In the Latin American public debate, the term “polarization” has become a word that seemingly explains everything—from an institutional crisis, aggressiveness in debate, weak approval of a government’s performance, to the inability to build agreements. While Peru is a conflict-ridden country, marked by distrust and indignation, this does not mean it is a polarized country. In analytical terms, the Peruvian experience resembles less a society structured into two stable camps and more a fragmented, personalistic, and volatile arena, where competition is organized by moments rather than by defined cleavages.
In political science, polarization is not synonymous with “conflict,” nor is it equivalent to the upheavals typical of a crisis, the use of rhetoric as a political communication strategy, or the tension characteristic of an electoral campaign. Polarization can be distinguished along two dimensions: ideological polarization, which occurs among relevant political groups, with a weakening of the center and relatively coherent alignments around ideas or policies; and affective polarization, which is hostility or aversion toward the opposing side, no longer perceived as a legitimate actor but rather as a moral or existential threat.
Following qualitative research conducted through focus groups in July 2025, in the run-up to the upcoming presidential elections, it is worth analyzing both dimensions of polarization in Peru. Any country may have one without the other, or it may have both, either in a stable manner or intermittently (as in a social outburst). For polarization to truly be polarization, it must regularly organize the political system; otherwise, what emerges instead is fragmentation, consensus, resilience, dealignment, anti-politics, anti-partisanship, personalism, or simple conflict.
From this perspective, qualitative evidence and recent electoral surveys reveal that in Peru, there is no ideological polarization structuring the party system, nor is there consistent electoral behavior over time. There are debates about the “economic model,” the “state,” “security,” or “public morality,” but these tend to be expressed in cross-cutting ways, without producing two stable programmatic blocs. Left–right self-placement does not organize enduring party competition because institutionalization is weak and parties are fragile, making it difficult to consistently predict voting behavior. Added to this are fleeting legislative alliances, party switching, changes of labels, the mimicry of leaderships, and crossings from one camp to another.
In an ideologically polarized country, disputes become relatively predictable, structured around two camps that aggregate demands, form recognizable coalitions, and compete with a certain continuity. In Peru, the opposite occurs: there are no consistent or institutionalized parties. What does exist is an extraordinary supply of candidacies, electoral vehicles, factions, and improvised lists. The result is dispersion and parliamentary fragmentation, not a stable binary division.
This does not mean the absence of ideological conflict, but rather that ideology fails to become an axis capable of durably organizing identities, organizations, and loyalties. Without that axis, ideological polarization loses its principal condition: the capacity to structure and guide political action.
Peru does show signs of affective polarization. Given the low level of party mediation, rejections intensify toward figures, institutions, symbols, or labels—often stronger than any positive attachment. In that sense, Peru may experience peaks of affective polarization, but not as a stable social cleavage; rather, as a campaign and crisis mechanism, centered on leaderships and institutions more than on parties.
In run-off elections, it is common for competition to be organized more around the “anti” than the “pro.” Thus, anti-establishment rhetoric, anti-communism, anti-corruption, anti-“caviares,” anti-Fujimorism, and—some decades ago—anti-APRA sentiment frequently emerge. This logic shows that Peruvians are emotionally pushed, at a given electoral moment, toward an antagonism that may be intense but fragile, because it depends on who the rival is, which scandal dominates the week, and which media coalition is temporarily articulated.
Peru may appear polarized due to the volume of noise—insults or delegitimization—but it is not polarized in the structural sense of the concept. What dominates is a pattern of political negativity, fragile attachments, and strong rejections. And that pattern, far from strengthening stable programmatic identities, tends to weaken representation and erode trust in institutions. Peru does not consistently exhibit structuring ideological polarization; what it displays is fragmentation and volatility, with episodes of personalistic affective polarization activated in electoral junctures and institutional crises.
The tragedy of a fragmented society is when conflict does not produce aggregation but decomposition. In democracies with programmatic polarization, tension may be high, but the system manages to organize competition into two or three recognizable poles, rules of alternation, and stable coalitions. In Peru, tension often produces the opposite: a proliferation of actors, legislative blocs that split, parties that dissolve, and governments without a majority dependent on short-term, defensive transactions that may drift toward authoritarian or illiberal dynamics without the country being polarized. This combination makes the authoritarian promise seductive even without structural polarization—based on the hope that “someone will restore order,” “put an end to the politicians,” or “govern without obstacles.”
The crisis is not explained by “two irreconcilable halves” confronting each other. It is explained by multiple minorities with low discipline and a high incentive to veto, turning the state into a field of obstruction. Politics becomes a sum of blockages, not a binary confrontation of projects. It is not a “war of factions”; it is “institutional guerrilla warfare.”
This pattern of fragmentation is functional to the neoliberal model because it prevents the construction of a stable programmatic majority capable of contesting it. Without consistent parties and enduring loyalties, politics is organized around scandals and vetoes; thus, structural issues remain off the agenda or are decided by technocratic inertia. The model is sustained not by consensus, but by the absence of a coalition capable of replacing it.
Autor
Cientista Político. Profesor e investigador asociado de la Universidad Federal de Goiás (Brasil). Doctor en Sociología por la Univ. de Brasilia (UnB). Postdoctorado en la Univ. de LUISS (Italia). Especializado en estudios comparados sobre América Latina.
