HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Polarized pluralism is a
two-party A two-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape. At any point in time, one of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually referre ...
or
multi-party In political science, a multi-party system is a political system in which multiple political parties across the political spectrum run for national elections, and all have the capacity to gain control of government offices, separately or in coa ...
political system which is seen as overly polarized and therefore as dysfunctional. It was originally described by political philosopher Giovanni Sartori to define a system where moderate views are replaced by polarized views. The phrase was used by analyst Roger Cohen writing in the ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' to describe American politics about energy, but the phrase is not widely used in mainstream newspapers. In a typical
two-party A two-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape. At any point in time, one of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually referre ...
or
multi-party In political science, a multi-party system is a political system in which multiple political parties across the political spectrum run for national elections, and all have the capacity to gain control of government offices, separately or in coa ...
system, the distribution of party power looks like a normal curve with a slight skew. In such a condition, most of the country is moderate or moderate-leaning left-wing or right-wing. If the country becomes polarized, then the curve becomes one with two main humps and looks like a
bimodal distribution In statistics, a multimodal distribution is a probability distribution with more than one mode. These appear as distinct peaks (local maxima) in the probability density function, as shown in Figures 1 and 2. Categorical, continuous, and di ...
, with the power at the far
political left Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
and
right Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical the ...
ends, and a severe dip in the middle; one side will have more influence than the other, creating a strong trend to follow them. There is speculation that a nation with such a distribution, effectively having two highly separate approaches with no compromise positions in the middle, becomes difficult to govern. An example of polarized pluralism was politics during Weimar-era Germany. The nation had two power centers, highly split apart; the
communists Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a ...
and the
Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
. The Nazis were the stronger of the two parties and won total control of the government, and led to a condition of
fascism Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...
.


References

Political science terminology Pluralism (philosophy) {{polisci-stub