Mapping political polarization around the world
By Sam Wilkin, Director of Political Risk Analytics, Willis Credit Risk Solutions
For many years, academic research on political polarization had a reassuring message: our societies are not as divided as they might seem. In the United States, for instance, a best-selling book of the early 2000s, Red State Blue State, argued that while the U.S. was increasingly divided into states that voted reliably ‘red’ (Republican) or ‘blue’ (Democrat), the policy views of voters in these states tended to overlap to a surprising degree.1
In 2012, however, a now-classic article by Iyengar, Sood, and Lelkes advocated for a new way to understand polarization – and came to some unsettling conclusions about the situation today.2 Republicans and Democrats may well overlap in their views on policy. But to a growing degree, politically active Americans tend to report, in opinion surveys, that they just do not like each other.
This worrisome form of polarization is called ‘affective’ polarization. Perhaps the most striking figures come from a question about marriage that appeared repeatedly in some U.S. opinion polls. In 1960, only about 5% of U.S. voters said they would be displeased if their child married someone from the other political party. By 2010, the figure was above 40% for Republican and 30% for Democrats. In 2016, the figure exceeded 60% for members of both parties (see graph).
Sources, including more recent data: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034; https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/us-democrat-republican-partisan-polarization/629925/; https://news.virginia.edu/content/how-politics-drive-our-personal-relationships-and-even-where-we-live; https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/32171-america-speaks-what-do-they-think-about-cross-part. Note that differences in samples, methodologies and question wordings may impact results.
In the decade since 2012, research on affective polarization has spread globally. The most comprehensive study we are aware of measured polarization by looking at polling results in 52 democracies.3 In this edition of the Index, we take a different approach, relying, as usual, on assessments by experts. This approach is probably less accurate than using opinion poll results. Experts will in many cases struggle to assess the views of the public, especially in authoritarian regimes, or where opinion poll data are unreliable.
That said, by taking this expert-driven approach, we are able to consider levels of polarization going back as far as 1900 and covering more than 200 countries (although the detailed country profiles, as usual, cover 40 countries). In addition to the Oxford Analytica experts who have contributed to our WTW Political Risk Index for roughly a decade, we draw on expert panel assessments from the Varieties of Democracy Project as well as the Fragile States Index.4
In what follows, we first review the global map of political polarization, the types of polarization we cover in this edition of Index, and some findings of recent research on polarization. We then look at patterns of polarization that occur in the Index countries, contrasting these patterns to polarization trends in history. We conclude with some lessons for highly polarized countries today, and a note on the link between polarization and political risk.
How polarized is the world today? Measures of affective polarization based on opinion polls tend to raise the alarm about the U.S. in particular, where polarization appears to have soared since the 1970s (when the most widely used survey-based measures first became available). On opinion-poll measures, the U.S. appears dramatically more polarized than Canada, Great Britain or France (although polarization is rising in those countries as well).5
Looking at expert-assigned ratings (see Figure 2), the U.S. still stands out, but not so dramatically. Although there are no opinion polls to confirm the finding, the experts believe that places such as Myanmar, Syria and Yemen are far more polarized than the U.S. (in light of ongoing civil conflict, it stands to reason that people in these countries would feel negatively towards members of opposing political groups). More controversially, the experts also rate countries including India, Mexico and Brazil as more polarized than the U.S. – although in some cases not by much (we will come back to these countries in our Index review section, on the next page).
Figure 2: Current levels of political polarization in countries and territories worldwide
Source: WTW analysis of data from the Varieties of Democracy Project and Fragile States Index
This discussion, and the colors in the map, are based on expert ratings of affective polarization (the degree to which people view members of opposing political parties with hostility). The map also highlights extreme cases of two other kinds of polarization. The first is ideological polarization: the degree to which people in a country are divided on fundamental political issues, such as religion in politics vs. secularism, lower vs. higher taxes, or whether their country should be at war.
The second kind of extreme polarization highlighted in the map is elite polarization, reflecting the degree to which political leaders are willing to accept each other as legitimate (unsurprisingly, on the map, this indicator appears most frequently in authoritarian regimes, but some democracies, such as Nigeria and Sri Lanka, also make the ‘extreme elite polarization’ list).
