Our project “Cultural divides: Understanding the role of affective polarisation” aims to situate developments in Greek public opinion in a comparative perspective, and examine how cultural issue cleavages have realigned around such new partisan identities. In doing so, our aim is to examine the extent to which social polarisation on issues that measure the logic of a “culture war” narrative prevail over those that measure “economic” issues and interests. We propose that one way to evaluate the extent of political and societal polarisation, and its effects, is by examining how individuals identify themselves on a dimension from “liberalism” to “conservatism”, and will then explore how this continuum relates to group identities and polarisation over time. After having established evidence for polarisation between liberal and conservative identities, we will ask what factors are responsible for producing and sustaining these changes, and finally, how they manifest in contemporary partisan identities. The project is funded by the Hellenic Observatory, London School of Economics and delivered by Roula Nezi (Principal Investigator), Georgios Karyotis (Co-Investigator) and Iakovos Makropoulos (Research Associate).
