Political participation and competition in the era of polarization

This thesis studies the strategic interaction between voters and politicians, and aims to provide a clearer understanding of the forces that govern political participation and competition, in order to explain the dynamics and the consequences of rising political polarization. Focusing on different aspects of polarization, the three chapters of this thesis show that considering polarization can help us explain certain alarming phenomena that undermine the stability of representative democracies. The first chapter addresses the relationship between voters’ polarization on economic issues and the polarization of economic policies. This chapter shows that, together with low electoral participation, extreme polarization can explain the lack of implementation of more redistributive policies in response to rising income inequality. The second chapter addresses the polarization of voters’ views on socio-cultural issues, and studies how this affects party polarization on both the economic and the socio-cultural dimension. This chapter sheds light on the complex interaction between these two dimensions of political competition and allows to explain different patterns of polarization in different countries. The third chapter studies the communication between voters and politicians and shows that the perceived polarization of voters’ preferences exacerbates the conflict between the politicians’ and voters’ interests and undermines informative communication between them.(ECGE - Sciences économiques et de gestion) -- UCL, 202