Pluralistic Collapse: the “Oil Spill” Model of Mass Opinion Polarization
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ASRXXX10.1177/0003122420922989American Sociological ReviewDellaPosta 922989research-article2020 American Sociological Review 2020, Vol. 85(3) 507 –536 Pluralistic Collapse: The “Oil © American Sociological Association 2020 https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122420922989DOI: 10.1177/0003122420922989 Spill” Model of Mass Opinion journals.sagepub.com/home/asr Polarization Daniel DellaPostaa Abstract Despite widespread feeling that public opinion in the United States has become dramatically polarized along political lines, empirical support for such a pattern is surprisingly elusive. Reporting little evidence of mass polarization, previous studies assume polarization is evidenced via the amplification of existing political alignments. This article considers a different pathway: polarization occurring via social, cultural, and political alignments coming to encompass an increasingly diverse array of opinions and attitudes. The study uses 44 years of data from the General Social Survey representing opinions and attitudes across a wide array of domains as elements in an evolving belief network. Analyses of this network produce evidence that mass polarization has increased via a process of belief consolidation, entailing the collapse of previously cross-cutting alignments, thus creating increasingly broad and encompassing clusters organized around cohesive packages of beliefs. Further, the increasing salience of political ideology and partisanship only partly explains this trend. The structure of U.S. opinion has shifted in ways suggesting troubling implications for proponents of political and social pluralism. Keywords political polarization, public opinion, belief networks, political pluralism Social and political theorists have long argued prevent disagreement in one arena from esca- that differentiated societies are best able to lating into all-out (metaphorical or literal) integrate diverse interests when relying on a warfare. As long as opinion cleavages remain foundation of cross-cutting social and political cross-cutting rather than all-encompassing, cleavages (Blau and Schwartz 1984; Dahl pluralistic disagreement should channel social 1961; Durkheim 1933; Lipset 1963; Simmel conflict toward mutual tolerance (Stouffer 1955; Truman 1951). Unlike stultifying mono- 1955), political forbearance (Levitsky and cultures built on public consensus (Arendt Ziblatt 2018), and other liberal ends. 1968), cross-cutting lines of conflict and dis- agreement found in pluralistic societies embed individuals in overlapping groups (Baldassarri aPennsylvania State University and Diani 2007; Centola 2015; Mutz 2002). Even if people fight over differing views on Corresponding Author: taxation, they may still agree on issues of for- Daniel DellaPosta, 503 Oswald Tower, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, eign policy or overlap in religious views; PA 16802 these areas of agreement are thought to Email: [email protected] 508 American Sociological Review 85(3) Against this backdrop, recent decades have they have? Why, in other words, does polari- brought mounting concern among social sci- zation appear as such a salient social fact entists, journalists, policymakers, and the gen- despite its apparent absence in the U.S. eral public that the pluralistic structure of U.S. population? politics has turned to all-encompassing con- Previous studies suggest the gap between flict between increasingly polarized camps. In popular and scholarly consensus could be due their provocatively titled book How Democra- to the tendency for media reports to pay selec- cies Die, Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) frame tive attention to polarized “hot-button” issues polarization as a fundamental problem for like abortion (Baldassarri and Bearman 2007; U.S. democracy—not merely a nuisance but a DiMaggio et al. 1996; Evans 2003); outsized potentially existential threat. Such alarmism is focus on political elites who have become not uncommon in mainstream discourse. Yet increasingly partisan and polarized them- despite the common belief that the United selves (Hetherington 2001); social sorting States has become dramatically more politi- leading to a sense of political homogeneity in cally polarized, social-scientific support for our personal networks (Baldassarri and Bear- such a pattern has been surprisingly elusive. man 2007; Cowan and Baldassarri 2018; Del- In the rarefied air of the U.S. Congress, laPosta, Shi, and Macy 2015); or increasing there is clear evidence that the Democratic geographic polarization in which regions and and Republican parties have moved far apart locales increasingly feature one-party domi- in recent decades (Andris et al. 2015; Lee nance even