bipolarism

plural bipolarisms

1. countableuncountablegovernmentThe characterization and practice of politics as the struggle and balance between left-wing and right-wing powers or ideologies.

   Born after the end of the First Republic (1948–92), bipolarism had gone through different phases, but never faded away.

   2016, Susannah Verney, Anna Bosco, Protest Elections and Challenger Parties, →ISBN

   4 more examples

   Political scientists and international observers debated whether the international system had become unipolar (with the United States as the sole superpower) or multipolar (with competing economic and military powers represented by the United States, China, Europe, and perhaps other countries and regions, depending on the political scientist consulted) in the aftermath of bipolarism.

   2004, Ellen Grigsby, Analyzing Politics, →ISBN, page 250

   East–West bipolarism is also associated with the “zero-sum” game (“my gain your loss”) of political-military rebalancing through military interventions or subversions in any Third World area where the adversary makes fresh inroads.

   2009, Marco Rimanelli, The A to Z of NATO and Other International Security Organizations, →ISBN

   To give credibility to its separation from the PD, the ApI had to declare bipolarism a failure and once again stress the usefulness, in the present situation in Italy, of a centrist, reforming party—one whose strength relies on concrete proposals and not on ideological radicalism.

   2011, Elisabetta Gualmini, Eleonora Pasotti, Much Ado About Nothing?, →ISBN, page 106

   One of the most prominent features of Cypriot party politics is the one which is also systemic at the party system level: bipolarism – the deep social, ideological and political division between right and left.

   2014, James Ker-Lindsay, Resolving Cyprus: New Approaches to Conflict Resolution, →ISBN, page 52