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Political Polarization Book Review

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Sides and Hopkins, who are experts in the field of political science, presents a cutting-edge argument about the nature of political polarization and its extent within both political institutions in America and the American public. Throughout the book, the authors capture the debate along with central ideas in the research of polarization. The piece of work consists a wide range of essays that are thoughtful and written by the best scholars in this discipline. For the individuals who want to learn more about polarization, its causes, impacts as well as consequences, this should be their source. In the modern American politics, polarization is perceived as an impeachment of the political system which for most of the time, concerns the two primary …show more content…

Nolan McCarty argues that the roots of the current manifestation can be traced back to the 1970s. He asserts that the Republican movements, successively to the right, has further widened the schism. On the other hand, Geoffrey Layman along with Thomas Carsey is of the opinion that polarization is the nature of politics in America and that from time immemorial, it has been about a single concern at a time. Further, they claim that the activists now have an easier time to get into party systems and this means that currently, polarization is all about a myriad of issues at any given moment and it is causing the conflict to extend. Other two scholars namely, Samuel Abrams and Fiorina Morris argue that presently, the U.S electorate is analogous to that which existed in the 1970s and this implies that a political center still exists (Hopkins & Sides, 2015). Since then, the only thing that has changed is that the Democrats, especially the self-identified ones, are more liberal than ever before and contrariwise, the Republicans are more conservative than they were in the …show more content…

Sean maintains that political polarization is not the primary problem with the productivity of the American politics. Undeniably, Sean sees polarization rightly as a valuable opportunity for an honest debate policy between the ideological opposites to find the way out of the problems facing the government. Polarization becomes ineffective as a facilitator of solving the policy issues due to the legislative gamesmanship' supremacy over honest debates. Hahrie Han along with David Brandy expand this argument further by asserting that the present state of Congressional divergence is a reoccurrence of the historical norms as opposed to being a historical incongruity. Additionally, the two argue that political progress was possible both socially and economically even in the face of the polarity of the voting process and this has been factual for most of the Congress’

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