Syllabus
Course description
“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.
Course objectives
The seminar is built around reading political science carefully rather than accumulating results. By the end of it you should be able to take a claim about polarization, work out what it is a claim about, and say what evidence would support or undermine it.
Three things run through every session. The first is conceptual discipline: polarization means several different things, and many disagreements in this literature are about which one is meant. The second is measurement: an affective polarization score is a construction, and what it is built from shapes what it can support. The third is evidence: a striking finding is a starting point rather than a conclusion, and the seminar asks what design produced it and how much it can carry.
The term paper is where you do this on a question of your own, with evidence you analyse yourself.
Course logistics
General information
The seminar meets on Wednesdays, 15:30-17:00, in A5, 6 – C 112. Each session is built around the core reading, so the discussion only works if everyone has done it. Readings for each session are listed in Section 5 and the full references are collected in Section 6.
If you have to miss a session, tell me beforehand. A short email is enough, and it lets me tell you what you missed.
Prerequisites
Two different things go by this name, and it is worth keeping them apart.
Formally, the prerequisite depends on which of the two modules in Section 3.3 you register this seminar under. Whether you meet it is a question for the module catalogue and the Studienbüro, not for me.
In terms of what this course assumes, no prior work on polarization, party systems or political psychology is expected. The readings are research articles rather than textbook chapters, so you should be comfortable reading one, but learning how to read one is part of what the seminar is for.
Module and credits
This seminar is offered in both International Relations modules, and which one applies to you depends on how you register it. The credits, the assessment and the term paper word limit are the same either way. It counts toward either of:
Aufbaumodul: Internationale Beziehungen (Modulkatalog p. 31)
Schwerpunktmodul: Internationale Beziehungen (Modulkatalog p. 38)
Course type: Hauptseminar (HS)
Credits: 6 ECTS
The authoritative version of all of this is the module catalogue and the examination regulations for the B.A. Political Science, not this page. Where the two disagree, the regulations win.
What is required of you
Assessment has two parts, and the vocabulary is the examination regulations’ own. Coursework (Studienleistung) is assessed pass or fail, and passing it is a prerequisite for the graded work. The term paper (Prüfungsleistung) carries the mark.
Coursework, pass or fail
1. Active participation (Mitarbeit). Section 13b of the examination regulations allows participation to be set as coursework in a discussion-based course of this size, and it is set here. It is assessed on the whole of your contributions across the term, not on any single session. What counts is that you engage with the reading and with what other people say about it.
2. Doing the reading. Each session lists core reading, which everyone does, and optional reading, which is there for anyone who wants to go further and as a starting point for term papers. The core reading is mandatory rather than recommended. It is also the basis on which participation is assessed, because a discussion of a text nobody has read is not a discussion.
3. A term paper idea presentation (Referat). You pitch your term paper to the group in session 11 or 12. A few minutes on your question, why it is worth answering, and how you would answer it, followed by discussion. The point is to get criticism while there is still time to act on it.
Term paper, graded
- Form: an empirical written term paper (schriftliche Hausarbeit), plus the code that reproduces its analysis.
- Length: at most 7000 words, the limit set in the module catalogue.
- Deadline: 15 January, 23:59.
- Topic: your own, on something the seminar covers. You pitch it in session 11 or 12, and session 13 is optional individual consultation.
A workable paper takes a claim from the literature and confronts it with evidence you analyse yourself: it tests the claim against a case or a dataset it was not built on, re-analyses published data under a different measurement choice, or works out what two authors’ rival definitions do to the same data. A summary of what several authors have said is not a term paper, and neither is an argument that never meets data.
Every paper produces results, and somebody else has to be able to recompute them. Hand in the script or the notebook that produced your numbers, tables and figures, together with the data or a link to where it comes from. Any technology is fine, R, Python, Stata or anything else, as long as the result comes out of a script that can be run again rather than out of clicks nobody can retrace.
Registration and withdrawal
Registration for the Prüfungsleistung, deregistration, and the applicable deadlines are handled by the Studienbüro under the examination regulations, not by me. Check the dates there and keep to them, because responsibility for meeting them sits with you.
If a good reason, illness in particular, prevents you from submitting the term paper on time, section 30 of the examination regulations applies. You must submit a written application to the Studienbüro without delay, with evidence. The examination board decides, and the burden of proof is on the applicant. Tell me as well, but telling me is not a substitute for the formal application.
