“Healing A Polarized World”: Jennifer McCoy On Creating Unity From Division

Jennifer McCoy is professor of political science at Georgia State University and nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Specializing in international and comparative politics. She is the co-author of “Reducing Pernicious Polarization: A Comparative Historical Analysis of Depolarization.” Dr. McCoy’s areas of expertise include democratic resilience, democratic erosion, and partisan polarization; crisis prevention and conflict resolution; democracy promotion and collective defense of democracy; election processes and international election observation; and Latin American Politics. McCoy’s research program on polarized politics aims to identify the causes, consequences for democracy, and solutions to polarized societies around the world, including the United States. She coined the term “pernicious polarization” to refer to the political polarization that divides societies into mutually distrustful “Us vs. Them” camps, and undermines the capacity of democracies to address critical policy problems.