The problem with polarization research in an age of extremism

"I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice"-Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963) Over the past decade, political polarization has become one of the most studied topics in the behavioral and social sciences. A search for "political polarization" in the Web of Science database (conducted on 23 October 2025) yielded 13,387 results, and more than 60 per cent of which were published since 2020. During the same period, authoritarian and anti-democratic movements have gained strength across diverse contexts. A Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (2023) study reported that support for a dictatorship led by a "strong leader" in Germany increased, and endorsement of social-Darwinist statements such as "some lives are worthless" more than doubled compared with previous years. Similarly, the Leipzig Authoritarianism Study (Decker et al., 2024) reported renewed increases in xenophobia, chauvinism, and the downplaying of Nazism. In Germany, national reports indicate that extremist offenses have increased year after year (Reuters, 2024). Similar patterns are also observable in the United States and Brazil where not only national surveys reveal an increased openness to military coups and one-party rule (Pew Research Center, 2024a;2024b) but also extremists have attempted to overturn electoral outcomes by storming their respective congresses (European Parliament, 2023).Authoritarian, conservative, and reactionary networks have been among the principal drivers of the surge in distrust, conspiracism, and anti-scientific sentiment (Backhaus et al., 2023;Benegal et al, 2022;Cologna et al., 2025;Dakin et al., 2023;Pavlovic et al., 2022;Philipp-Müller et al., 2022;van Bavel et al, 2022;van der Linden, 2020;Vlasceanu et al., 2024;Voelkel et al., 2024). Coordinated reactionary movements couple conspiratorial and antiscientific narratives as a central element of their political strategy, which, in the recent decades, has been successful in undermining pluralist opponents, galvanizing reactionary followers, shifting blame away from authoritarian sources, and weakening democratic values and institutions (Ren et al., 2022). Through national and international political campaigns, these networks have attempted to replace societal trust and factual knowledge with alternative belief systems that frame them both as victims of ideological attacks and as opponents of a corrupt establishment against the "will of the people" (Golder, 2016;Mudde, 2007;Rothmund et al., 2020;2022;Van Hauwaert et al, 2018;2020). By portraying democracy and science as corrupt, elitist, or ideologically captured establishments, these actors erode public trust in civic society, empirical inquiry, and in the institutions that sustain both (van der Meer et al., 2026). Moreover, in framing pluralist democracy and scientific expertise as nefarious, they reframe their quest for political power and dominance as a project of "renewal" and "social progress".foot_0 This rather paradoxical-and populist (Golder, 2016;Mudde, 2007)-framing has been a potent tool spreading and legitimizing hostility towards pluralist democracy and its knowledge-based institutions. Opposition to democracy, science, and institutional expertise is therefore not an accidental feature of anti-democratic populism and authoritarianism, but its defining component (Capraro et al., 2026;Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2019;Sandel, 2022;Snyder, 2021;Stanley, 2020).These developments illustrate that contemporary polarization does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it is embedded within a wider ideological shift towards authoritarianism marked by the normalization of violence, systematic dis/misinformation campaigns, and hostility toward scientific expertise (Azevedo and Jost, 2021;Roozenbeek and van der Linden, 2024;van der Linden, 2023;Van Dijck et al., 2018;Vilanova et al., 2025). Against this backdrop, the widespread assumption of the field that polarization is inherently detrimental warrants re-examination. Notably, most empirical studies conceptualize polarization either in ideological terms-typically as increasing divergence or clustering of citizens' attitudes along an ideological spectrum (Philipp-Müller et al., 2022)-or in affective terms, defined as intensified animus toward political outgroups coupled with ingroup favoritism (Iyengar et al., 2012). While analytically tractable, this approach is nonetheless conceptually naïve and methodologically too coarse for the current political moment. Polarization can reflect (i) agonistic democratic conflict-a constitutive feature of pluralist democracy in which adversaries contest values and policies while accepting democratic norms, rules, and outcomes (Mouffe, 2000)-or (ii) democratically corrosive conflict, in which political identity is asymmetrically organized and strategically exploited into distrustful camps and wielded to justify rule-breaking, delegitimizing of elections and pluralist institutions, and erosion of accountability (Somer and McCoy, 2019). Rather than reflecting a symmetric breakdown of civility, this form of dissension constitutes a well-documented, elite-driven pathway to democratic backsliding (Bermeo, 2016). This framing constitutes a tacit belief that social harmony and dialogue are the ideal state of democratic life, and political antagonism is a failure of civility. In the current moment of rising extremism, not all polarization is equivalent nor undesirable. Historical experience underscores this asymmetry. Normative appeals to civility and harmony, when applied indiscriminately, can obscure the moral distinction between domination and resistance-condemning confrontational opposition even in contexts where democratic survival or basic human dignity is at stake. Under conditions of systematic persecution, conflict is not a pathology of democracy but one of the few remaining mechanisms through which injustice can be resisted. Moreover, opposition between democratic