Section 5 additionally allows deadlines for coursework and examinations to be extended on a timely written application, for instance for students with children or with dependants requiring care.
Disability and chronic illness
If a disability or a chronic illness makes it harder for you to take an assessment in the form it is set, you are entitled to compensation that restores equal opportunity, under section 6 of the examination regulations. Applications are made in writing and in good time, and applications on grounds of disability or chronic illness go to the university’s representative for students with disabilities or chronic illness.
Talk to me early, and tell me only what you want to. The formal route runs through the representative and the examination board, and I do not need to know the nature of your condition. What helps me is knowing early that an adjustment is coming, so it can be built in rather than improvised.
Language
The seminar is taught in English and the readings are in English. The term paper shall be written in English.
Additional learning resources
Two external platforms are worth your time. Both are voluntary and neither is part of the requirements to pass. They are here because the term paper asks for reproducible code, and this seminar spends its sessions on the reading rather than on tooling.
DataCamp. Use the link to join the course group, which gives you six months of premium access. DataCamp offers in-depth, self-paced practical training in R, coding, data analytics and AI topics, so it is the right place to drill something until it is automatic, at whatever speed suits you. The introduction to R track is a good starting point.
Register with your uni-mannheim.de address. Premium access is tied to the university account. If you sign up with a private address the group link will not grant it, and the fix is to start again with the right address.
Duolingo Math. Freemium, and a good starting point if you would like to relaunch yourself into mathematics fundamentals or introductory statistics. No prior statistics is assumed in this seminar, so this is not a prerequisite. It is simply there if the maths behind a reading feels shakier than you would like.
Mental health support
Life and study at the University of Mannheim can sometimes feel complicated, challenging, or overwhelming. That is completely normal.
If you ever feel mentally or emotionally strained, you may find useful advice on the university’s good mental health and studying page. The help in times of crisis page gives an overview of the counselling and support services available at the university.
AI policy
This stated policy is a first proposal and may be subject to change during the term.
You may use AI assistance, and for some things it is genuinely useful: finding literature, checking whether an argument holds together, working on your English.
Two conditions.
Declare it. Your term paper carries a short note saying what you used and what you used it for. A sentence is enough. An undeclared use is a problem in a way that a declared one is not.
It does not make the argument. The claim, the reasoning and the judgement about what the evidence supports have to be yours, because they are what is being assessed. A paper that reads as though nobody decided anything is a weak paper whether or not a model wrote it, and you are answerable for every sentence you submit, including any citation that turns out not to exist.
Session plan
What each session covers, what you should be able to do afterwards, and what to read. Dates are on the Schedule.
This is a preliminary plan and may be revised during the term.
Session 1: Introduction and outlook
What the seminar asks, how the term is organised, and what a term paper in it looks like. We also settle the schedule for the term paper pitches.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Describe what the seminar covers and how the three substantive blocks build on one another.
- State what the term paper asks for, when the pitch happens, and what makes a question workable.
Optional
- Torcal and Harteveld (2025)
Session 2: What is identity?
Before we can ask what divides a democracy, we need a concept of the groups that do the dividing. This session treats identity as a demand for recognition and dignity, and asks how an attachment to a group becomes a political fact rather than a private one.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Trace where the modern concept of identity comes from and how it entered political argument.
- Explain how a demand for recognition becomes a political demand.
- Distinguish an identity from a preference, and say why the distinction matters for the rest of the term.
Session 3: What is political polarization?
The core reading for this session was listed incorrectly at first. The intended readings are the 2008 exchange in the Journal of Politics between Abramowitz and Saunders (2008) and Fiorina et al. (2008). The Annual Review article by Fiorina and Abrams (2008), listed here before, is now optional. If you have already read it, your time was not wasted: it makes the same case as the reply, at greater length and with the concepts spelled out.
Polarization is a metaphor borrowed from the natural sciences, and political science has attached it to several different things: how far apart elites stand, how far apart voters stand, how tightly issue positions bundle together, and how far apart the camps feel. This session sorts them apart and asks which disputes in the literature are empirical and which are definitional.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Distinguish elite from mass polarization, and ideological divergence from issue alignment.
- Explain why two authors can disagree about whether a public is polarized without disagreeing about any fact.
- Identify which concept of polarization a given empirical claim depends on.
Session 4: What is affective polarization?