Each of these kinds of polarization appears to be rising fast at a global level. For both elite and ideological polarization, the indicators have been rising since the early 2000s. For affective polarization, we have a measure from the Varieties of Democracy project that stretches back to 1900 (Figure 3). On that measure, polarization globally appears to have shot up since around 2000, to levels unprecedented in modern history.
Our second map looks at where increases in polarization have been most rapid in recent years (Figure 4). Here, democracies seem most vulnerable – not only the emerging market democracies of Brazil, India, Peru and Bulgaria, but also established democracies including Spain, Germany and the U.S. (Although there have also been surges in some non-democracies: Russia has been divided by its participation in the Ukraine war, and the territory of Hong Kong by its relationship with mainland China.)
Much of the African continent, by contrast, seems unaffected by the global surge in affective polarization (perhaps because in Africa, the ‘new populism’ has yet to take root – see the next section). That said, some of Africa’s authoritarian regimes have experienced surges in elite polarization.
Figure 4: Ten-year changes (2014 to 2024) in political polarization in countries and territories worldwide
Why are these increases happening? The research on affective polarization is still relatively young – as noted above, survey-based research on the topic is a bit more than a decade old. It is possible that some of the following findings (from a review of academic research) will be questioned in coming years:
Exposure to partisan media intensifies polarization – there is a good deal of evidence that consumption of partisan media content (whether in print or online) increases affective polarization.6
It is not just social media – the 2000s global surge in polarization (in the previous graph) coincides almost perfectly with the rising global adoption of social media. That said, social media consumption is probably not the only driver of the global trend. In the U.S., for instance, polarization among older people, who are least likely to use social media, is increasing most rapidly.7
Negativity matters most – rising affective polarization tends to be driven by growing dislike for the opposition rather than stronger positive feelings towards one’s own preferred political party.8
Political engagement intensifies polarization – in general, people who are more politically active tend to express more negative feelings towards members of other parties, probably in part because they consider politics to be more central to their identity.9
Polarization leaks into daily life – both polling and experimental evidence indicate that people who identify more strongly with a political party are more likely to prefer hiring, dating and interacting with co-partisans over members of the opposing party, even when politics is not obviously relevant.10
Some places are getting less polarized – Even if the global trend is towards a rapid increase, evidence from opinion polling suggests that in countries including Australia and Norway, affective polarization may be in decline, both over the long term and recently.11
Some polarization is probably healthy – early findings about links between polarization and risks to democracy have since been contested, although polarization appears to put fragile democracies at risk. Some research suggests that a minimum level of polarization improves outcomes in democratic politics.12
Reviewing the detailed country profiles in this edition of the WTW Index, there are patterns that occur regularly in the way countries are polarized. Note that many countries straddle more than one category, and our classification below is not intended to be scientific. Where possible, we draw on insights from historical polarization data and research to explain these patterns.
China, Egypt, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine. Let us start with the least polarized countries in the Index. In countries where opposition political parties are outlawed or co-opted, affective polarization tends to be low: people are unlikely to have negative feelings about supporters of rival political groupings if no genuine political rivalry is allowed. Of course, repressed tensions can break out – Egypt had that experience following the Arab Spring, when Egyptian society was suddenly divided between secular reformers and Islamists.
Looking back in history, many of the world’s most dramatic reversals of polarization since 1900 (using the expert-assigned affective polarization measures in the Varieties of Democracy database) involve authoritarian consolidation and repression of politics (see graph on next page). While the top of the chart is dominated by democratic truth and reconciliation processes (in Uruguay, Timor-Leste and Chile), numerous cases of ‘successful’ repression appear among the top 15 cases (in Kenya, Jordan and Burundi, for instance).
Another pattern from history: international war can reduce polarization, uniting a country’s political factions. Among the top 15 cases, that pattern occurred in post World War II Norway, Luxembourg and Denmark, for instance. Among the WTW Index countries, Ukraine is an example, where a previously divided country has united, in effect postponing partisan politics to see off an existential threat from Russian invasion.
Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Morocco, Philippines and South Africa. In Europe and North America, political parties are usually expected to contest for power in support of an ideology or policy platform – even if there is sometimes daylight between a party’s platform and the agenda of any given politician.
