Workshop on Polarized Polities: Causes, Consequences and Solutions

本研讨会旨在增进人们对严重政治和社会两极分化的原因、后果和潜在解决方案的认识。它的一个重要贡献是关注与世界各地民主国家两极分化有关的问题。这个话题很重要，因为高度两极分化的社会对政治和社会稳定构成了潜在威胁。民主应该以和平的方式管理社会中相互冲突的利益，并为人口中新出现的或以前被排除在外的阶层提供争取和获得政治权力的机会。然而，今天，一些民主国家正在竭力将这些新群体纳入其中，同时又不屈服于往往与政治和社会两极分化相关的负面后果。讲习班将汇集不同的专家小组来研究这一问题，并建立一个关于这一专题的跨学科研究网络。它通过跨国家研究民主，这些民主代表了不同政治和经济发展水平以及不同分裂(即阶级、意识形态、宗教、种族、城市-农村、民族主义-世界主义、精英-人民)的国家。这条调查路线很重要，因为传统智慧倾向于将既定的民主制度描绘为政治稳定。然而，正如最近的事件所表明的那样，民主制度容易受到不稳定的反民主压力的影响。这些事件越来越不局限于发展中世界的新兴民主国家，而是出现在西方发达国家更成熟的民主国家。各国在民族主义和全球主义/一体化问题上的分歧越来越大，这可能会增加这种不稳定。在美国，政治两极分化反映在政府僵局上，而在世界其他地区，这种两极分化可能会导致更不稳定的结果。

This workshop aims to advance knowledge about the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to severe political and societal polarization. An important contribution is its focus on issues related to polarization in democracies around the world. The topic is important, as highly-polarized societies pose potential threats to political and social stability. Democracy is supposed to manage competing interests in a society in a peaceful manner, and provide opportunities for newly-emerging or previously-excluded sectors of the population to strive for and reach political power. Today, however, a number of democracies are straining to include these new groups without succumbing to the negative consequences often associated with political and societal polarization. The workshop will bring together a diverse group of experts to investigate this question and to develop an interdisciplinary research network on the topic.This workshop brings together a number of scholars to examine cases of polarization in democratic governments. It does so by studying democracies cross-nationally, and that represent states with varying levels of political and economic development, as well as varying cleavages (i.e. class, ideology, religion, ethnicity, urban-rural, nationalist-cosmopolitan, elites - people). This line of inquiry is important, as the conventional wisdom tends to portray established democratic systems as politically stable. As recent events show, however, democratic systems are susceptible to destabilizing anti-democratic pressures. These events are increasingly not limited to new democracies in the developing world, but are emerging in more established democracies in the developed west. States have increasingly become divided over issues of nationalism and globalism/integration which may increase such instability. In the United States, political polarization is reflected in government gridlock, in other parts of the world such polarization can potentially lead to much more destabilizing outcomes.