A Database and Index for Political Polarization in the EU

Sebastian Müller; Gunther Schnabl

Januar 2022

Abstract

In many European countries, political parties at the extreme left or right of the political spectrum have gained votes in democratic elections. This process is widely referred to as growing political polarization. The IWP database for political polarization covers the parliamentary elections in the EU-27 countries and in the United Kingdom since 1990. It provides a systematic scheme of categorizing extreme political parties. Parties falling in the category of extreme are those that either reject or question liberal democratic systems, market-based economic principles and/or the European Union. The database allows to depict the political polarization trend in the EU-27, in different geographic sub-groups and individual member states (including the UK). The aggregated index as well as the sub-indices provide evidence for an increasing and persistent political polarization in the European Union.

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Erschienen in

Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(4), pp. 2232-2248..

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