HAMBACH DEMOCRACY PAPER 1/22 Progressive Tradition. European Vision. Reducing Pernicious Polarization by Jennifer McCoy P olitical polarization is rising around the world, generating concerns about its detrimental impact on politics and society. The threats posed by pernicious polarization—the division of society into two mutually antagonis­tic political camps—are especially concerning for democracies as they are correlated with democratic backsliding. 1 It is therefore urgent to determine how to reduce these tensions. In a study of depolarization episodes in all countries since 1900, my coauthors and I learned that depolarization occurred most often after a systemic shock: a foreign interven­tion, independence struggle, violent conflict, or regime change(primarily in a democratizing direction). 2 In only a quarter of the cases, coun­tries depolarized within a given regime struc­ture, whether democratic or autocratic. Notably, the study found no cases of depolarization from pernicious levels among liberal democracies, most likely because very few countries classified as full liberal democracies have ever reached pernicious levels; the United States stands out today as the only wealthy Western democracy with persistent levels of pernicious polarization. Within Europe, pernicious political polari­zation in the 21 st century is concentrated in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, though Italy joined those ranks in 2020 and 2021. 3 Of the perniciously polarized Euro­pean countries rated as full liberal demo­cracies in the V-Dem database at some point in this century, three of the four were also downgraded in their regime category to the lesser electoral democracy rating – Hungary, Slovenia, and Poland(Italy retained its liberal democracy rating through 2021). None of those countries has depolarized to date. Therefore, we face a major challenge in determining effective strategies to reduce, or at least manage, polarization while also protecting democracy. The task becomes particularly challenging because pernicious polarization is elite-driven, that is, by political entrepreneurs who calculate that demonizing, enemy-identify­ing, and anger-appealing messages is a winning electoral strategy, and by opponents who recip­­rocate in kind. When these political leaders then decide to retain power by concentrating power in the executive and/or by changing 1