Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in its PlaceWhy We Must Put Politics in its Place
Abstract
Democracy is an extremely important social political good. Nonetheless, there is such a thing as having too much of a good thing. When we overdo democracy, we allow the categories, allegiances, and struggles of politics to overwhelm our social lives. This has the effect of undermining and crowding out many of the most important correlated social goods that democracy is meant to deliver. What’s more, in overdoing democracy, we spoil certain social goods that democracy needs in order to flourish. Thus overdoing democracy is democracy’s undoing. A thriving democracy needs citizens to reserve space in their shared social lives for collective activities and cooperative projects that are not structured by political allegiances; they must work together in social contexts where political affiliations and party loyalties are not merely suppressed, but utterly beside the point. Combining conceptual analyses of democratic legitimacy and responsible citizenship with empirical results regarding the political infiltration of social spaces and citizens’ vulnerabilities to polarization, this book provides a diagnosis of current democratic ills and a novel prescription for addressing them. Arguing that overdoing democracy is the result of certain tendencies internal to the democratic ideal itself, the book demonstrates that even in a democracy, politics must be put in its place.
... Against this minimalist conception of democracy, IDD theorists suggest stronger democratic solutions involving the use of representative minipublics whenever value-laden questions that risk polarise institutional debates arise. By contrast, EDD theorists keep viewing any kind of democratic body inherently unable to deal with value-laden questions, and call instead for their depoliticisation (Pettit 2001(Pettit , 2004Talisse 2019Talisse , 2021. Their remonstrations notwithstanding, it is clear that EDD theorists are keen to revise the inherited minimalist model of democracy while affirming its basic validity as a normative ideal. ...
... Building on this multilayered conceptual embankment, EDDs theorists employ the notion of deliberation as an epistemic tool to (i) discriminate between valid and non valid standards of evaluation, (ii) identify the institutions entitled to express authoritative judgments, and finally (iii) select the reasoning process employed to make any authoritative decision compelling for limited moral agents. In other words, deliberation becomes, in their hand, an instrument for depoliticising both constitutional and postconstitutional issues having value-laden relevance, so as to pre-empt democratic politics from polarising opinions, or for imposing authoritarian solutions whenever those value-laden issues are at stake (Talisse 2019(Talisse , 2021. ...
... Dominated by a very fractious professional managerial class subscribing to liberal fundamentalist values, academia is at present engulfed by a legitimacy crisis that is as acute as the one affecting the political realm. Pace Talisse (2019Talisse ( , 2021, the priority academic philosophers attribute to epistemology and moral reasoning over political argumentation is the main reason for the polarisation of opinions within university campuses. This polarisation is due to a rigid defence of cultural minorities against the supposed tyranny of the majority, an attitude that has stunted the inner democratisation of academia over the years. ...
This is a preprint of my new book on deliberative democracy. Feedback will be much appreciated
... In other words, affective polarization involves not (only) a change in our cognitive attitudes (i.e., what we believe), but crucially a change in our affective attitudes (i.e., those attitudes connected with certain courses of action) toward certain narratives. In particular, it involves an increase in our level of confidence in certain ideologically active ideas (see Almagro 2022;Hobolt et al. 2021;Talisse 2019). 3 Thus, acknowledging that contemporary democracies are affectively rather than ideologically polarized is recognizing that even though our positions on many issues may have remained unchanged, our confidence in the narrative underneath the political group we identify with has increased dramatically. ...
... However, as social creatures, we all self-identify more or less with different social identities, and even being an individualist is being part of a social identity (Van Bavel and Packer 2021, p. 25). Since many contemporary democracies across the globe appear to be affectively polarized (Bosco and Varney 2020;Boxell et al. 2020;Carothers and O'Donohue 2019;Finkel et al. 2020;Gidron et al. 2020), meaning that citizens are highly identified with opposing ideological groups (Almagro 2022;Mason 2018;Talisse 2019), it is expected that people perceive reality through different lenses. Once our identities are activated, we experience and understand the world in a specific way. ...