Looking globally, however, that is not always the case. Political parties in Cameroon or Cote d'Ivoire, according to Oxford Analytica’s experts, seek to win power to distribute benefits to their followers – such as government jobs or contracts. In these countries, parties focus on patronage rather than policy, and polarization tends to be low or moderate (particularly ideological polarization, as ideologies – for instance, left vs. right – play little role in patronage politics).
“President Paul Biya … has used co-optation to mostly neutralize the ethno-religious regional polarization [in Cameroon],” writes Oxford Analytica’s contributor. In the Philippines, the “primary constraint on more longstanding political polarization is the nature of Philippine political parties, which promote the interests of individual politicians and are for the most part lacking in ideology,” that country’s contributor notes.
That said, when things go wrong, these countries can devolve into our next category, which is home to the most extreme affective polarization of any countries covered in the WTW Index.
Angola, Ethiopia, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya and Nigeria. In some cases, political parties begin to represent not an ideology, but a group – and that kind of politics can be very dangerous if a country is divided along ethnic, religious, or regional lines. In these countries, patronage politics can have devastating effects. Political parties come to be seen as promoting the interests of one ethnic or religious group over another; politicians often seek to accentuate these divisions to mobilize their supporters. “The regions that make up the Ethiopian federation are principally drawn along ethnic lines, and most political parties are also organized along ethnic lines,” Oxford Analytica’s contributor notes. “Both traditional and social media are dominated by acrimonious ethnic voices.”
In the worst cases, extreme polarization along ethnic, religious or regional lines can be associated with extensive political violence or even civil war (a topic we shall return to in the conclusion, below). However, there are milder forms, such as the Hindu nationalism of India’s governing BJP party. Oxford Analytica’s contributor claims that skin color is a key divide in Mexican politics, and the country’s former president drew on this divide to gain high levels of popularity.
Bangladesh, Ghana, Indonesia, Iran and Mozambique. Another potential fate that awaits patronage-based regimes is being seen as failing to deliver. Parties may forget their constituencies and deliver only to insiders; long-serving authoritarian leaders may become isolated or out of touch.
One theme of recent decades, spotlighted most dramatically during the Arab Spring, is the idea that politically mobilized youth have begun to rise up against corrupt regimes dominated by the old. “The most dynamic polarity, and one that appears certain to increase in significance under the presidency of Prabowo Subianto, is the division between age groups,” Oxford Analytica’s contributor writes about polarization in Indonesia.
Of course, in many developing countries, there is a ‘youth bulge’ – an overwhelmingly young population. Hence claims that “the youth oppose the regime” and “the public oppose the regime” are not all that different. “An unprecedented surge in the number of independent presidential candidates to 10 suggests a desire for alternatives to traditional two-party politics,” Oxford Analytica’s contributor notes, regarding Ghana. “The economy was the main issue for Ghana’s 18 million voters — more than half of whom are under 35.”
That said, young people, in particular students, have long played a frontline role in rebellion (in cases ranging from the ‘subway fare’ protests in Chile to the Iranian revolution). In addition to youthful feelings of invincibility, university students, particularly in emerging economies, are in many cases the children of privilege, and thus confident in their parents’ ability to get them out of trouble (a young Vladimir Lenin, the university-educated child of a minor noble, was repeatedly rescued from the state’s reprisals by his mother).13
In Bangladesh, youth-led massive protests eventually forced the patronage-based government to flee into exile, resulting in a transfer of power to their nominated technocrat, the Nobel-Prize-winner Muhammad Yunus. Unfortunately, after the rebellion, “stability remains elusive,” Oxford Analytica’s contributor notes, as violence by previously repressed forces of political Islam, and vigilante reprisals by Bangladeshis against police who served under the deposed government, have increased.
Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, India, Turkey and Thailand. All populists have a touch of the revolutionary in them. A ‘populist’ (these days, sometimes a pejorative term) is a politician who claims to represent the people against a corrupt elite. Majoritarian voting in democracies should accomplish that automatically, so a claim that the people need help gaining representation is almost always equivalent to a claim that the system is broken (“nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,” said Donald Trump, accepting the Republican nomination in 2016).14 Populists are thus distinguished from typical party politicians in that they focus not only on a policy agenda but also campaign against the political system itself.