and authoritarian values cannot be treated as symmetrical disagreement. When one side rejects pluralism, electoral legitimacy, or epistemic accountability, then 'reconciliation' and even 'civility' function less as neutral civic virtues than as asymmetric constraints, and they risk unilaterally disarming prodemocracy forces. Indeed, democratically corrosive conflict primarily disciplines democratic defenders while leaving anti-democratic actors free to escalate, delegitimize, and capture institutions. Under such asymmetric conditions, appeals to reduce polarization risk equating resistance to authoritarianism with intolerance.The assumption that polarization must be reduced carries profound epistemic and political consequences for social and political psychology and political science. It shapes research designs, variable operationalizations, and the normative interpretations of findings. Interventions aimed at reducing affective polarization, for example, often promote empathy and perspective-taking across ideological divides without considering whether the underlying attitudes sustain or undermine the very conditions that allow for democratic discourse and evidence-based reasoning (e.g., Gillissen et al., 2025;Santos et al., 2022;Tausch et al., 2024;Voelkel et al., 2024;Warner et al., 2020). When authoritarian and anti-scientific movements are gaining strength, such naïve depolarization efforts risk demobilizing both scientific communities and democratic publics at precisely the moment when active defense of evidence and reasoned inquiry is most needed. Safeguarding the norms that make civil society and empirical inquiry possible requires an explicit commitment to democratic rules, pluralism, and epistemic standards (e.g., electoral legitimacy, institutional accountability, and evidence-constrained claims-making). We therefore propose a distinction between democratic polarization-agonistic contestation among actors who accept multicultural pluralism, democratic institutions and election outcomes, civil and human rights, and epistemic accountability-and antidemocratic polarization, in which conflict is strategically mobilized to delegitimize opponents, erode institutional constraints, and normalize dehumanization, scapegoating, misinformation, antiscientific, and conspiratorial narratives as a route to political power. To clarify this distinction, we introduce a minimal framework specifying when political conflict remains within democratic bounds and when it begins to undermine them. This clarification is necessary because much of the polarization literature treats all forms of conflict as analytically comparable, regardless of their implications for democratic functioning.Under contemporary conditions of authoritarian resurgence, disinformation, and institutional erosion, the meaning of democratic conflict cannot be inferred from intensity, incivility, or ideological distance alone. Research treating polarization as presumptively pathological may misclassify democratic resistance as equivalent to anti-democratic escalation. Indeed, democratic politics is not reducible to civility, consensus, or the absence of conflict. In pluralistic societies, conflict is often unavoidable and sometimes necessary. Political disagreement commonly concerns collective priorities, the allocation of public resources, and the design of institutions that structure social life. But democratic disagreement does not extend without limit. It unfolds within a democratic framework that must secure equal standing, basic rights, and meaningful inclusion for all members of the polity. Polarization researchers must contextualize and interpret political conflict in light of the political reality, including stakeholders' commitments to pluralism, equal citizenship, collective welfare, equitable social and economic opportunities, and the maintenance of democratic institutions.This point is especially important because the boundary between "ordinary" policy disagreement and anti-democratic politics cannot be drawn by separating social and economic arrangements from questions of rights, recognition, and membership. Social and economic arrangements are not external to democratic inclusion: they help determine who has security, health, mobility, voice, and genuine access to collective life. When such arrangements systematically expose some groups to deprivation, precarity, premature death, or political marginalization while insulating dominant groups and concentrated economic power, they cease to be ordinary policy disagreements in any normatively innocent sense. They become mechanisms through which hierarchy is organized and reproduced. For this reason, conflicts over rights, recognition, and membership cannot be cleanly separated from conflicts over economic life, since the latter shape whether democratic citizenship is substantive or merely formal. When such inequalities are re-described as routine political disagreement, domination is recast as policy and anti-democratic projects can pass as normal democratic contestation.Accordingly, not all politically salient disagreements are democratically equivalent. Some conflicts occur within democratic bounds, even when they are intense and adversarial. Others target the very conditions that make democratic life possible. When political actors seek to deny full standing to opponents, restrict who counts as a legitimate member of the polity, erode rights protections, weaponize institutions, or degrade the epistemic conditions of public reasoning, the issue is no longer conflict within democracy alone. It is conflict over democracy's own normative and institutional basis. Under such conditions, domination can be redescribed as policy, exclusion can be redescribed as disagreement, and anti-democratic projects can pass as routine democratic contestation.To tentatively point out this distinction, Table 1 provides a heuristic framework for evaluating when political conflict remains consistent with democratic functioning and when it does not. It is not intended as a rigid classificatory