According to the partisan cheerleading view, numerous political disagreements that appear to be genuine are not authentic disputes, because partisans deliberately misreport their beliefs to show support for their parties. Recently, three arguments have been put forth to support this view. First, contemporary democracies are characterized by affective rather than ideological polarization. Second, financial incentives indicate that partisans often deliberately misreport their beliefs to express their attitudes. Third, partisans have inconsistent and unstable political beliefs, so we should not take these attitudes seriously. In this paper, I examine these arguments and present an alternative view, which I call the partisan conviction view. According to it, partisans are not necessarily insincere in their political judgments, and they are in genuine disagreement.
... When it already prevails, however, fixing it by reversing its effects should be the appropriate cure (Talisse 2019). Then, the question should be: Are we tasked with preventing an identity from becoming a mega-identity or treating an existing mega-identity not to be a threat to democracy? ...
While Derrick Darby and Eduardo Martinez's "Making Identities Safe for Democracy" proposes flexible identities as a solution to reconciling social identity with democratic politics, this paper argues that flexibility alone is insufficient to address contemporary challenges to democracy. Through a critical examination of their work, I identify two significant limitations in their argument. First, their primary example of veteran status as a flexible identity is problematic, as empirical evidence shows it remains significantly aligned with Republican partisan identity and may be grounded in potentially restrictive forms of national identity. Second, their framework fails to adequately address how identity flexibility can counter the phenomenon of partisan sorting, where partisanship has evolved into a mega-identity that increasingly structures both political and social life. In response to these limitations, I argue that emphasizing the plurality of social identities, rather than merely their flexibility, offers a more effective approach to treating—rather than just preventing—the challenges that identity poses to democratic practice. While flexibility remains important, cultivating multiple, distinct social identities that coexist and interact within individuals and communities may better dilute the dominance of partisan mega-identities and foster more inclusive democratic engagement.
... This harmful aspect of polarization has to do with becoming ardent supporters of an ideological identity (Mason 2018;Talisse 2019). In polarized democracies, the number of people who are absolutely certain of the truth of the political beliefs held by their political groups has increased (Costello and Bowes 2022). ...
A population can be ideologically or affectively polarized. Ideological polarization relates to people's political beliefs, while affective polarization deals with people's feelings toward the ingroup and the outgroup. Both types of mental states, beliefs and feelings, are typically measured through direct self-report surveys. One philosophical assumption underlying this way of measuring polarization is a concrete version of the first-person authority thesis: the speaker's sincerity guarantees the truth of their mental self-ascriptions. Based on various empirical studies, the first part of this paper argues that we are particularly bad at spotting our own mental states regarding political issues. This, in turn, raises doubts about the accuracy of direct self-report surveys in measuring polarization. In the second part, I introduce Michael Lynch's notion of political meaning to argue that traditional surveys can still provide valuable information for detecting polarization. However, I suggest that this information pertains not to participants' beliefs and feelings, but rather to their level of commitment to the core beliefs of the political groups they identify with, which is a relevant aspect of pernicious polarization.
... I argue that the gamification of social identity results in the socialization of political judgment, which accelerates the mechanisms of belief polarization even in the presence of diverse perspectives. This section also contextualizes my Arendtian approach with recent work on belief polarization by Robert Talisse (2019;, as well as with other critiques of social media (Heersmink, 2018;Marin, 2021;Nguyen, 2021). By arguing that social media radicalization emerges at the nexus of social identity and gamification, the Arendtian approach provides a novel critique of social media that has been overlooked. ...
It is often claimed that social media accelerate political extremism by employing personalization algorithms that filter users into groups with homogenous beliefs. While an intuitive position, recent research has shown that social media users exhibit self-filtering tendencies. In this paper, I apply Hannah Arendt’s theory of political judgment to hypothesize a cause for self-filtering on social media. According to Arendt, a crucial step in political judgment is the imagination of a general standpoint of distinct yet equal perspectives, against which individuals compare their own judgments in order to test their defensibility. I argue that social media inhibit this step by gamifying the pursuit of social status, which encourages users to consider the perspectives of others not for the sake of a general standpoint but for the sake of improving their social status, resulting in self-filtering. Consequently, ameliorating political extremism on social media requires not just reforming the algorithms that deliver content to users, but the interfaces on which users present their social identities.
... Similarly, Finkel et al. (2020): "Social-media technology employs popularity-based algorithms that tailor content to maximize user engagement, increasing sectarianism within homogeneous networks (SM), in part because of the contagious power of content that elicits sectarian fear or indignation" (Finkel et al., 2020, 534). Talisse (2019) argues that much of the recent polarization is the result of widespread ideological segregation, and this extends well beyond social media. People increasingly tend to associate only with those who share their political views. ...