Populism is often associated with surges in polarization. Reviewing the 100 largest 10-year increases in affective polarization in democracies between 1900 and the present day, populist movements appear to have played a role in more than half of these cases (56%). Before blaming the populists, though, consider this: in the majority of cases, populists assumed power after polarization had already risen (Figure 6). Factors that tended to appear early in the polarization surge were economic crises and corruption scandals – events that discredited traditional political leaders, after which polarization rose and populist parties tended to thrive.
Figure 6: Analysis of the 100 cases in which polarization increased the most over a ten-year period, between 1900 and the present day, worldwide
Source: WTW case research using GenAI. Two deep research models were used to assign event tags and disputes were resolved by a human reviewer. Democracies only. Based on Varieties of Democracy data, https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds25x
Some ‘new populists’ have taken the revolutionary pose to extremes. In the U.S., the Trump administration has sought to spread the new-populist revolution globally. Vice President J.D. Vance appeared to support the AfD in a now-famous speech in Germany; President Trump backed Hungary’s populist leader in battles with the European Union.15 Trump supporter Peter Thiel penned a striking opinion piece in which he called Joe Biden’s government the “ancien regime” (a reference to the monarchy deposed by the French Revolution).16 That said, it can be difficult to internationalize an inherently nationalist political movement, as was recently demonstrated when Trump’s tariff policies appeared to undermine the campaigns of right-leaning candidates in Australia and Canada.17
In advanced economies, ‘new populists’ have tended to draw support from rural and post-industrial areas, and to politicize educational divides (in the words of Vice President J.D. Vance, speaking of America’s colleges and universities: “we are giving our children over to our enemies and it’s time we stopped doing it”).18 ‘New populists’ have tended to capitalize on the demographic bulge of elderly citizens with conservative views, and campaign against immigration and social change. Social media is a crucial new-populist enabler, allowing these movements to create a solid base of political support by drawing on people who were once difficult to mobilize, because of their rural location or disinterest in political action.
The movement’s demographics tend to be different in emerging markets, where populations often skew young. Long-serving Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to get along well with the new-populists of the West, but his party’s core supporters are said to be upper-caste, middle-class Hindus.19 Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan initially mobilized support across the country, backing an aggressive reform plan oriented towards EU membership. When the EU pulled the rug from under him, however, he changed tack, focusing on the poor and less educated from the Anatolian heartland and attacking elite and urban institutions in classic new-populist fashion (Erdogan’s movement helped turn Turkish concern about the “deep state” – in Turkish, derin devlet – into a global term of populist art).20
In fragile democracies, battles between populists and traditional leaders have produced turmoil. “Since 2000 and the arrival of the Shinawatra political dynasty … populism has been a growing theme in [Thai] electoral politics,” notes Oxford Analytica’s contributor, but “one that has been interrupted at times by military coups in 2006 and 2014 — the former against Thaksin and the latter against Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, his sister.” The battle rages with the recent accession to power of Thaksin’s daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra.
That said, it is surely in Latin America and Eastern Europe that the clearest emerging market adherents of the new-populist movement can be found. Argentina’s Javier Milei presented Trump advisor Elon Musk with a chainsaw. Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa placed tariffs on Mexico in apparent imitation of the Trump tariffs, Oxford Analytica’s contributor notes. And so, the revolution spreads.
Colombia and Mexico. Populism is an ancient political form and can flourish on the political left as well. Of course, every politician is unique – “sui generis,” to quote the great American populist Huey Long.21 But as populists, the left’s class warriors can share a surprising number of political traits with the ‘new populists’ of the right.
For instance, the class warriors tend to perform their disdain for elite politics by transgressing political norms and insulting their opponents (although Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum appears staider, if no less popular, than her predecessor). Populists of any stripe tend to be masters of ‘earned media,’ making shocking pronouncements and deliberately courting scandal to garner headlines (perhaps compensating for the fact that traditional media outlets tend to oppose their campaigns).
Populists tend to battle with institutions including courts, traditional media, universities and government bureaucracies. One might attribute these battles to polarization along education lines; to the populist tendency to campaign against the system; or to dictatorial tendencies. The explanation usually depends on the politics of the analyst involved.