Affective polarization (AP) is the tendency of people who identify with a party to view opposing partisans negatively and copartisans positively (Iyengar and Westwood 2015; Iyengar et al. 2019). This session takes the concept apart: the social identity logic it rests on, what it claims to add to an ideological account of division, and what evidence shows that partisan animus reaches beyond survey answers into implicit attitudes and behavior.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Derive in-group favouritism and out-group hostility from social identity theory.
- Explain what affective polarization claims to add to an ideological account of division.
- Assess the evidence that partisan animus shows up in implicit attitudes and behavior, and not only in what people say in surveys.
Session 5: Measuring affective polarization
Almost everything we know about AP rests on one class of survey item: feeling thermometers and like/dislike ratings. This session asks what that item captures, how single ratings are aggregated into one score when there are more than two parties, and how those construction choices move the estimates and the conclusions that rest on them.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Say what a feeling thermometer measures and what it does not.
- Reconstruct how an AP score is built in a multiparty system, and state what each step of the construction assumes.
- Explain why the decision about who counts as a partisan changes the population an estimate refers to.
- Judge whether a published estimate supports a comparison across countries or over time.
Session 6: Beyond the thermometer: behavioral measures
An attitude scale asks people what they feel. A behavioral measure asks them to do something: to divide money, to extend trust, to choose between candidates. We work through conjoint allocation games fielded across EU member states, and ask what a behavioral measure buys and what it costs.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Describe how a conjoint allocation game turns a choice into a measure of partisan animosity.
- Compare behavioral and attitudinal measures on what each can and cannot support.
- Explain, with potential outcomes, why only one outcome per person is observed and why random assignment still recovers the average causal effect.
- Distinguish internal from external validity, and assess both for a given design.
- Explain why coalition partnership changes the pattern of animosity in European party systems.
Session 7: Beyond party: social sorting and non-partisan identities
Party is not the only line people sort along. This session asks what happens when party, region, religion, ethnicity and referendum camps line up with one another, and what happens when they cut across instead.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Define social sorting and explain why an aligned cleavage structure raises out-group animus.
- Give a case in which the polarizing identity is not partisan at all, and say what makes it behave like one.
- Assess how much support the evidence gives the claim that cross-cutting identities dampen animus.
Session 8: Is partisanship a social identity, or a cue about ideology?
American work is split on what partisan animosity is actually about. One side reads it as group identity, dislike of them because they are them (party over policy). The other reads a party label as shorthand for policy positions, so what looks like identity is disagreement in disguise (policy over party). We follow the exchange and ask what evidence could settle it.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- State the party-over-policy and the policy-over-party positions and the evidence each rests on.
- Explain why identity and categorisation are hard to separate in survey and experimental designs.
- Specify what evidence would distinguish the two accounts, and why it is hard to obtain.
Session 9: Consequences of affective polarization for democracy
AP is usually introduced as a danger, to democratic norms, to accountability, to the willingness to live alongside people who vote differently. Recent work is more careful. Some of the alleged consequences do not survive better designs, and others hold only under particular conditions. This session separates what is established from what is asserted.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Reconstruct the argument for why AP is supposed to harm democracy.
- Name the consequences that have actually been studied, and the designs used to study them.
- Distinguish findings that hold up from findings that depend on context or on measurement.
Session 10: Open session
This slot is deliberately unallocated. We settle the topic and the reading in the session before, so it can follow whatever the group most wants to pursue, whether that is a theme from earlier in the term or something none of the readings covered. Bring suggestions.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Propose a topic or a reading, and say what the seminar gains from it.
- Read a text without a prepared framing, and take part in a discussion the group has shaped itself.
Session 11: Term paper pitches I
Short pitches of your term paper plan, followed by discussion. Half the group presents and the other half asks the questions.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Present a research question, why it is worth answering, and a design that could answer it, in a few minutes.
- Name the data or the texts your paper will work from.
- Give another student criticism they can still act on.
Session 12: Term paper pitches II
The second half of the pitches, in the same format.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Present a research question, why it is worth answering, and a design that could answer it, in a few minutes.
- Name the data or the texts your paper will work from.
- Give another student criticism they can still act on.
Session 13: Term paper consultation (optional)
Optional individual consultation on the term paper. There is no group session in this slot. Email me to book a time.
Afterwards you will be able to:
- Leave with a question, an outline and a plan you can execute before the deadline.