Us and them: Identity and polarization in contemporary democracies
What it means for a democracy to be polarized, and what group identity has to do with it.
Fall 2026
Department of Political Science
School of Social Sciences
University of Mannheim
Instructor
- Tristan Muno
- A 5, 6 – Room A 351
- tristan.muno@uni-mannheim.de
Course details
- Wednesday
- 15:30-17:00
- A5, 6 – C 112
- 13 sessions, one per week
- Term paper, max. 7000 words
- 6 ECTS
Contacting me
- Office hours: By appointment. Please email me to arrange a meeting (in person or online). I aim to reply within 24 hours.
What this course is
“Us and them” is one of the oldest structures in politics and one of the hardest to pin down. This seminar asks what happens to a democracy when that line hardens, and what group identity has to do with it.
We start with identity, where the concept comes from and how an attachment to a group becomes a political fact. Then we take the word “polarization” apart, because it names several different things and many arguments in this literature are really arguments about which one is meant. The middle of the term belongs to affective polarization, the tendency to dislike the other side rather than merely to disagree with it, and to the survey items that much of the evidence for it rests on. We end by pushing on the concept: what happens when the dividing line is religion or region rather than party, whether partisan animosity is about identity at all, and how much of the alleged damage to democracy holds up.
The last three sessions belong to your term paper: two of short pitches to the group, and one of optional individual consultation.