The U.S. faces increasing levels of political polarization. Bipartisan disagreements over moral, cultural, and socioeconomic issues have turned into social conflict, political gridlock, and personal animosity. How did we get here? The dominant narrative has argued that identity cleavages have caused increasing splits in values. Yet Klaus Desmet — Research Fellow at CEPR, Research Associate at NBER, and the Altshuler Professor of Cities, Regions, and Globalization at Southern Methodist University — painted a different picture in a CDDRL seminar series talk.

Leveraging data from seven waves of the World Values Survey (WVS), Desmet develops a new methodology to study the evolution of these social divisions. For Desmet, the problem with an identity-based measure of polarization is that these demographic traits do not necessarily align with people’s values. If we care about splits in values, we need to create social partitions based on values, not identity traits.

Desmet asks how individuals would optimally form groups based on “homophily in values.” If people associate with others who hold similar views, they will sort themselves into groups based on these preferences. Individuals leave groups with fewer shared values and join groups with more shared values. Eventually, this self-sorting process reaches what Desmet calls a “Global Values Identification Equilibrium (VIE),” where within-group value heterogeneity is lowest and between-group value heterogeneity highest. Importantly, Desmet can then compare the split in values between these underlying clusters (latent polarization) to the split in values between Democrats and Republicans (partisan polarization).

What does the model find? While many have argued that America has witnessed a shift from disagreements on redistribution to disagreements on culture, Desmet’s findings indicate otherwise. Since at least the early 1980s, the latent values-based clusters have been divided mostly along moral and religious values, and the level of disagreement has been remarkably stable. There is no evidence of latent polarization increasing over time, and the underlying conditions for the culture wars have been present for a long time.

Partisan polarization, on the other hand, is a more recent development. Using the same model, Desmet shows that in 1981, the average value positions of Democrats and Republicans were almost indistinguishable, nowhere close to aligned with the endogenous clusters. By 2017, however, the average positions of Democrats and Republicans have diverged, aligning with the positions of the values-based clusters. These findings suggest that there has been rising partisan polarization in spite of stable latent polarization.

How might we explain this sequence of events? Desmet suggests that increasing partisan polarization may be a consequence of politicians discovering which values are particularly salient for political mobilization. Instead of politicians engendering value splits in society, partisanship has become more representative of people’s values. The American public has long had the conditions to be divided — they just needed parties to catch on. 

The second of four panels of the “America Votes 2024” series featured critical reflections on the reliability of forecasting models, declining trust in American elections, and reforms to combat polarization. Moderated by Michael Tomz, the William Bennett Munro Professor in Political Science and Chair of Stanford’s Department of Political Science, the panel featured Stanford scholars Brandice Canes-Wrone, Justin Grimmer, and Larry Diamond, each drawing on their research to address the complexities shaping the 2024 election. The “America Votes 2024” series is co-organized by CDDRL, the Hoover Institution’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, and the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences.

The Fisher Family Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is now accepting applications for our summer 2025 program. The deadline to apply is 5:00 pm PST on Thursday, January 16, 2025.

The program brings together an annual cohort of approximately 30 mid-career practitioners from countries in political transition who are working to advance democratic practices and enact economic and legal reform to promote human development. Launched by CDDRL in 2005, the program was previously known as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program. The new name reflects an endowment gift from the Fisher family — Sakurako (Sako), ‘82, and William (Bill), MBA ‘84 — that secures the future of this important and impactful program.

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, our program participants are selected from among hundreds of applicants every year for the significant contributions they have already made to their societies and their potential to make an even greater impact with some help from Stanford. We aim to give them the opportunity to join a global network of over 500 alumni from 103 countries who have all faced similar sets of challenges in bringing change to their countries.

The Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program provides an intensive 3-week on-campus forum for civil society leaders to exchange experiences and receive academic and policy training to enrich their knowledge and advance their work. Delivered by a leading Stanford faculty team composed of Michael McFaul, Kathryn Stoner, Francis Fukuyama, Larry Diamond, Erik Jensen, and more, the program allows emerging and established global leaders to explore new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote good governance, accountable politics, and find new ways to achieve economic development in their home countries.

Prospective fellows from Ukraine are also invited to apply for our Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development (SU-DD) Program, which runs concurrently with the Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program. The SU-DD program provides a unique opportunity for mid-career practitioners working on well-defined projects aimed at strengthening Ukrainian democracy, enhancing human development, and promoting good governance. Applicants to the SU-DD program will use the Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program application portal to apply and indicate their interest there. You will then be directed to a series of supplemental questions specific to the SU-DD program, including requiring a detailed description of your proposed project.

