Research Activities
Research Projects 2025
Party Choice under Affective Polarization
Outline
Electoral authoritarian regimes are systems where elections are held regularly, but competition between ruling and opposition parties is unfair. In these regimes' elections, information and electoral manipulation are employed to promote affective polarization. The aim is to emotionally bind supporters to the ruling party, making it difficult for them to defect to the opposition. However, voters tend to use policy issues they consider important as criteria for evaluating parties and governments. If so, does affective polarization reduce the influence of issue preferences on voting decisions uniformly across all issues, or does the degree of reduction vary by issue? Turkey, being one of the most affectively polarized countries in the world, serves as an excellent case study. Using primary data on Turkey, this research aims to answer these questions, thereby illuminating the mechanisms and limitations of public opinion manipulation employed by authoritarian and populist regimes.
Period
April 2025 - March 2027
Members
| Role | Member |
|---|---|
| [ Organizer ] | Hazama, Yasushi |
*Affiliations are as of April 2025.
Expected Outcome
- Paper Submission to Peer-Reviewed Journal