Who cooperates with whom? The role of day-to-day partisan cooperation in affective polarization

Abstract

Recent research has shown that partisan cooperation in the form of coalitional government in parliamentary democracies can mitigate partisans’ negative feelings toward opposing parties. However, little is known regarding the influence of informal cooperation beyond coalition arrangements on citizens’ affection towards the out-parties. To address this, I combine survey data from 11 Western democracies with a measure of parties’ public relationships as reported by the media to examine the extent to which partisans’ affection towards opposing parties aligns with the changing portrayal of interactions between the parties as reported in the news. The findings demonstrate that voters’ affection towards opposing parties does indeed correspond with the actual pattern of interactions as depicted by the media. However, the reduction in the levels of affective polarization varies across individuals with different levels of political knowledge. This finding shows that affective polarization is also influenced by the short-term nature of cooperative or conflictual events beyond its policy-based or institutional underpinnings.