...Anthony Fowler Members of the U.S. Congress have become increasingly extreme and polarized over the past 50 years, but explanations for this phenomenon remain hotly debated. This paper tests whether and to what extent Congressional polarization can be explained by the increasing partisanship...

... ideology are partially to blame. Second, majority party agenda control (both negative and positive) varies considerably as polarization increases (or decreases). Using models that take advantage of within-state variation, we find that as polarization in a state legislature grows, majority parties...

...Ipek Cinar; Monika Nalepa Is elite or mass polarization the driver of the democratic backsliding? A number of recent papers in the political economy of backsliding have developed theoretical predictions about the effects of polarization in the electorate as well as elite polarization on the process...

... of the country. In this article we analyze the implications of a static House size on the partisan polarization of its members. Using a series of computer simulations, we imagine a set counter-factual worlds set in a purely hypothetical environment and in the real world to explore the relationship between...

...Jeremy C. Pope Polarization is often discussed as a modern phenomenon, something that has happened in the past half-century. While no doubt true, this framing omits the constitutional underpinnings that exacerbate polarization and leave it entrenched in the specific way we see it now. A fragmented...

... turnout levels among their key supporters (their partisan base) by taking positions popular with that base. High polarization alters expected payoffs from each strategy by enhancing party loyalty, on average, and increasing the influence of voters with more extreme views. Thus, as polarization rises...

...Dan Alexander; Asya Magazinnik Both the academic political science literature and the popular discourse are replete with narratives seeking to explain the concurrent rise of income inequality and legislative polarization over the past half century. We focus on a prominent subset of such accounts...

...E. J. Fagan This paper argues that partisan think tanks played an important role in the rapid polarization of American politics that began in the late 1970s. Scholars of polarization conclude that political elites polarized long before their voters or districts did, directing our attention toward...

...Austin Bussing; Joshua Y. Lerner How do procedural innovations, such as committee bypass, affect our roll-call-based measurements of individual member ideology — and therefore our measurements of polarization? Congressional polarization, measured using member ideal points derived from scaling roll...

... for political representation, policy making, and the workings of the US federal system. In this paper, we update the analysis of Shor and McCarty (2011) with comprehensive data from 1996 to 2020 for the state legislatures of all fifty states.We extend the analysis of state legislative polarization back...