2. Why might polarization matter and what is it?

Let us therefore turn to polarization and I shall do so by inverting, intentionally, the order of the two questions I asked around the first point. By asking first not what polarization is but why it might matter. That is simply because I believe there is anything like the essence of polarization. When we phrase new concepts we have to do it in terms of what are we going to use them for. And so we must have at least some intuition about what these concepts may be useful for before trying to devise regular measurements, for instance.

The way in which I understand the initial intuition is very simple and perhaps too simple. Let us simply consider these two diagrams [Slide 2]. Forget what is said about inequality, there, for the moment, intuitively I can easily see that one can call that there is polarization, a sort of distance between two poles in the second case, which does not exist in the first. And if you have this sort of strong oppositions between two poles, rather than everyone being gathered around a single pole, there is a first intuition: that the second situation may well lead to more conflict than the first, whatever the variable along which this distribution is defined. Perhaps one may say: "But, after all, this may well simply fit within the order idea with which Debraj started his talk, which we can simply find for example of the introduction of Sen's On Economic Inequality, which is that inequality matters to social conflict, and clearly the second situation is a situatiation in which there is more inequality than in the first one. And if we intuitively feel that the second one will lead to more conflict may be due to the fact that there is more inequality, not to something a bit more subtle that may be polarization.

Polarization may be a better notion to focus on than inequality, if we want to explain conflict

And here we need to respond, and that is the way in which I understand the basic intuition, is that one can imagine two distributions which are characterised by the same level of inequality, but that are quite different in terms of polarization. At least, intuitively -so I may be wrong in some indicators- if I think of the distribution like that one [3] with a wider base, one can shape it in such a way that the level of inequality measured somehow would be the same as in the second case, while the level of polarization in the third case would show up as being considerably less than in the second case. Then, if we compare the three situations, we have at least an intuition that in all these three situations, the one which lead to more conflict will be the second one, despite the fact that the level of inequality is the same as in the third case. Therefore, polarization may be a better notion to focus on than inequality, if we want to explain conflict.

I certainly cannot see why polarization should matter directly for social justice in the way in which inequality matters

So the question is what may polarization matter for? Inequality may matter for conflict, as I have suggested, but it may matter to many other things. For example, inequality, along some dimensions (income, wealth, power and a number of others) matters directly for issues of social justice. The question is whether something similar can be said for polarization, or is the relevance of polarization restricted to what it may explain in terms of conflict, or the conflict proneness of certain situations. I must say -and this is certainly more a challenge or question to you-, I certainly cannot see why polarization should matter directly for social justice in the way in which inequality matters. I cannot see any reason for believing that the second situation of high polarization for a given level of inequality would be more unjust than the third situation. On the contrary, I would say.

Also, I am not seeing in any of the other papers any suggestion as to the explanatory relevance of polarization for facts different for conflict. There may be some, but I have not seen them developed, not even hinted in any of the other papers. I may be wrong. So from what I have heard the potential relevance of polarization is neither directly normative nor explanatory for other things than conflict.

[Debraj Ray] I can think very immediately of at least three other things which may be important. One on which actually a study has been done is the notion of crime. The paper is by Norman Louisia [*], who is at the World Bank. Basically, the idea is that in a polarized society there is a strong feeling that there is a group that has it all and there is another strong group who does not have it, and this may precipitate organized crime, which inequality may not be able to do. Then there is the issue of polarization and social mobility. A polarized society is highly mobile or not so highly mobile: that is the sort of question, and there are some reasons to believe that there is a strong connection. And finally, of course, there is the notion of polarization of growth, of economic growth. All of this three things have a priori connections which we can discuss more and which may be subject to empirical analysis.

[PvP] Ok. That is helpful. And so the question which I am going to ask in the final part of what I want to say will return to the nature of this connection between polarization and conflict, and to what extent it had been made plausible by a number of the papers we have heard. But I will do that after the very short section about what explains polarization. There had been a number of hints on that in the course of this week, but I first need to return, then, to the question of what exactly polarization is. We have an idea of what purpose we want this notion to serve, but now that we have this vague idea we need to be more precise about what exactly the notion of polarization is supposed to mean. [Next]

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