Why We're Polarized

I am a huge fan of people who can translate vast amounts of research findings in a way that’s engaging, accessible, and accurate. I’m also a fan of people who don’t waste our time by shying away from hard truths, like the fact that America’s polarization problem is largely about race or that our polarized politics get baked back into our institutions and make everything worse. Klein is a master at all of this.

When I read his book, I was deep in the academic literature about the psychology of misinformation beliefs. But his book made me zoom out to… show more.

Ezra Klein’s a journalist not an academic, but he does an excellent job of incorporating important academic research on polarization (in particular, work by political scientists Lilliana Mason and Lee Drutman) with a DC insider’s knowledge of how politics really works.

Klein offers a very different take on polarization from Haidt’s, focusing on history, racial politics, “partisan sorting,” and institutional incentives as the cause of polarizing behavior by politicians today. He also provides a nice discussion of practical policy options for reducing polarization like multi-member Congressional districts with proportional representation and Supreme Court term limits.

Klein admittedly leans left and… show more.