The day after the 2016 election, I posted a blog entitled “Time for Civic Courage” that seemed to strike a chord; it was shared much more than I’m used to. I mainly wrote it for people like myself– those who would not face much personal risk under Trump but who needed to step up. Compared to our fellow human beings, Americans have more leverage over the US government, and we had to protect them by resisting here. I wrote: “no jokes about moving to Canada. No thoughts about giving up on the nation you belong to, even if its majority and its institutions anger you. No opting out.”

On Election Day 2020, I am cautiously optimistic about the outcome, sharing the conventional view that Biden has roughly a 90% chance of winning, and even a 30% chance of a landslide. But there is certainly a risk of another Trump win. And it is now–not after a loss–when we should pledge Civic Courage. Regardless of what happens, we Americans must keep working and struggling for justice and peace. We’ll need plenty of courage and perseverance even if the election turns out well; and if not–that’s the time to show civic character.

Shanto Iyengar and colleagues write, “Democrats and Republicans both say that the other party’s members are hypocritical, selfish, and closed-minded, and they are unwilling to socialize across party lines, or even to partner with opponents in a variety of other activities. This phenomenon of animosity between the parties is known as affective polarization.”*

Although affective polarization is far from our only problem, it does make public deliberation more difficult and hence undermines democracy. It is a particular problem for people who would like to build up public institutions: progressives. A minimal state doesn’t require much public comity, but an ambitious one does.

Iyengar and colleagues treat affective polarization as symmetrical, depicting both parties as equally affected. Based on the graphs below (which I contribute), I think that is fair.

The first one shows that in the late 1970s, Democrats and Republicans both rated the other party at almost 50 on a 1-100 scale (the ANES’ “feeling thermometer”). You could describe their feelings about the other side as neutral. Now both sides’ ratings are down to the mid-twenties on the same scale. You could call that hostility. The downward trend is pretty consistent from 1990-2016, across Clinton, Bush, and Obama.

This second graph is more dramatic still. It shows the percentage of Democrats and Republicans who chose to rate the opposite party at zero on the 0-100 scale. For both sides, that proportion has risen from very low in the late 1970s to about one in four people today. Again, the trend is linear all the way through the Bush and Obama years. More Democrats have rated Republicans at zero than vice-versa.

These graphs show ratings of the parties, not of party members. Ratings of people are better for this purpose, but ANES stopped asking that in the 1980s and now asks only about the parties. However, during the period when they asked the same respondents about both parties and party members, the correlations were high (>.75). Therefore, I think these lines are good proxy measures for how people feel about other people across party lines.

Independents–including leaners–began this period rating both parties above 50 on a 0-100 scale. Their ratings have fallen in parallel, although not as steeply as the partisans’ ratings of each other; and they have viewed Democrats more favorably than Republicans.

*Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N. and Westwood, S.J., 2019. The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science, 22, pp.129-146. See also: promoting democracy and reducing polarization; marginalizing views in a time of polarization; empathy boosts polarization; what is polarization and when is it bad?; civic education in a time of inequality and polarization, etc.

This review-essay was recently published and is available for free: Peter Levine, “Citizens against Domination: A Critical Reading of Ian Shapiro,” The Good Society, vol. 28, No. 1-2 (2019), pp. 1-8.

I admire and recommend Shapiro’s book, Politics against Domination, but I use the review as an opportunity to push two positions that I frequently advocate:

1. The state should not be sharply distinguished from other institutions; it is not uniquely capable of dominating people [or preventing domination]; and
2. The salient question is not how to design a state to prevent domination–because none of us are really state-designers–but how we should prevent domination by working through the state and the other institutions that we can influence.

The rest of the special issue is valuable. I have been particularly eager to see Brooke Ackerly’s essay, “Rage, Resistance, and Politics against Oppression,” in print. She explores the overlap and the differences between domination–the keyword in modern republican political theory–and oppression, a fundamental term for much of the left, especially for intersectional social movements. That contrast is valuable for anyone to consider.

See also: from classical liberalism to a civic perspective;  do we live in a republic or a democracy?; against state-centric political theory; avoiding arbitrary command; authoritarianism and deliberative democracy.