In this chapter, we turn our attention to the effects of the attention economy on our ability to act autonomously as a group . We begin by clarifying which sorts of groups we are concerned with, which are structured groups (groups sufficiently organized that it makes sense to attribute agency to the group itself ). Drawing on recent work by Purves and Davis (Public Aff Q 36:136–62, 2022), we describe the essential roles of trust (i.e., depending on groups to fulfill their commitments) and trustworthiness (i.e., the property of a group that makes trusting them fitting) in autonomous group action, with particular emphasis on democratic institutions (which we view as group agents) and democratic legitimacy (which depends on trust and trustworthiness). We then explain how engagement maximization promotes polarization, which is detrimental to trust and trustworthiness and, in turn, democratic legitimacy and democratic institutions. We close by considering what groups might do to protect themselves from the threat posed to them by the attention economy.
... Through carefully and intentionally introducing competing views for consideration, paired with practices that cultivate generous listening, students can learn to respond with open-mindedness rather than overreaction or outright dismissal. This practice would be a crucial counter to increasing political hyperpolarisation and echo chambers, which are eroding trust in those with di ering political opinions (Pew Research Center, 2016;Talisse, 2019). The classroom environment can o er an educative space, where students can be exposed to di ering opinions, consider them in a structured way, and see the shared humanity even in disagreement. ...
This chapter looks at the challenge posed by ‘divisive concepts’ and how they have been invoked by some politicians to prevent certain issues from being taught or discussed at school. It points to policies being taken forward in the US, and argues that, instead of allowing partisan legislators to impose their preferences regarding what should or should not be taught, teachers should be given the support and protection to engage their students in considering issues, arguments and perspectives that need to be addressed in a civil and constructive manner. It warns of the danger that teachers may retreat further from political education out of fear of prosecution, and sets out why democracy needs citizens to learn about building strong relations that would enable them to engage with controversial matters and become, not more polarised, but more connected through shared understanding even when they disagree.
... By locating political polarization's epistemic harms in a system-level reduction in diversity, my account differs from previous approaches. Two prominent candidates are group polarization theory, associated with Sunstein (2000; and Talisse (2019;, and cultural cognition theory associated with Kahan (2012;. 1 These accounts focus on certain psychological mechanisms involved in polarization-particularly issue and affective polarization-and their tendency to lead individual citizens to form unreliable or false political beliefs. I argue that there are two problems with these current approaches. ...
Political polarization is one of the most discussed challenges facing contemporary democracies and is often associated with a broader epistemic crisis. While inspiring a large literature in political science, polarization’s epistemic problems also have significance for normative democratic theory, and this study develops a new approach aimed at understanding them. In contrast to prominent accounts from political psychology—group polarization theory and cultural cognition theory—which argue that polarization leads individuals to form unreliable political beliefs, this study focuses on system-level diversity. It argues that polarization’s epistemic harms are best located in its tendency to reduce the diversity of perspectives utilized in a democratic system and in how this weakens the system’s ability to identify and address problems of public concern. Understanding such harms is also argued to require a greater consideration of the political dynamics of polarization and issues of elite discourse, alongside political psychology.
... It also raises the justificatory burden on enacting laws and policies that are truly in the general interest of a heterogeneous population. Many of us however feel that something is going wrong with this virtuous mechanism (Talisse 2019;Lepoutre 2021). Digital and local public spheres are overwhelmed with explicit and covert speech that is associated typically with intolerance, bigotry, and animosity. ...
... Las posiciones a favor y en contra de las mascarillas se endurecieron hasta convertirse en enemigas en el campo de batalla de la política. La polarización afectiva y de convicciones sobre diferentes posturas hacia las mascarillas y las vacunas se convirtieron rápidamente en posiciones de identidad y estilo de vida irresolubles (Talisse, 2019). Los distritos escolares en EE. ...