Taiwan, Lebanon and Russia. It could be a coincidence but looking at average levels of polarization since 1900 (see graph in the previous section), the trough occurred near the end of the Cold War. Did the declining salience of left-right ideological divides lead to a decline in polarization? Or did this decline occur, more cynically, because the superpowers stopped funding violent opposition movements in states aligned to the opposing geopolitical bloc?
Either way, there is a risk that the recent shift back towards a multipolar world could increase polarization globally. In Myanmar (not covered in the WTW Index), the opposing sides in a low-level civil conflict are backed by geopolitical rivals. The territory of Taiwan faces political divides that are less extreme, but also increasingly geopolitical in nature. Lebanon, meanwhile, is divided on the role of Hezbollah, supported by Iran but strongly opposed by Iran’s Western rivals.
Pakistan, Peru and Tunisia. Over time, a political figure can become so dominant in a country’s politics that the most salient divide is whether one is for or against them. According to Oxford Analytica’s contributors, that pattern of polarization applies in several WTW Index countries (one also could place Turkey’s Erdogan and Thailand’s Shinawatra, discussed above, in this category). In Tunisia, according to Oxford Analytica’s contributor, “[President Kais] Saied’s consolidation of power since 2021, including ruling by decree and dismantling democratic institutions, has deepened divisions between his supporters and opponents.”
Polarizing figures can also divide society from a position of opposition. That holds true for Pakistan, where former premier Imran Khan has been relentless in his criticism of the military. And in Peru, where a left-populist president was controversially removed from office.
There is a great deal of research on remedies for polarization, which tends to focus on micro interventions, because these interventions can be tested in controlled research settings. Increased contact with members of opposing parties, for instance, appears to reduce polarization, as does priming people from different parties with information on views they hold in common.
But what about the macro scale? What kinds of political shifts lead to reductions in polarization?
There are two countries in the WTW Index I have not yet mentioned – Chile and Senegal. In these countries, Oxford Analytica’s contributors believe recent surges in polarization could be arrested or even reversed.
Of Chile, the contributor writes: “Public wariness of more extreme positions was evident in the successive rejection … of two proposed new constitutions, reflecting extreme-left and far-right visions of society, respectively.” While polarization soared following the extraordinary ‘subway fare’ protests of 2019 (which caused more than $3 billion in property damage22), the subsequent process of public consultation on constitutions appears to have de-escalated tensions, at least to some degree. Recent opinion polls suggest that both ideological and affective polarization are falling.23
Senegal, meanwhile, saw the against-the-odds election victory of the Pastef opposition, after years of polarizing political conflict. Pastef had suffered the arrest of more than a thousand supporters and multiple deaths following crackdowns on protests but nonetheless triumphed in elections. That said, the new government’s admirable spirit of transparency has revealed that public finances are in a dire state, so stability is not assured.
We asked Oxford Analytica’s contributors for lessons inspired by their countries’ histories. The Kenya contributor noted that the ability of the country’s leaders to “resolve disputes and prevent political controversy spiraling into broader civil conflict” had been crucial to stability (but could also raise concerns about elite collusion). The contributor covering the Philippines warned that administrations “based purely on personal rule” were more unsteady than they appear. The Thailand contributor warned about the staying power of populist family dynasties.
Throughout this essay, we have reviewed data from the Varieties of Democracy project and its expert-assigned ratings. If we look again at the countries where polarization declined the most rapidly (reviewed at the beginning of the previous section), many of the lessons are alarming. Authoritarian rule can rapidly reduce polarization, by repressing political divisions – but few in Western democracies would wish for such an outcome. International wars can also unite societies, but again, are hugely undesirable.
In Western Europe and North America, populism was a common political form on the eve of World War II. However, World War II changed the picture completely, banishing populism and polarization to the political margins (with exceptions, such as Silvio Berlusconi in Italy). But trying to explain why World War II had this effect is nearly impossible. The war changed everything – uniting polarized societies, changing demographics, giving rise to new political forces, vastly reducing inequality – and that is only a short list.