Why do elites in authoritarian regimes choose to pursue democratic transitions? In a CDDRL research seminar series talk, James Fearon, Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), offers a theory to explain the methods and motivations behind elite-led democratization. Fearon probes how authoritarian elites safeguard their power through autocratic constitutions, focusing on Myanmar, one of the longest-lived military regimes in the post-WWII era.

The Tatmadaw — Myanmar’s armed forces — held exclusive power after General Ne Win took control in a 1962 coup d’état until the early 2010s when they pursued a power-sharing arrangement with a civilian opposition. In 2008, the military junta that ruled from 1988 to 2011 ratified a new constitution they had drafted in a dubious referendum. While the 2008 Constitution appeared to take steps toward democracy, it featured serious limitations. It handed the military full control over several key ministries, secured “rent” streams for the officers, and reserved a quarter of parliamentary seats for military-appointed representatives. It further required that any changes to the constitution be passed by 75% of the legislature, thus giving them an effective veto.

In the November 2015 General Election, the opposition scored an overwhelming victory. The National League for Democracy Party (NLD) won close to three-fourths of the seats, giving them a large parliamentary majority and a strong ability to pass laws even if they were formally constrained on changing the constitution. The trajectory of these events raises the question, why did the military choose to pursue a democratic transition? Relatedly, why did military leaders believe that the 2008 Constitution would sufficiently protect them? Fearon observes that one of the NLD’s first actions was to create a new head-of-state position outside the constitution for Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD’s leader.

Fearon argues that the military was protected not by the formal constitution, which is just a piece of paper, but rather by maintaining direct control of important streams of income and policy influence in the form of staffing of the bureaucracy and control of natural resource and drug incomes in militarily contested parts of the country. Control of these “rent streams” meant that the new NLD government could not shift them away from the military simply passing laws in parliament — even though the NLD did have considerable control and influence on many other dimensions of policy. In effect, this was a power (and rent) sharing division of the state.

Authoritarian rulers face international and domestic pressures, such as economic and political sanctions and costly revolutionary threats. Continued authoritarian rule would preserve elites’ control of the country’s existing resources. Movement toward democratization, on the other hand, generates both opportunities and costs. It comes with the promise of lifting international sanctions and increasing the flow of foreign aid, thus increasing the total economic “pie” available. However, the military could only take full advantage of that economic opening if they maintained a significant degree of economic and political control that the newly elected government could not revise without provoking a costly conflict (such as a coup attempt to reverse democratization). More general, Fearon argues that autocratic elites will be more inclined to try democratization when they can share rent streams and their military ability to retake power if this is challenged does not decline too rapidly after the transition.

Elite-led democratic transitions hold unique implications. On the one hand, top-down transitions are more efficient than bottom-up democratic revolutions because they reduce the costs and risks of violence. On the other hand, transitions led by undemocratic leaders are likely to result in only partial democratization because they tend to perpetuate preexisting power dynamics by reinforcing the influence of ruling elites and maintaining their access to rents.

Fearon proposes that as newly democratized societies begin to institutionalize, the relative power of the old elites may gradually diminish, leading to “endogenous consolidation.” Yet, if the military sees its power fading faster than expected, it may — as in the aftermath of Myanmar’s 2020 elections — intervene militarily to restore the status quo ante.

The first of four panels of the “America Votes 2024: Stanford Scholars on the Election’s Most Critical Questions” series examined the changing political and global landscape shaping the upcoming U.S. presidential and congressional elections. The panelists shed light on the challenges of election administration, shifts in campaign strategies due to polarization, and the global context animating the election. Moderated by Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the panel featured Stanford scholars Shanto Iyengar, Beatriz Magaloni, and Nathaniel Persily. The “America Votes 2024” series is co-organized by CDDRL, the Hoover Institution’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, and the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences.

Evolving Election Administration and Oversight

The 2024 election will differ significantly from previous cycles, said Nathaniel Persily, the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a Senior Fellow at FSI. That is due to changes in the legal landscape, a shift in the social media environment, and ongoing threats to election officials.

Persily noted that many election officials have resigned due to rising threats. Changes like the Electoral Count Reform Act have impacted the certification process, and the decline of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) has affected voter registration accuracy. Persily raised concerns about how social media platforms have restricted access to election monitoring tools, like CrowdTangle, further complicating election oversight.

While new Artificial Intelligence tools are playing a growing role in content moderation on social media, they have limited reach, especially on popular platforms like TikTok. Persily pointed out that misinformation is a continuing concern, with conspiracy theories around mail-in ballots, poll watcher interference, and vote-counting delays potentially undermining public trust. However, he expressed some optimism, indicating that early voting could help election officials proactively address issues before Election Day and that the use of paper ballots in most states will add a layer of security.