Political animosity became a central feature of contemporary democratic politics. An eminent question is where this animosity comes from. Relevant literatures exhibit a broad dualism: some view this as a bottom-up socioeconomic phenomenon focusing on people's adverse economic experiences, while others interpret this as a top-down political phenomenon driven by partisan political conflict or the rhetoric of populist politicians.
In this presentation, Sun Young Park adjudicates between these views by presenting a comprehensive definition of political animosity and a sequential theory: economic discontent have produced political animosity in relatively declining places before the rise of populists, and their consequent rise have increased threat perceptions and political animosity in prospering places. To test this theory, Park applies deep learning models to the universe of geo-located tweets, offering a novel measure of political animosity that is geographically fine-grained and covers the U.S., France, and Korea from 2013-2022. Results show that relatively declining places exhibited high levels of political animosity before the rise of populism. These places include not only areas with industrial decline, but also areas with high concentrations of ethnic minorities or long-distance commuters. This pre-existing animosity produced a larger swing to populists. And it is prospering places that experienced sharper increases of political animosity with the rise of populists, ultimately closing the gap with declining places.
The Graduate Student Research Workshop is a seminar for graduate students at Harvard University and MIT to present their research to peers and faculty with an interest in European studies. This student-run, student-centered workshop welcomes presenters from any social science discipline who are at any stage of their research.
To join the seminar mailing list, please contact the seminar chairs. Papers will be distributed to participants via email in advance. For a schedule of upcoming workshops see here. This schedule will be updated throughout the academic year.
Political animosity became a central feature of contemporarly democratic politics. An eminent question is where this animosity comes from. Relevant literatures exhibit a broad dualism: Some view this as a more bottom-up socioeconomic phenomenon focusing on people's adverse economic experiences, while others interpret this as a top-down political phenomenon driven by partisan political conflict or the rhetoric of populist politicians. I adjudicate between these views by presenting a comprehensive definition of political animosity and a sequential theory: Economic discontent have produced political animosity in relatively declining places before the rise of populists, and their consequent rise have increased threat perceptions and political animosity in prospering places. To test this theory, I apply deep learning models to the universe of geo-located tweets, offering a novel measure of political animosity that is geographically fine-grained and covering the U.S., France, and Korea in 2013-2022. Results show that relatively declining places exhibited high levels of political animosity before the rise of populism. These places include not only areas with industrial decline, but also areas with high concentrations of ethnic minorities or long-distance commuters. This pre-existing animosity produced a larger swing to populists. And it is prospering places that experienced sharper increases of political animosity with the rise of populists, ultimately closing the gap with declining places.
