Replication Data for \"A Scalable Democratic Reform that Sharply Reduces Affective Polarization\"

Democratic citizens across the globe exhibit dramatically increased affective polarization—a gulf in feelings toward inpartisans versus outpartisans. This trend threatens the social underpinnings of stable, cooperative political cultures. Scholars have responded by developing scores of depolarizing interventions with mixed success. We analyze evidence from a national field experiment centered on a specific democratic innovation, Deliberative Town Halls (DTHs). Though designed for other purposes, we document very large declines in affective polarization for those attending the DTH. A single event led to enormous reductions for a large group, yet DTHs require modest enough resources to make scaling realistic. The effects show no sign of decay out to two weeks, and depolarization emerged as a by-product of citizen engagement that promoted other democratic goods.

全球范围内民主政体下的公民的情感极化（affective polarization）程度显著加剧——即同党派支持者与异党派支持者之间的情感鸿沟不断扩大。这一趋势正威胁着稳定且协作型政治文化所依托的社会根基。为此，学界已开发出数十种极化缓解干预手段，但这些举措的实施效果参差不齐。本研究对一项以特定民主创新举措"协商式市政厅（Deliberative Town Halls，DTHs）"为核心的全国性实地实验的相关证据展开分析。尽管该活动最初并非为极化缓解而设计，但我们发现，参与协商式市政厅活动的群体的情感极化程度出现了大幅下降。单一场次的活动就能让大量群体的极化程度大幅降低，而协商式市政厅所需的资源投入相对有限，具备大规模推广的现实可行性。该干预的效果在两周内未出现任何衰减迹象，且极化缓解作为公民参与的副产品，同时还促进了其他民主福祉的提升。