En este artículo, analizo una muestra de las prácticas educativas actuales en los movimientos populistas educativos de Brasil, Estados Unidos e Israel. Tras un breve examen de estas formas de populismo, que revela tendencias políticas de nacionalismo étnico, ortodoxia religiosa, antisecularismo y autoritarismo, reviso la teoría democrática para interpretar el populismo desde una posición teórica democrática dual: pragmatismo, y teoría democrática crítica o radical. Utilizo reflexiones pragmáticas en la esfera pública (Dewey, 1927; Frega, 2010, 2019), para explicar cómo y por qué emergen colectivos en la dinámica de las instituciones estatales democráticas de educación. Y posteriormente, paso a la teoría democrática radical para analizar la idea de la expresión populista y su función en la política democrática (Laclau, 2005; Mouffe, 2018). En términos pragmáticos, los movimientos populistas son colectivos en potencia, basados en una idea experimentalista de la vida política que incluye asociaciones de grupos en la sociedad civil que generan opinión, acción y desacuerdo en intentos de conformar decisiones en las instituciones estatales. Pero muchos movimientos populistas no llegan a ser colectivos democráticos en la medida en que se caracterizan por reducidos intereses privados, hábitos irreflexivos y prácticas que son antagónicas a la interpelación, la capacidad de respuesta y la deliberación. Como tales, los movimientos populistas amenazan la legitimidad normativa y la estabilidad de las instituciones estatales democráticas liberales de enseñanza. Aunque las versiones minimalistas o menos militantes de populismo son compatibles con, y vehículos importantes para la política educativa, las versiones maximalistas actualmente dominantes perfiladas en este artículo amenazan el proyecto de estado liberal-democrático (Sant, 2020). Las teorías pragmáticas de política democrática y acciones colectivas (Frega, 2019) ofrecen vías para conocer el momento populista, pero contienen significativas implicaciones de rediseño y reforma institucional para su materialización.
... Through carefully and intentionally introducing competing views for consideration, paired with practices that cultivate generous listening, students can learn to respond with open-mindedness rather than overreaction or outright dismissal. This practice would be a crucial counter to increasing political hyperpolarisation and echo chambers, which are eroding trust in those with di ering political opinions (Pew Research Center, 2016;Talisse, 2019). The classroom environment can o er an educative space, where students can be exposed to di ering opinions, consider them in a structured way, and see the shared humanity even in disagreement. ...
... Through carefully and intentionally introducing competing views for consideration, paired with practices that cultivate generous listening, students can learn to respond with open-mindedness rather than overreaction or outright dismissal. This practice would be a crucial counter to increasing political hyperpolarisation and echo chambers, which are eroding trust in those with di ering political opinions (Pew Research Center, 2016;Talisse, 2019). The classroom environment can o er an educative space, where students can be exposed to di ering opinions, consider them in a structured way, and see the shared humanity even in disagreement. ...
... Through carefully and intentionally introducing competing views for consideration, paired with practices that cultivate generous listening, students can learn to respond with open-mindedness rather than overreaction or outright dismissal. This practice would be a crucial counter to increasing political hyperpolarisation and echo chambers, which are eroding trust in those with di ering political opinions (Pew Research Center, 2016;Talisse, 2019). The classroom environment can o er an educative space, where students can be exposed to di ering opinions, consider them in a structured way, and see the shared humanity even in disagreement. ...
... 14 Political polarization. Others note that corporate activism worsens political polarization (Talisse, 2019). Liberal democracy requires that citizens be willing to set aside their disagreements in pursuit of common aims. ...
In July 2020, more than 1000 companies that advertise on social media platforms withdrew their business, citing failures of the platforms (especially Facebook) to address the proliferation of harmful content. The #StopHateForProfit movement invites reflection on an understudied topic: the ethics of boycotting by corporations. Under what conditions is corporate boycotting permissible, required, supererogatory, or forbidden? Although value-driven consumerism has generated significant recent discussion in applied ethics, that discussion has focused almost exclusively on the consumption choices of individuals. As this article underscores, value-driven consumerism by business corporations complicates these issues and invites further examination. We propose principles for the ethics of boycotting by corporations, indicate how these principles relate to different CSR paradigms, and show how these insights can help assess recent instances of corporate boycotting.
... Há, em primeiro lugar, um (grande) conjunto de indivíduos dispostos a produzir, ecoar, compartilhar e promover, deliberadamente, conteúdos inverídicos para fortalecer suas agendas políticas. Tal postura não se restringe a lideranças de movimentos e partidos políticos, mas se entranha no tecido social à medida que o posicionamento político parece necessário, evidente, ubíquo e definidor de identidades (Talisse, 2019). Há muitos vizinhos, primas e tios compartilhando inverdades não apesar de sua falsidade, mas justamente em virtude dela e porque podem produzir os efeitos desejados. ...