Some of the threats to democracy in the USA involve bias or injustice in our political system: barriers to registration and voting, gerrymandered districts, the filibuster, money in politics, the Electoral College, and an unrepresentative Senate. With some important exceptions, reforms that address those problems will tend to benefit Democrats and progressive causes.

A particular kind of polarization also threatens democracy. The problem is not disagreement. Our elected representatives should hold diverse political views–maybe more diverse than they do now. Debate and contestation are valuable. It is good to have at least two parties with sharply distinct approaches, so that people can choose between them.

However, our Constitution was written by people who disliked parties and didn’t anticipate them. It is badly designed for partisan polarization. Whenever the branches are controlled by different parties that have homogeneous ideologies, all the incentives favor mutually destructive game-playing.

I can accept the argument that Republicans have played harder and less ethically than Democrats, although I am not certain that’s true, because my prior assumptions and my media stream are biased. But even if it’s true, all the incentives now predict that Democrats will play tit-for-tat.

Besides, affective partisanship–disliking fellow citizens because of their political identities–is the kind of divide that prevents human groups from governing themselves. In order to deliberate, you need not agree, but you must believe that it’s valuable to discuss common issues with the other side. Affective polarization blocks discussion. In the absence of a reasonable level of goodwill, arguments and reasons have no purchase.

The main alternative is simply power: amassing more votes than the other side has. That is preferable to amassing more dollars or more guns than the other side, but it is still raw power. It is government by accident and force, not by reflection and choice, to paraphrase Federalist #1. I suppose if mobilizing more votes consistently generated good outcomes, it might be OK–but it doesn’t.

Democrats and progressives (if they take power) and nonpartisan reformers face a real dilemma. Political reforms will be seen as partisan because they have unequal effects, but partisan polarization is also a problem–and an obstacle to achieving progressive goals.

This is what I would recommend:

First, push political reforms despite their partisan impact if they’re the right things to do. Not only are equity and accountability very high priorities, but our current system actually worsens polarization by giving the parties too many opportunities to pass or block policies without building consensus. I’d vote for expanding the Senate and the Supreme Court, but those reforms are so unlikely that perhaps it’s a mistake to focus much attention on them. More to the point would be voter protection, districting reform, and ending the filibuster.

Second, include political reforms that are bad for Democrats if those are also the right things to do. Redistricting reform meets that criterion in some states. Ranked-choice voting might qualify. Constraining the executive branch is an example, if Biden is president.

An often-overlooked problem involves the dates of municipal elections. Many mayors and city councils are elected in odd-numbered years or in different months than November. Democratic incumbents and municipal employees’ unions benefit because the electorate shrinks to hard-core party and union members. But turnout is often miserably low. I’d move municipal elections to November of even-numbered years and fight Democratic city halls to get that done.

Third, take explicit actions to reduce affective polarization by promoting cross-partisan dialogue and deliberation.

• Civic education can help if it focuses on discussions of contested issues.
• Private efforts like Braver Angels have a role.
• The federal government could organize official public deliberations on controversial matters. The UK Climate Assembly might be a worthy recent model, but the same method could be used to discuss whether to open schools during the pandemic.
• After the election, Biden and/or Harris could attend listening sessions with people who might be alienated from them–including right-wing groups but also marginalized people of color. It would be easy to mobilize partisans to distort these sessions. Biden/Harris could turn them into manipulative symbolic events. However, skillful advance work could make them work out better. For example, imagine Biden visiting a conservative evangelical church in the South without prior public notice (maybe he’d coordinate in advance with the pastor) and listening to congregants behind the closed church doors before emerging to make some remarks. If that were done with sincerity, it could make a difference.

The extreme polarization of the news and information sphere may actually help. As Barack Obama learned, it doesn’t really matter how you act; the right-wing news cycle will treat you as an anti-American extremist. Under these circumstances, why not push for genuinely worthwhile reforms, while also making sincere efforts to combat polarization?

See also: Four Threats to American Democracy video; empathy boosts polarization; what is polarization and when is it bad?; marginalizing views in a time of polarization; on playing hardball with the shutdown, an agenda for political reform in Massachusetts; is our constitutional order doomed? etc.