Speaker Series – Chagai Weiss

The Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship presents:

Can Politicians Bridge Partisan Divides? A Field Experiment with the U.S. National Governors Association
(with Donald Green and Robb Willer)
Chagai Weiss (University of Toronto, Canada)

When: CANCELLED
Where: Thomson House, 3650 McTavish, Montréal, Québec H3A 1Y2

Existing research on depolarization focuses on grassroots approaches, paying less attention to elected officials’ potential to bridge partisan divides. We argue that politicians’ bipartisan appeals to civility can bridge partisan divides. To test our argument, we collaborated with the U.S. National Governors Association on a field experiment, testing the effects of their « Disagree Better » campaign, in which Democratic and Republican governors encouraged citizens to engage in constructive bipartisan conversations. Leveraging addressable TV advertising technology, we assigned over 8,700 survey respondents to be exposed unobtrusively to the « Disagree Better » campaign for two weeks, followed by a seemingly unrelated survey. We find that treated respondents were more likely to engage in bipartisan behaviors and reported greater openness to conversations with political opponents, but no further attitudinal effects. Our findings demonstrate that by acting as role models, politicians can encourage bipartisan behaviors, even absent broad attitudinal change, highlighting the promise of top-down depolarization approaches.

This series is sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, which is funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC).