organizations and political tendencies; appropriating an older concept by Colin Seymour-Ure who had originally applied it in a narrower way to the links between the press and political parties.

<i>Comparing Media Systems</i>

Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics (2004), by Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini, is a seminal study in the field of international comparative media system research. The study compares media systems of 18 Western democracies including nine Northern European countries, five Southern European countries and four Atlantic countries.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to politics and political science:

Political polarization in the United States Divisions among people with different political ideologies in the United States

Political polarization is a prominent component of politics in the United States. Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization and affective polarization, both of which are apparent in the United States. In the last few decades, the U.S. has experienced a greater surge in ideological polarization and affective polarization than comparable democracies.

References

  1. Roger Cohen (2010-11-08). "Energy lessons". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-11-08. Perhaps there's something to treadmill wisdom. We're all so narrow-band these days, using the vast resources of broadband to direct ourselves into a chosen ideological and news tunnel. Polarized pluralism defines us.