In this context, many partisan elites have political incentives to take, or at least refrain from pushing back on, relatively extreme partisan positions.
Those I queried repeatedly cited the role of the two-party winner-take-all system in exacerbating polarization in this country.
Iyengar cited two other “big differences between the U.S. and the other industrialized democracies”:The U.S. is the outlier, in the sense that we are the one case without a major public broadcaster.
In other words, our democracy has always been contested and political polarization has often been intense.
Foner shares the view that the two-party system fosters polarization, noting that “it may even be that the political system produces polarization, even though on many issues Americans may not be as divided as appears on the surface.”
Persons:
”, Malka, Shanto Iyengar, Iyengar, “, ” Eric Foner, —, Foner
Organizations:
Stanford, Coalition, U.S
Locations:
United States, Covid, U.S, ’, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Japan, Columbia