A Cross-National Analysis of the Effect of Parties' Characteristics on Affective Polarization and Interpersonal Trust

This paper uses multilevel models to investigate how parties influence affective polarisation and interpersonal trust in multiparty systems. In particular, I investigate how party rhetoric influences how much partisans dislike other parties, and how much supporters from different parties trust each other. To do so, I combine a survey experiment conducted in 2019 in 25 European countries with an expert survey measuring how parties communicate during electoral campaigns. These data allow me to test the effect of party tone on affective polarization and partisan trust bias in a comparative perspective. I find that animosity between parties is triggered by individuals' own party rhetoric. Moreover, I find that it is the truster's party tone that affects partisan trust bias, not the tone of the trustee's party.

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