How Polarization Begets Polarization

Samuel Merrill III has served as a professor of mathematics at the University of Rochester and Wilkes University. He received a PhD in Mathematics from Yale University and an MS in Statistics from Pennsylvania State University. Bernard Grofman is Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine and the inaugural Jack W. Peltason Chair of Democracy Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Thomas L. Brunell is Professor of Political Science University of Texas at Dallas

Acknowledgements

Part I: Where Did Polarization Come From and Why is it Getting Worse?
Chapter 1. Making Sense of Polarization
Chapter 2. How Does Party Discipline Generate Polarization?
Chapter 3. Why, Even in Highly Competitive Districts, Are Candidate Positions so Different?
Chapter 4. Heterogeneity across Districts and Within-district Partisan Gap and Proclivity

Part II: Conseqences of Polarization
Chapter 5. How Do Party Loyalty and Activist Influence Foster Mobilizing the Base?
Chapter 6. Consequences of Polarized Politics
Chapter 7. Discussion and Conclusions

Appendices
Appendix to Chapter 1: Literature Review on Causes of Polarization
Appendix to Chapter 2: The Party-constraint Model
Appendix to Chapter 3: Relation between Candidate and District Ideology: Statistical and Theoretical Analyses
Appendix to Chapter 4: Components of Legislative Polarization
Appendix to Chapter 5: Derivations for the Appeal-to-the-Base Model
Appendix to Chapter 6: Derivations relating to Chamber and Party Medians

Bibliography