There are handful of democratic, nonviolent cases of rapid improvements in polarization. Most of these cases involved processes of truth and reconciliation (in Uruguay, East Timor, Chile, Spain and others). In these countries, populations that were highly polarized following dictatorships, ideological divides or civil conflicts found a way to accept the past, often involving a multiparty consensus or public referendum, and in some cases with the understanding that it was politically necessary for the guilty to go unpunished.
Iceland offers a contrasting lesson. Iceland stands out as the only major success case from the post-2000 era of social media and the post-financial-crisis populism. Iceland grappled with an extreme form of that crisis, culminating in an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout and capital controls. Between 2009 and 2019, however, the country saw one of history's largest declines in affective polarization, as bankers and government officials (including the prime minister) were put on trial for their role in the crisis, and parties of the left and right governed in coalition.
Featuring insights from Simon Coote, John Marshall, Monica Martin and Weimeng Yeo
Among more than 170 countries and territories for which data are available, the U.S. is the only country to see a rapid increase, in the past 15 years, in all three forms of polarization we studied (affective, ideological and elite). The U.S. is not the world’s highest in any single category. The rise in affective polarization has been faster in countries including Brazil, India and Peru, for instance; the rise in ideological polarization faster in Pakistan and Tunisia. But the U.S. is the only country where all three forms of polarization have risen sharply and together.
As of this writing, violent social unrest has occurred in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and several other U.S. cities and towns, apparently in response to changes in immigration policy.24 Our research has found that the correlation between all three types of polarization and political violence is strong. Indeed, in the Varieties of Democracy database, across all countries, dating back to 1900, the single variable with the strongest correlation with expert-assessed affective polarization is expert-assessed levels of political violence by non-state actors, including terrorism, assassination, and riots. For ideological polarization, the variable with the highest correlation is also political violence, but in this case violence organized by groups.25
Looking again at the top 100 cases of rising polarization in democracies since 1900 (see graphs), political violence and ethnic/religious conflict occur frequently, and the number of incidents tends to peak towards the end of the polarization surge.
At the moment, the U.S. appears to be facing particularly acute risks. Major protest movements have historically been triggered by government policies that are opposed by social groups capable of mass mobilization. For instance, the extensive riots in Chile that eventually led to a new constitution were triggered by a hike in subway fares in Santiago. The more recent unrest in Bangladesh that caused the government to flee the country was triggered by dissatisfaction with policies on public sector job quotas. The yellow vest (gilet jaunes) movement in France was triggered by an increase in fuel taxes.26
In the U.S., the new administration has in its first six months put in place new policies at a very rapid pace, covering tariffs, immigration and government efficiency, using executive orders. Such rapid changes in policy, with limited input from other branches of government and the next national elections still some way off, may lead people to conclude that their best chance of having such policies overturned is contentious politics (i.e., to take to the streets).
Academic research is at present inconclusive on whether polarization is a cause or an effect of political violence. Does violent conflict in a society divide people against each other, or are divided people more likely to turn to violence?27 In the U.S., leaders from both political parties have actively blamed each other for escalating the situation in Los Angeles.
Regardless of the direction of causation, businesses in most democratic countries globally must operate in societies that are dramatically more polarized than they were 25 years ago. The risks that may arise are numerous. Polarization in the workforce can affect company culture, productivity, and workplace and psychological safety of employees – possibly even the risk of insider threats. Polarization among customers can pose challenges for brand marketing and positioning. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) activism on issues where ideological polarization is intense, such as diversity, sustainability, or public health, can provoke a backlash. In the U.S., some companies have faced boycotts or declining sales after being publicly associated with contentious political views.
In addition, the rise in ideological polarization appears to have contributed to oscillations in public policy. In the U.S., for instance, changes in government have been associated with fluctuating federal support for pipeline development and fracking, or large-scale imposition and then withdrawal of federal subsidies for clean energy or electric vehicles. In these polarized times, changes in government following free and fair elections can sometimes feel like regime changes.
At the extreme, polarization may be linked to political violence, leading to operational disruptions, such as employees being unable to commute, property damage, or security issues in transporting goods – and, in extreme cases, the inability to operate safely or profitably in a country or region. In fragile democracies, elite polarization may be associated with attempted coups or other irregular transfers of power. Even in long-standing democracies such as the U.S., companies need to be prepared for the potential consequences of large-scale unrest, given the recent pace of policy changes and current high levels of political polarization.
