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In the past decades, new governance models have been introduced, that include the use of self-regulation tools, such as pledges and nudges, to achieve regulatory goals. One of the main appeals of these new governance models, is the premise that they lead to more voluntary compliance since they rely on the intrinsic motivation to cooperate instead of coercive measures. More importantly, they rely on trust: of the government in society, of society in the government and of citizens in each other. However, increasing polarization and the associated diminished trust in many societies brings up the question of whether these self-regulation tools remain effective in securing compliance. In this paper, we focus on a particular aspect of polarization, ideological extremity, and ask if it leads to reduced levels of cooperation. We develop the hypothesis that extremity reduces trust in the government and in other people, and this in turn reduces cooperation, hence threatening the viability of self-regulation. In addition, we hypothesize that extremity affects the dynamics of authority, increasing the influence of peoples' ideology and whether their party is in power on their willingness to cooperate. We utilize two large and comparative datasets, the European Social Survey (ESS) and the World Value Survey (WVS), to test our hypothesis and find some evidence that ideological extremity undermines cooperation, and that there are ideological differences for the way this occurs. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for policy makers who wish to incorporate self-regulation tools in polarized societies.
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