This article aims to comprehend the contemporary phenomenon of fake news. To do so, it begins with a literature review, addressing: (1) definitions of the concept; (2) the factors that would explain its ubiquity in contemporary political debate and the consequences of this process; (3) the cases most frequently explored by the literature and the concept’s historical development; (4) the “antidotes” or solutions proposed to address it. The article then assesses the concept of fake news through the repertoire of contention perspective and argues that some of the frequently prescribed antidotes do not seem adequate to tackle the current epistemic crisis scenario.
fake news; repertoire of contention; communicative abundance; post-truth; political communication
... where in-group members view out-group members with a strong negative valence, and often are disposed to punish or distance themselves from out-group members where they can. The point is of special relevance nowadays since it has been widely noted that the modern United States in particular is marked by relatively high affective polarization (Iyengar & Westwood, 2015;Talisse, 2019). Though of course, this phenomenon is hardly new in human history-witness the Spanish Civil War or the religious conflicts of the seventeenth century, for instance. ...
Following Anthony Downs’s classic economic analysis of democracy, it has been widely noted that most voters lack the incentive to be well-informed. Recent empirical work, however, suggests further that political partisans can display selectively lazy or biased reasoning. Unfortunately, political knowledge seems to exacerbate, rather than mitigate, these tendencies. In this paper, I build on these observations to construct a more general skeptical challenge which affects what I call creedal beliefs. Such beliefs share three features: (i) the costs to the individual of being wrong are negligible, (ii) the beliefs are subject to social scrutiny, and (iii) the evidential landscape relevant to the beliefs is sufficiently complex so as to make easy verification difficult. Some philosophers and social scientists have recently argued that under such conditions, beliefs are likely to play a signaling, as opposed to a navigational role, and that our ability to hold beliefs in this way is adaptive. However, if this is right, I argue there is at least a partial debunker for such beliefs. Moreover, this offers, I suggest, one way to develop the skeptical challenge based on etiological explanation that John Stuart Mill presents in On Liberty when he claims that the same causes which lead someone to be a devout Christian in London would have made them a Confucian in Peking. Finally, I contend that this skeptical challenge is appropriately circumscribed so that it does not over-extend in an implausible way.
In collective action problems, large numbers of contributions together produce a good outcome, but any one contribution often makes no difference. Many philosophers think that act consequentialism implies that individuals should not contribute in these cases, given that their contributions cannot be expected to affect the outcome. Nearly everyone has assumed that the relevant expected effects of an action are those effects that are counterfactually dependent on what a given agent does. This assumption is at the heart of causal decision theory . In contrast, evidential decision theory evaluates actions on the basis of whatever can be expected to happen, given that the agent performs some action, where this includes events that are simply correlated with the action. I show that causal and evidentialist versions of act consequentialism can diverge in collective action problems. Evidential decision theory can require us to do our part even when causal decision theory does not.
In recent years, we have witnessed increased interest in alternatives to the dominant corporate social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter (now X), and TikTok. Tired of disinformation, harassment, privacy violations, and the general degradation of platforms, users and technologists have looked for non-corporate alternatives. Not-for-profit social media platforms emerging from free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) communities based on non-centralized infrastructure have emerged as promising alternatives. For applied epistemology of the internet, these alternative social media platforms present an opportunity to study different ways of producing knowledge together online. This paper evaluates the epistemic potential for such alternative, non-corporate social media. I present an epistemological framework for analyzing the epistemic promises and perils of alternative social media. Then I apply this framework to the case of Mastodon, a federated, open-source microblogging platform. Mastodon’s structure and culture of openness present opportunities to avoid many of the epistemic perils of biased and untrustworthy large corporate platforms. However, Mastodon’s risks include techno-elitism, white ignorance, and isolated, epistemically toxic communities.