Figure 7: Analysis of the 100 cases in which polarization increased the most over a ten-year period, between 1900 and the present day, worldwide
Source: WTW case research using GenAI. Two deep research models were used to assign event tags and disputes were resolved by a human reviewer. Democracies only. Based on Varieties of Democracy data, https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds25
1 Andrew Gelman. Red state, blue state, rich state, poor state: why Americans vote the way they do. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008.
2 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41684577
3 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14789299211067376
4 V-DEM: Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Fabio Angiolillo, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Linnea Fox, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Ana Good God, Sandra Grahn, Allen Hicken, Katrin Kinzelbach, Joshua Krusell, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Natalia Natsika, Anja Neundorf, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundström, Marcus Tannenberg, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Felix Wiebrecht, Tore Wig, Steven Wilson and Daniel Ziblatt. 2025. "V-Dem [Country-Year/Country-Date] Dataset v15" Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds25; Fragile States Index: https://fragilestatesindex.org/global-data/
5 https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/106/2/557/109262/Cross-Country-Trends-in-Affective-Polarization
6 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15456870.2022.2076856; https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ijssp-09-2019-0181/full/html
7 https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/cross-polar.pdf; https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shapiro/files/age-polars.pdf
8 https://pcl.sites.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj22066/files/media/file/iyengar-poq-affect-not-ideology.pdf; https://academic.oup.com/book/46611/chapter-abstract/410021452
9 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03623319.2020.1750845; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092656620300490; https://osf.io/j7d4t_v1
10 https://pcl.sites.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj22066/files/media/file/iyengar-poq-affect-not-ideology.pdf; https://academic.oup.com/book/46611/chapter-abstract/410021452; https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/83/1/114/5486527
11 https://academic.oup.com/poq/article/87/1/219/7056278
12 https://academic.oup.com/psq/article/138/3/335/7192890; https://www.eui.eu/news-hub?id=andres-reiljan-on-affective-polarisation-causes-impacts-and-solutions&lang=en-GB
13 Sam Wilkin. History Repeating. Profile Books, 2018.
14 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/07/21/donald-trump-republican-convention-acceptance-speech/87385658/
15 https://news.sky.com/story/jd-vance-takes-aim-at-uk-and-europe-over-free-speech-and-democracy-13309240; https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/berlin-says-vance-should-not-interfere-german-politics-2025-02-14/; https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cydvj24m4g4o
16 https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105
17 https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/like-canada,-australia-has-rejected-trumps-disruption
18 https://www.ft.com/content/2619bc3d-d3f5-4819-9125-09f8097deaf6
19 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/thakurs-and-other-upper-castes-remain-loyal-to-bjp-in-up-in-ls-polls-survey/articleshow/111029904.cms; https://casi.sas.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/upiasi/Sridharan%2C%20IPP%2C%20Vol.%203%2C%20No.%201%2C%20Spring%202020.pdf; https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-opposition-leveraged-caste-constitution-shock-modi-election-2024-06-14/
20 https://konda.com.tr/uploads/1807-konda-24juneelectionsanalysis-491d18bb158c16d667947092072d755facb2d6ca293d2614da74774f6781d3e4.pdf; https://www.wsj.com/world/turkey-votes-sunday-in-high-stakes-local-election-327118db; https://warontherocks.com/2019/02/how-the-deep-state-came-to-america-a-history/
21 https://www.americanheritage.com/fdr-and-kingfish
22 https://www.reuters.com/graphics/CHILE-PROTESTS/0100B32527X/
23 https://www.swissre.com/reinsurance/conference-season/man-made-catastrophes.html
24 https://acleddata.com/2025/06/13/qa-what-can-the-la-demonstrations-and-trumps-reaction-to-them-tell-us-about-what-lies-ahead/
25 For elite polarization, the strongest correlations are with several measures of democracy. In non-democratic countries, political rivals are almost always considered illegitimate.
26 https://willistowerswatson.turtl.co/story/political-risk-index-spring-summer-2023-gated/page/3
27 https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/09/05/polarization-democracy-and-political-violence-in-united-states-what-research-says-pub-90457; https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022343307087168
