Prior polarization and weakened parties preconditioned conspiracism’s delegitimating effects

Evidence

Our focus is less on the conditions for the new conspiracism than on its effects: delegitimation and disorientation in the political world. And these effects are possible because democratic institutions have already been weakened. For decades, party organizations and knowledge-producing institutions have been under assault. Long before the new conspiracism appeared, intensified political polarization had turned politics into a zero-sum game in which members of rival parties could scarcely cooperate or even agree to disagree. It had produced depictions of the mainstream press and the scientific community as skewed by political bias. This set the stage for the delegitimation of the party system itself. And it set the stage for rejecting the necessity of specialized knowledge for governing. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 104

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth probing the empirical support for the sequencing claim — did institutional decay really precede conspiracism, or co-evolve with it?
• XREF: connects to: Polarization and motivated bias differ from conspiracism in being corrigible — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 263; Conspiracism causes a deeper rift than partisan polarization — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 293; Conspiracist delegitimation rejects the normal cycle of alternating party power — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 208 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Polarization and motivated bias differ from conspiracism in being corrigible #qualifies (0.78) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 263
• Conspiracist delegitimation rejects the normal cycle of alternating party power #expands (0.75) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 208
• Polarization does not statistically predict conspiracy talk #contradicts (0.75) — Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, American Conspiracy Theories, 667
• Conspiracism causes a deeper rift than partisan polarization #expands (0.72) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 293
• Political conspiracism acts independently once entrenched, not as an epiphenomenon #complicates (0.72) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 369