scheme, nor does it aim to resolve ambiguities inherent to sociopolitical realities. Rather, it identifies a set of dimensions along which political conflict may be evaluated. The purpose of Table 1 is to make explicit why polarization cannot be evaluated solely in terms of distance, hostility, or civility, as it is often the case in the published literature. What should matter most, in our view, is the nature and kind of conflict being mobilized, by whom, under what institutional conditions, and toward what ends. Contestation over collective priorities, public resources, and institutional arrangements within a framework that protects equal standing, basic rights, and democratic inclusion.Mobilization directed at domination, exclusion, scapegoating, or the denial of full standing, often while being framed as ordinary policy disagreement.The key distinction is not between "material" and "symbolic" conflict, but between conflict within democratic bounds and conflict targeting democracy's normative basic tenets. Treating social and economic arrangements as if they were innocent or neutral background can obscure the existence of democratically corrosive conflict.Opponents are treated as legitimate adversaries within a shared political community, even amid deep disagreement.Opponents are cast as enemies, traitors, contaminants, or groups whose equal standing should be denied.In unequal systems, claims for equal inclusion are often re-described as divisive or extreme.Commitment to fair representation, meaningful participation, and peaceful transfer of power under substantively democratic conditions.Fraud claims without evidence, voter suppression, intimidation, rule manipulation, or other efforts to entrench minority rule.Procedural compliance alone is insufficient. Elections can be formally lawful yet substantively distorted by gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, or unequal access.Rejection of intimidation, vigilantism, and coercive force as tools of routine political competition.Endorsement, normalization, or strategic toleration of violence, threats, or paramilitary intimidation to secure political ends.Defensive resistance under conditions of authoritarian aggression should not be treated as equivalent to aggression in the service of domination.Disagreement proceeds with some commitment to evidence, accountability, policy evaluation, and truth-seeking institutions, even when values differ.Strategic disinformation, conspiracy narratives, epistemic nihilism, anti-scientific attitudes, or the systematic rejection of evidence when it constrains preferred outcomes.Democratic politics requires agreement and commitment to epistemic infrastructure. Accountable institutions for truth-seeking and policy assessment are necessary while not devolving into technocracy nor preaching technocratic infallibility. Preserves equal citizenship, equal protection, minority rights, opposition rights, and inclusive participation as non-negotiable conditions of democratic life.Treats the rights, recognition, safety, or participation of some groups as contingent, revocable, or subordinate to dominantgroup interests.Formal rights may coexist with substantive exclusion. The issue is whether institutions protect equal standing just formally or de facto. A democracy that protects formal liberties while permitting social and economic arrangements that systematically hollow out equal membership remains democratic only in a thin and unstable sense.Supports and materially sustains the institutions that enable accountability, including independent courts, watchdogs, civil society, electoral administration, and a genuinely free press.Defunds, captures, delegitimizes, or selectively weaponizes accountability institutions in order to avoid scrutiny or entrench power.The performative acceptance of democracy is too weak a standard. Democratic conflict must occur while all actors help sustain democratic accountability infrastructures.Clarifies genuine social conflicts, widens participation, increases accountability, and surfaces injustices that require political resolution.Accelerates democratic erosion, normalizes exclusion, immunizes power from scrutiny, and recasts hierarchy as ordinary disagreement.Whether conflict is agonistic depends partly on background power relations, not merely on tone or intensity. For one example, civil and political liberties cannot be exercised meaningfully in the absence of the social and economic conditions that make equal membership, voice, and participation materially possible.This framework indicates that polarization cannot be adequately evaluated solely in terms of attitudinal distance, hostility, or affect. By distinguishing between agonistic and corrosive forms of conflict, it helps account for why comparable levels of polarization may have different implications across contexts. This distinction, however, introduces challenges for classification and measurement. Simpler models may offer greater clarity, parsimony, and cross-context comparability, but these advantages often involve the omission of distinctions that are normatively and politically relevant. As a result, analytically distinct forms of conflict may be treated as equivalent. These limitations are not only methodological but also epistemic, as they relate to how analyses incorporate asymmetries of power, institutional conditions, and the processes through which political meanings and attitudes are formed. with these dimensions and yet their exclusion does not their it may to that are but conceptually in which forms of domination are as ordinary disagreement and anti-democratic is as equivalent to democratic central is not polarization but the of of polarization research to conflict as presumptively pathological while distinguishing democratically contestation from democratically corrosive under conditions of and epistemic it is not that efforts toward depolarization are inherently nor that all research on polarization treats polarization as undesirable. 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