Cognitive political networks: A structural approach to measure political polarization in multiparty systems

While there is a well-established literature on measuring political polarization in two-party systems, relational approaches to polarization in multiparty systems are still very limited. In this paper we develop a network-based approach for measuring perceived party polarization in survey studies that is suitable for multiparty systems. Our approach is based on cognitive social structures design. We generate a cognitive political network for each respondent in a nationally representative survey in Turkey by asking respondents their perceived ties among all possible dyadic relations among major political parties. From these networks we calculate multiple whole network measures that may be reasonable proxies for perceived party polarization. We compare our approach with the Left-Right political ideology distance scale commonly used in survey studies. Our analyses show that the association between our measure and the Left-Right ideological distance is limited. The cognitive political network approach may be a flexible and a direct alternative for measuring political phenomena in survey studies such as perceived party polarization in multiparty contexts.