Polarized pluralism is a two-party or multi-party political system which is seen as overly polarized and therefore as dysfunctional. It was originally described by political philosopher Giovanni Sartori to define a system where moderate views are replaced by polarized views. The phrase was used by analyst Roger Cohen writing in the New York Times to describe American politics about energy,^[1] but the phrase is not widely used in mainstream newspapers.

In a typical two-party or multi-party system, the distribution of party power looks like a normal curve with a slight skew. In such a condition, most of the country is moderate or moderate-leaning left-wing or right-wing. If the country becomes polarized, then the curve becomes one with two main humps and looks like a bimodal distribution, with the power at the far political left and right ends, and a severe dip in the middle; one side will have more influence than the other, creating a strong trend to follow them. There is speculation that a nation with such a distribution, effectively having two highly separate approaches with no compromise positions in the middle, becomes difficult to govern.

An example of polarized pluralism was politics during Weimar-era Germany. The nation had two power centers, highly split apart; the communists and the Nazis. The Nazis were the stronger of the two parties and won total control of the government, and led to a condition of fascism.

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