The 2024 GESIS Klingemann Prize for the Best Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Scholarship has been awarded to the research paper titled ‘Patterns of affective polarisation toward parties and leaders across the democratic world’. The article, published in the American Political Science Review, is co-authored by Andres Reiljan (leading author), EUI Max Weber Fellow and project co-leader of the EU&I voting advice application, along with Diego Garzia and Frederico Ferreira Da Silva from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and Alexander H. Trechsel from the University of Lucerne in Switzerland.
This year’s winning publication stood out for its innovative examination of affective polarisation—how people emotionally respond to political parties and leaders—across a diverse range of democratic countries. The study brings together, both in its theoretical discussion and empirical research design, two lines of research that have so far developed separately: polarisation and personalisation. Its broad geographical scope, including nations from Taiwan to Estonia, is another significant contribution, differentiating it from previous studies that typically focus on Western democracies, despite affective polarisation being a pervasive and troublesome phenomenon all across the democratic world.
The study finds that despite the personalisation of modern politics, political parties as broad organisations with their own symbols and programmatic standpoints, in fact, polarise voters’ feelings more than party leaders. However, the strength of polarisation over leaders is relatively higher in countries with presidential systems, lower number of relevant parties and less effective governments. The broad theoretical framework and the macro level findings presented in the paper pave the way for more specific studies to better understand the underlying mechanisms that lead to different types of affective polarisation.
The 2024 Selection Committee, consisting of Noam Gidron (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Rosario Queirolo (Universidad Católica del Uruguay, Chair), and Jan-Lucas Schanze (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences), highlighted how the research elegantly contributes to theoretical debates on polarisation and enriches the understanding of the complex relationships between affective polarisation, institutional features, and regime output.
The GESIS Klingemann Prize is named in honour of Professor Doctor Hans-Dieter Klingemann, a pioneering political scientist known for his contributions to comparative research and the CSES project. The prize acknowledges exceptional scholarship using CSES data, whether in the form of a paper, book, dissertation, or other academic work published in the previous year.
For more details, you can access the award-winning paper here.