How Polarization Begets Polarization - Ideological Extremism in the US Congress

This book explains the feedback loop that generates ever-increasing polarization--the signature feature of contemporary American politics. This loop is powered by the discipline exerted by the respective political parties and their activists on both their Congressional members and their district candidates. The authors show that tight party discipline produces party delegations in Congress that are widely separated from one another but each ideologically concentrated--in a word, polarized.