Peer-reviewed Articles

“Winners, Losers, and Affective Polarization.”(with Josephine Andrews) Forthcoming at Party Politics. 📎

Abstract: We analyze the winner-loser gap in affective polarization. Using data from 37 countries over years 1996 – 2016 from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), we find that winners’ affective polarization is significantly greater than losers’, and the difference is due to winners’ consistently higher in-party favoritism. These findings are robust when controlling for partisanship and ideological distance to winning party. Although much of the literature focuses on the impact of out-party dislike on affective polarization, our results align with research in social identity theory indicating that intergroup discrimination is driven primarily by in-group favoritism rather than out-group dislike. Given that winners are more likely than losers to support their favored party’s violation of democratic norms, our work suggests that in-party favoritism is an important but overlooked contributor to problematic implications of affective polarization.

Working Papers

“Impact of Winning and Losing on Affective Polarization During Campaign Period: Increasing In-party Favoritism under Different Motives.” Presented at MPSA (Chicago, Apr 2023), WPSA (San Francisco, Apr 2023), and APSA (Philadelphia, Sep 2024).

Abstract: Focusing on the most salient aspects of elections—winning and losing—this study examines how partisans’ perceptions of their party’s electoral chances during campaigns shape their affective evaluations of both their in-party and the out-party. Through a preregistered survey experiment conducted in the U.S. (N = 2,000), I find that partisans exhibit heightened in-party favoritism whether their party is leading or trailing the opposing party, albeit driven by different motivations. In winning scenarios, partisans display greater enthusiasm and stronger favorability toward their party, motivated by identity confirmation and the desire to showcase their party’s superiority. Conversely, in losing scenarios, partisans express increased anger but still show stronger favorability toward their party, driven by both identity confirmation and an instrumental motivation to boost morale and rally their party to reverse the unfavorable situation. Interestingly, even in the U.S., where scholars argue affective polarization is largely driven by out-party dislike and distrust, I find that neither winning nor losing scenarios significantly alter out-party dislike. Instead, both scenarios primarily increase affective polarization through heightened in-party favoritism. These findings highlight the crucial role of positive partisanship in understanding why affective polarization is a natural consequence within democratic systems.

“Winners, Affective Polarization, and Support for Violations of Democratic Norms.”

Abstract: Why winners, those who voted for the winning party, are more inclined to support violations of democratic norms than losers? Existing literature suggests this inclination is tied to citizens being willing to compromise democratic principles for perceived political gains. Building upon the intergroup discrimination theory in social psychology, I propose an alternative argument. I argue that winners are more likely to endorse violations of democratic principles compared to losers not due to a deliberate pursuit of political gain, but rather because they unconsciously favor actions that can benefit their own party, perceiving them subjectively democratic. This inclination stems from heightened in-party favoritism post-election, driven by the identity confirmation function and resulting in increased affective polarization. In other words, heightened in-party favoritism resulting from electoral victory makes winners more prone to let their partisan identity shape their democratic perceptions than losers, enabling them to endorse violations of democracy without considering them inherently undemocratic. The pilot experimental results show that those assigned to imagine their party winning the 2024 presidency and controlling both houses of Congress show significantly more support for the governing party implementing norm-eroding policies than those assigned to imagine their party losing. Furthermore, the mediation analysis indicates that winners’ greater leniency toward democratic norm violations is driven by increased in-party favoritism. Additionally, winners significantly perceive these norm-eroding policies as making the country more democratic compared to losers and are less likely to think these policies will politically benefit the newly-elected party and its supporters.

“Political Institutions, Party Size, and Parties’ Decisions to Enter Presidential Elections: An Analysis of South American and European Cases.” (with Feng-yu Lee) Presented at the 10th Conference of Semi-Presidentialism and Democracy (Taiwan, May 2019).

Abstract: In presidential and semi-presidential democracies, whether parties run a candidate for president exists a huge variance. In some countries, not only large parties, but also many small ones entered the presidential race. Yet in others, only large parties ran a candidate for president, or only a few parties (be they large or small) were likely to participate in presidential elections. Given that presidential elections are very important and can decide who controls executive power, why parties across the world display such a huge variation in terms of deciding whether to enter the presidential race? To explore the interactive effects of party size and political institutions on parties’ decisions to enter the presidential race, the authors compare and analyze the parties of 20 democracies in South America and Europe from 1975 to 2009. The factors of political institutions include: presidential electoral systems, concurrent elections, and government structures. To better estimate the causal relations between the exogenous and the endogenous variables of this article, the authors control for the influence of country- and year- specific effects, and they have the following findings. First, compared with a non-plurality system, a plurality one decreases the probability that all parties will run their own candidates for president. Second, for parties having more legislative seats, concurrent elections will increase the probability that they will run a candidate for president, compared with non-concurrent ones. In concurrent elections, the impact of party size on the probability that parties will enter the presidential race is also larger than that in non-current elections. Furthermore, compared with premier-presidential and president-parliamentary systems, presidential ones increase the probability that all parties will enter the presidential race. Last, compared with premier-presidential systems, president-parliamentary ones only increase the probability that smaller parties will run their own presidential candidates. In president-parliamentary systems, the impact of party size on the probability that parties will enter the presidential race is also smaller than that in premier-presidential ones.