The word polarization has gained notoriety both in journalistic headlines and academic publications to explain the social and political conflicts of recent years. Despite its relevance, this concept is used indiscriminately, so its meaning is not always clear. Consequently, this research aims to provide an overview of polarization in the social sciences, in terms of characteristics of polarization, theories, and associated variables that support its academic use. A review of reviews was carried out using the PRISMA methodology. 56 publications from different disciplines and databases were analyzed. The methodological quality of the publications was evaluated using the AMSTAR2 and SANRA instruments. The publications were analyzed by statistical analysis of textual data. Based on these analyses, definitions of three classes and 19 subclasses of polarization were defined. The quality of the reviews was determined, and the variables and theories associated with the phenomenon were specified. Most of the reviews are narratives, which show little methodological systematicity. Similarly, most of the reviews relate to political polarization, and only five variables were found to be inversely related to polarization, which shows how little depolarization has been studied.
Em tempos de crise da democracia, o conceito de esfera pública mostra-se novamente útil para gerar compreensão sobre os desafios que se apresentam. Seja pela fragmentação saturada dos fluxos discursivos em plataformas digitais, pela explosão de fenômenos vinculados à desinformação, pela centralidade adquirida por entidades não humanas na estruturação da opinião pública hodierna, ou pelas lutas sociais e a tematização de problemas públicos como têm se organizado, eis que a noção é retomada, 60 anos após a publicação de Mudança Estrutural da Esfera Pública, para dizer das possibilidades de sobrevivência da democracia. Este livro reúne um conjunto de capítulos que se propõem a mobilizar o conceito de esfera pública e de lentes deliberacionistas, para ler não apenas o quadro mais amplo de erosão democrática, mas também as reconfigurações de práticas comunicacionais e de embates públicos que marcam o contemporâneo.
Em tempos de crise da democracia, o conceito de esfera pública mostra-se novamente útil para gerar compreensão sobre os desafios que se apresentam. Seja pela fragmentação saturada dos fluxos discursivos em plataformas digitais, pela explosão de fenômenos vinculados à desinformação, pela centralidade adquirida por entidades não humanas na estruturação da opinião pública hodierna, ou pelas lutas sociais e a tematização de problemas públicos como têm se organizado, eis que a noção é retomada, 60 anos após a publicação de Mudança Estrutural da Esfera Pública, para dizer das possibilidades de sobrevivência da democracia. Este livro reúne um conjunto de capítulos que se propõem a mobilizar o conceito de esfera pública e de lentes deliberacionistas, para ler não apenas o quadro mais amplo de erosão democrática, mas também as reconfigurações de práticas comunicacionais e de embates públicos que marcam o contemporâneo.
Em tempos de crise da democracia, o conceito de esfera pública mostra-se novamente útil para gerar compreensão sobre os desafios que se apresentam. Seja pela fragmentação saturada dos fluxos discursivos em plataformas digitais, pela explosão de fenômenos vinculados à desinformação, pela centralidade adquirida por entidades não humanas na estruturação da opinião pública hodierna, ou pelas lutas sociais e a tematização de problemas públicos como têm se organizado, eis que a noção é retomada, 60 anos após a publicação de Mudança Estrutural da Esfera Pública, para dizer das possibilidades de sobrevivência da democracia. Este livro reúne um conjunto de capítulos que se propõem a mobilizar o conceito de esfera pública e de lentes deliberacionistas, para ler não apenas o quadro mais amplo de erosão democrática, mas também as reconfigurações de práticas comunicacionais e de embates públicos que marcam o contemporâneo.
Om discussie over democratie te vernieuwen moeten we kijken naar ‘valse vrienden’ van de democratie, die ondanks democratisch zeggen te zijn, een van de oudste menselijke praktijken trachten te vernietigen.
