Political Communication Breakdown: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

Harvard FAS

American democracy is in crisis. Politicians talk past each other, national policymaking is increasingly calcified, and states pursue wildly diverging policies that frequently contradict, or even directly challenge, one another. Traditionally apolitical policies are politicized. People tune in to separate and distinct information streams from which they receive contradictory messages about what constitute the nation’s problems, and how best to fix them. They increasingly don’t…