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How polarized are citizens? Measuring ideology from the ground-up
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Draca, Mirko and Schwarz, Carlo (2019) How polarized are citizens? Measuring ideology from the ground-up. Working Paper. Coventry: University of Warwick. Department of Economics. Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) (1218). (Unpublished)
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Official URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w...
Abstract
Strong evidence has been emerging that major democracies have become more politically polarized, at least according to measures based on the ideological positions of political elites. We ask: have the general public (‘citizens’) followed the same pattern?
Our approach is based on unsupervised machine learning models as applied to issueposition survey data. This approach firstly indicates that coherent, latent ideologies are strongly apparent in the data, with a number of major, stable types that we label as: Liberal Centrist, Conservative Centrist, Left Anarchist and Right Anarchist. Using this
framework, and a resulting measure of ‘citizen slant’, we are then able to decompose the shift in ideological positions across the population over time. Specifically, we find evidence of a ‘disappearing center’ in a range of countries with citizens shifting away from centrist ideologies into anti-establishment ‘anarchist’ ideologies over time. This
trend is especially pronounced for the US
Item Type: | Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform J Political Science > JK Political institutions (United States) |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Polarization (Social sciences) , Polarization (Social sciences) -- Political aspects -- United States, Political culture -- United States | ||||
Series Name: | Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) | ||||
Publisher: | University of Warwick. Department of Economics | ||||
Place of Publication: | Coventry | ||||
ISSN: | 0083-7350 | ||||
Official Date: | July 2019 | ||||
Dates: |
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Number: | 1218 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 25 | ||||
Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Status: | Not Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||
Description: | This paper also appears as CAGE Discussion paper 432 |
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Date of first compliant deposit: | 12 March 2018 | ||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 12 March 2018 |
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