Isaiah Berlin and polarisation in Europe: what 34,000 survey answers say about Spain

Ask Europeans whether their societies are divided and most say yes. In Germany, more than 81% told researchers in 2025 that society is currently divided, and roughly one in four described the divide as very strong. That figure comes from the Polarization Barometer of MIDEM, the Mercator Forum Migration and Democracy at TU Dresden, published in March 2026. Its survey, run with YouGov between 11 February and 3 March 2025, reached 33,873 adults in eight EU countries: Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Spain, Czechia and Hungary, which together hold about 73% of the EU's population. It is the first wave of a panel that will follow the same people until 2027.

The headline is less interesting than the method. MIDEM measures polarisation issue by issue, and it separates two things that usually get blurred. Ideological polarisation is how far apart people's positions are, whether they cluster into opposing camps. Affective polarisation is the emotional side, how strongly people reject those who think differently. The two do not always move together.

Four zones of disagreement

Crossing the two measures gives the study four zones, illustrated with German examples. In the zone of compromise both are low, as with international trade. In the zone of conflict people form clear opposing camps, yet the temperature stays moderate, as with the requirements for integrating immigrants. In the zone of friction positions are not sharply opposed, yet the debate is emotional, as with immigration in general. In the zone of division both are high, as with climate measures, where camps are entrenched and indignation runs hot.

This map matters for anyone who wants to reduce polarisation. A zone of conflict is a healthy democracy at work: people disagree, and they can still bargain. The danger lies where disagreement is wrapped in contempt.

Where Spain stands out

The cross-country findings put Spain in an unexpected place. On whether governments should intervene in the market, Germany, Spain and Hungary show high ideological polarisation. On the emotional measure Spain stands alone: of the eight countries, it is where market versus government is debated with the highest affective polarisation, the strongest rejection of people on the other side. Redistribution is also emotionally charged across Europe, especially in France, Italy and Spain. On climate measures, emotional rejection of dissent is particularly marked in Germany, Italy and Spain.

On immigration the picture is mixed. Spain and Italy show a strong tendency to form opposing camps on immigration overall. Yet on the emotional measure, whether entry should be restricted or expanded, Spain recorded the lowest score of the eight, a value of 5.0 that the authors note is still high in absolute terms. On skilled-worker immigration, Spain and Germany showed the strongest emotional reactions.

This fits an older finding. In 2020 Luis Miller of the CSIC, writing for EsadeEcPol, found that Spaniards were far more polarised by ideology and territorial identity than by concrete policies: ideological and territorial polarisation was two to three times greater than polarisation on taxes and immigration, and about fifteen times greater than on public services. The MIDEM data suggests that the abstract question of market against state carries much of that identity charge.

What Berlin sees in this

Isaiah Berlin never studied survey data on polarisation, and his work still describes the mechanism well. His value pluralism holds that genuine goods, liberty and equality, efficiency and solidarity, conflict with no single formula to rank them. Political fights become poisonous when each side treats its own good as the whole truth, so that anyone who weighs things differently must be stupid or malicious. The philosopher John Kekes, discussed in the Stanford Encyclopedia's entry on value pluralism, puts the civic consequence plainly: deep disagreements about values need not be due to wickedness on the other side.

Market versus state is the perfect example. In the abstract it is a contest of identities: freedom against solidarity, enterprise against the common good. In practice it is a long list of concrete questions with different answers. Competition tends to work where customers can switch easily and new firms can enter. A single rail track or a water network is a natural monopoly that needs public ownership or firm regulation. Treated sector by sector, the question moves from the zone of division into the zone of conflict, where people can argue with evidence and strike deals.

Berlin also had something to say about the other great source of anger in the survey, immigration and identity. He treated belonging to a people as a basic human need and took national consciousness seriously. He distinguished it from an inflamed nationalism fed by resentment and humiliation, which he called pathological. A politics that sneers at belonging pushes people towards the inflamed version.

A radical-centre response

Each tradition brings part of the answer. From the left comes the recognition that inequality and redistribution are real, material causes of division, and that a credible social floor lowers the stakes of every other fight. From the liberal and conservative traditions comes respect for belonging and for markets as tools to be judged by results, without stigma. From neither comes the lesson of the MIDEM map: the aim is to keep disagreement and remove contempt, moving issues from division to conflict.

For Spain that suggests a concrete practice. Stop debating market against state as a whole. Ask, sector by sector, which arrangement delivers better results for people, publish the evidence, and let both sides propose designs. Pair that with an honest social floor, so that losing an argument about one sector never means losing security. And treat national belonging as a legitimate attachment that a pluralist democracy can share. Pluralism makes disagreement cheaper, and cheap disagreement is what lets a divided country still get things built.