when elections split evenly at the 2009; Moody and Mucha 2013; Poole and national level (Bishop 2008; but see Abrams Rosenthal 1984). In the broader public, adher- and Fiorina 2012). ents of the two major political parties have become increasingly distinct, as Democrats Measuring Polarization have become more consistently liberal and Republicans more reliably conservative (Bal- Nevertheless, although many scholars have dassarri and Gelman 2008). However, critiqued the lack of a clear index of polariza- although people have become better sorted by tion in previous work (e.g., Fiorina and party and political ideology, public attitudes Abrams 2008), less attention has been paid to on most political issues seem to have remained the ubiquity of a particular (and implicit) unpolarized to a remarkable degree (DiMag- model of how polarization would appear in gio, Evans, and Bryson 1996; Evans 2003; population-level survey data. The common Fiorina 2004; Hill and Tausanovitch 2015). empirical strategy in prior research is to select Although knowing someone’s political and analyze a limited set of survey questions party or self-described ideology allows us to on political issues, focusing on questions the predict their attitudes with increased accu- researcher identifies as most politically rele- racy, these attitudes themselves have not vant (e.g., opinions on abortion, climate become much more strongly aligned with change, taxation, or foreign policy). By select- other attitudes, as we would expect in a world ing on an issue’s already-established political of mass polarization (Baldassarri and Gelman relevance, however, the researcher implicitly 2008; Fiorina and Abrams 2008; Fischer and assumes that polarization occurs via height- Mattson 2009; Park 2018).1 Unlike the politi- ened alignment along existing lines of politi- cal elite, the broader public is composed of cal debate, akin to a fence the researcher can large numbers of “ideological innocents” observe getting taller over time. (Converse 1964; Kinder and Kalmoe 2017) But what if polarization is less like a fence who espouse cross-cutting and often incon- getting taller over time and more like an oil sistent beliefs across political issues. This spill that spreads from its source to gradually raises the question: If opinions have not taint more and more previously “apolitical” become markedly more polarized, why is it so attitudes, opinions, and preferences? DellaPosta widely believed—and so easy to intuit—that and colleagues (2015) show that even many DellaPosta 509 initially apolitical lifestyle characteristics, from to analyze how these cultural elements cohere musical taste to belief in astrology, can become into a broader structure of meaning (DiMag- politicized as signals for deeper beliefs and gio 2011:287; see also Lizardo 2014; Mohr preferences—a tendency most saliently cap- and White 2008; Pachucki and Breiger 2010; tured in the popular image of the “latte liberal” Vilhena et al. 2014). (see also Hetherington and Weiler 2018; Mutz This conceptual approach dovetails with and Rao 2018; Shi et al. 2017). classic work on beliefs and opinions (e.g., This suggests a different answer to the Converse 1964) in which the meaning and puzzle posed at the outset: rather than height- importance of a particular belief derives from ened alignment across already-politicized its relationships to other beliefs (for some opinion dimensions, the crux of contempo- recent examples, see Baldassarri and Gold- rary polarization might lie in the increased berg 2014; Boutyline and Vaisey 2017; Fried- breadth of opinions and preferences that have kin et al. 2016). Whereas recent work typically come to be associated with political identities conceives of polarization as increasing and beliefs. This broadening of opinion align- extremism on issues (e.g., DiMaggio et al. ment to encompass areas typically thought of 1996) or heightened alignment across pairs of as nonpolitical would not be picked up in issues (e.g., Baldassarri and Gelman 2008), studies that only consider polarization along the belief network approach recasts polariza- existing lines of political debate. However, tion as a particular structure of opinion. the widespread impression that polarization Scholars of public opinion have long rec- has dramatically increased may reflect real ognized the importance of belief structure, politicization of an increasingly diverse span meaning an ordered arrangement of beliefs of beliefs and preferences that once cut across such that holding one belief implies holding (or lay apart from) ideological divides. other beliefs (Kinder and Kalmoe 2017:13; see also Converse 1964). However, recent research on polarization conceptualizes struc- Belief Network Analysis ture in terms of pairwise relationships among Rather than focusing on a selected subset of beliefs, ignoring the larger