The epistemic turn in deliberative democracy has led to a re-evaluation of the search for the truth as the ultimate aim of public deliberation. This search for the truth is not confined to metatheoretical debates emphasising the relevance of discussion over voting, but also questions the role of popular participation promoted by the deliberative turn itself (as discussed in Chap. 4). This chapter critically assesses the types of epistemic justification sought by several thinkers committed to identifying either which democratic practices are more conducive to right decisions, or which types of reasoning processes are deemed to be inconsistent with the requirements of public reason. The starting point is Estlund’s (1997, 2003, 2008) attempt to arrive at a procedural justification of DD alternative to those suggested by both radical deliberative democrats on one side, and epistocrats on the other side. Following Estlund, several other philosophers have insisted on separating justification and legitimacy, making the search for external standards and criteria of validity a necessary precondition for attributing legitimacy to public decisions (Landemore, 2012, 2020; Misak, 2000, 2009; Peter, 2009, 2013; Talisse, 2005, 2009). To them must also be added several authors employing the Rawlsian notion of public reason to discern which doctrines/approaches can be part of an overlapping consensus, and which are beyond its bounds (Farrelly, 2007; Gutmann & Thompson, 1996, 2004; Laden, 2001). The chapter pursues two main goals. First, the theoretical arguments employed to show the inconsistencies affecting non-epistemic conceptions of DD are discussed and reassessed. Second, the more substantive elements of the epistemic readings of DD are critically scrutinised and evaluated. The conclusion supported in this chapter is that epistemic conceptions of DD are not only deeply problematic on their own terms, but they are to a large extent also politically counter-productive. While they are unable to suggest positive epistemic criteria that can track the correct courses of action, their anti-political stance and critical view of popular participation inevitably question the legitimacy of the democratic experimentation promoted so far, and are likely to have a negative, demotivating effect on the participatory spirit of those involved in it.
It is widely agreed that the increased polarization many countries experience is bad for democracy. However, existing assessments of how polarization affects democracy operate with simplified understandings of both polarization and democracy. Bringing empirical studies and democratic theory into dialogue, I argue that polarization cannot be understood as a single phenomenon that can be evaluated in one way. Moreover, its different kinds affect different parts of the democratic system in distinct ways. First, we must distinguish between the degree of polarization in a given context and the different kinds of polarization at play. Second, we must consider whether people have good reasons for their polarizing behavior or whether it is entirely irrational. If people have good reasons for their polarizing behavior, the problem lies elsewhere than in polarization itself. Third, we must distinguish between the content of polarized opinions and the process of opinion formation. Both can be assessed with democratic criteria, but they raise different questions. Finally, for democratic evaluation it matters where polarization occurs and thus, we must differentiate between different sites of polarization: civil society, election campaigns, and legislatures. I recommend a systemic approach to assessing the democratic implication of polarization, which analyzes both the effects of polarization at different sites and on democracy as a composite whole.
With what modes of mentality can we build a visceral, subjective sense of being in some specific mass-political society? Theorists and political cultivators standardly call upon the imagination – the kind prompted by symbols and rituals, for example. Could perception ever play such a role? I argue that it can, but that perceptions of mass-political publics come with costs of cruelty and illusion that neither democratic theorists nor participants should be willing to pay. The clearest examples of such perceptions are found in fascist political culture. My discussion aims to illuminate what it is about publics, perception, and democracy that makes this so.
This chapter provides a rationale for, and outlines of, a democratic ethical framework for defining the moral responsibilities of school leaders working within political conditions of growing inequality, authoritarian state governments, and populist parental-rights movements. Facing these conditions, many leaders are tempted toward a position of liberal neutrality, a (false) removal of politics designed to minimize anger or retribution by parents and legislatures. A democratic, communal ethic orients the responsibilities of the school leader around democratic values, and the educational interests of the students. Moral responsibility requires leaders to embrace liberalism’s pluralism but also its strong egalitarianism, by educating students in both the hopeful and the tragic forms of knowledge and shared social existence that constitute the national democratic project.
It is widely agreed that the increased polarization that many countries experience is bad for democracy. However, existing assessments of how polarization affects democracy operate with too unified understandings of both polarization and democracy. Bringing empirical studies and democratic theory into dialogue, this article argues that polarization cannot be understood as one phenomenon that can be evaluated in one way. Moreover, its different kinds affect different parts of the democratic system in distinct ways. First, we must distinguish between the question of the degree of polarization in a given context and the question of the different kinds of polarization at play. Second, we must consider whether people have good reasons for their polarizing behavior or whether it is entirely irrational. If people have good reasons for their polarizing behavior, the problem lies elsewhere than in polarization itself. Third, we must distinguish between the content of polarized opinions and the process of opinion formation. Both can be assessed with democratic criteria, but they raise different questions. Finally, it matters for democratic evaluation where polarization occurs and thus, we must differentiate between different sites of polarization: civil society, election campaigns, and legislatures. The article recommends a systemic approach to assessing the democratic implication of polarization, which analyzes both the effects of polarization at different sites and on democracy as a composite whole.
