A_03 Polarization and Political Legitimacy

By addressing the relationship between polarization and political legitimacy, this work package (WP) subjects the widespread thesis that tendencies toward polarization inevitably endanger the legitimacy of political institutions to critical scrutiny. Its aim is to specify more precisely the conditions under which certain forms of polarization threaten political legitimacy at the national and inter- or transnational levels, and under which conditions they may even strengthen it. In doing so, the WP makes a central contribution to clarifying the relationship between social cohesion and political legitimacy, which is examined in Focus Area 2 of the research area.

The starting point of the WP is the discursive rise of the keyword “polarization” in recent diagnoses of the times, whether in connection with the electoral success of populist parties, the (alleged) emergence of new political divides, or the (purported) increasing moral devaluation of political opponents. With regard to the inter- and transnational level, it has also been common — not only since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine—to speak of a new polarization between liberal-democratic and authoritarian states, accompanied by a struggle over the legitimacy of international institutions. Even though political science, sociology, and political philosophy advance highly divergent conceptions of polarization, the term is unambiguously negatively connoted in public perception. On closer inspection, however, this diagnosis appears at least questionable.

Is the growing distance between political actors described by the concept of polarization—whether individual citizens, parties, or states and their representatives—truly and inevitably something negative that endangers the stability of state or international order(s) and their normative constitution? Or can processes of political polarization, under certain circumstances, even contribute to the quality of democracy or to the stability of the international order?

The WP aims to provide a differentiated answer to these questions. It proceeds from the observation that the relationship between polarization and the stability and legitimacy of political orders is discussed ambivalently, for example in democratic theory as well as in theories of international relations.

While many liberal commentators fear that processes of polarization undermine the legitimacy of democratic governance and/or the stability of political order because they make cooperation and compromise more difficult and lead to conflictual zero-sum politics, perspectives from conflict sociology emphasize the epistemic value of polarization processes. Polarizing politics, it is argued, can increase democratic legitimacy and political stability by making latent social conflicts more visible and thus sharpening the contrast between political alternatives.

According to the thesis of the WP, these two assessments are only seemingly in conflict with one another. They do not contradict each other but rather refer to two different forms of polarization—affective and ideological polarization—which have different effects on the legitimacy of democratic governance. While the relationship between legitimacy and cohesion in the other WPs of the focus area is examined primarily from an empirical perspective, this WP seeks to make a theoretical contribution. The distinction between different types of polarization and a more fine-grained differentiation of the various aspects of democratic legitimacy are also likely to be relevant for the empirical research of the research area and of RISC as a whole.