Tolerance for Unity: A Deceptive Call

Türkiye Siyaset Bilimi Dergisi, cilt.6, sa.1, ss.81-94, 2023 (Hakemli Dergi)

In the history of democratic politics, following elections many

triumphant executive politicians proposed tolerance as a cure for

detrimental effects of fractionalization. Moreover, tolerance level in the

society and its level of fractionalization are suggested to have counter

implications for a series of macro-political and macro-economic features,

including level of democracy, quality of institutions and economic growth.

Nevertheless, up to now far too little attention has been paid to

understand the relationship between the two. This research aims to solve

this puzzle and asks the question whether tolerance level of the society

decreases the fractionalization of the voters and the legislative body. This

research used quantitative modes of inquiry to gain insights into this

relationship. A final dataset, which consists of system-level data derived

from Comparative Political Data Set and aggregated individual -level

data extracted from World Values Survey for 12 Western democratic

countries, was used for the analyses of this research. Counter to

expectations, findings revealed that out-group tolerance and

fractionalization of the political party system on both votes and seats

levels are statistically significantly and positively associated.