Should businesses engage in moral talk when it becomes profitable? Due to their particular position of visibility, it is reasonable to acknowledge that businesses have specific moral duties. Some might argue that companies ought to help abandon morally repugnant norms by providing examples of alternative behaviors through advertisements. However, the moral talk of businesses might unexpectedly reinforce repugnant norms and increase social tensions in a polarized society. Then, the duty of the companies is not fulfilled when they engage in moral talk. In polarized societies, the positional duty of businesses implies decreasing the risk of social conflict. It is not clear how to do that, yet I argue that if businesses use moral talk with mass marketing strategies, they would strive to shape impartial moral messages aiming to find points of moral convergence among polarized moral positions, which might mitigate social polarization. I call this duty the imperative of doux commerce.
Many democratic societies struggle with issues around knowledge: fake news spreads online and offline, and there is distrust of experts, but also fear of technocratic tendencies. Citizen Knowledge discusses how knowledge, understood in a broad sense, should be dealt with in societies that combine a democratic political system with a capitalist economic system. How do citizens learn about politics? How do new scientific insights make their way into politics? What role can markets play in processing decentralized knowledge? The book takes on the perspective of “democratic institutionalism,” which focuses on the institutions that enable an inclusive and stable democratic life. It argues that the fraught relation between democracy and capitalism gets out of balance if too much knowledge is treated according to the logic of markets rather than democracy. Complex societies need different mechanisms for dealing with knowledge, among which markets, democratic deliberation, and expert communities are central. Citizen Knowledge emphasizes the responsibility of bearers of knowledge and the need to support institutions that support active and informed citizenship. It develops the vision of an egalitarian society that considers the use of knowledge in society not a matter of markets, but of shared democratic responsibility, supported by epistemic infrastructures. It contributes to political epistemology, a new subdiscipline of philosophy, with a focus on the interrelation between economic and political processes. It analyzes the current situation, drawing on the history of ideas and on systematic arguments about the nature of knowledge and epistemic justice, developing proposals for reforms.
Is it possible to measure a people’s capacity for containing the ambitions of any regime at its helm—its ability to resist the power of a tyrant? We begin here from the premise that this power has to be in proportion to individuals’ capacity (both individually and in groups) for communicating, at least among themselves, dissatisfaction with the regime. As the paper subsequently shows, by articulating an ontology of information diffusion on a communication network structure, it is possible to take some stock of the features of a communications network that facilitate resistance to tyranny (among other things), and so to begin answering questions about the sort of power that people living within them might be able to mobilize, while not yet answering outright the question of how to measure the power to resist.
In a well-functioning democracy, must citizens regard one another as political equals, despite ongoing disagreements about normatively significant questions of public policy. A conception of civility is needed to supply citizens with a common sense of the rules of political engagement. By adhering to the norms of civility, deeply divided citizens can still assure one another of their investment in democratic politics. Noting well-established difficulties with the very idea of civility, this essay raises a more fundamental problem. Any conception of civility faces the problem of semantic descent, the phenomenon by which second-order norms devolve into tools for conducting first-order disputes. The problem of incivility in politics thus is not simply that of designing a suitably inclusive view of what civility demands. It might be that political civility can be cultivated only by way of interactions that are themselves not at all political.
Jonathan Neufeld proposes a concept of aesthetic disobedience that parallels the political concept of civil disobedience articulated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. The artistic transgressions he calls aesthetic disobedience are distinctive in being public and deliberative in their aim to bring about specific changes in accepted artworld norms. We argue that Neufeld has offered us valuable insight into the dynamic and potent nature of art and the artworld; however, we contend that Neufeld errs by constraining aesthetic disobedience to the artworld. Through a reconsideration of the parallel between aesthetic and civil disobedience, we illustrate how aesthetic disobedience is more accurately conceived of in terms of two kinds of acts: artistic and artworld. In addition to artistic disobedience and artworld disobedience, we add a broader and more diverse sort of transgressive aesthetic disobedience. Our aim is to articulate how Neufeld’s account of a kind of disobedience in the artworld that parallels civil disobedience can prove even more generative.
Scholarly curiosity about political friendship (the relationship of mutual care among political fellows) is increasing as liberal democracies around the world face radical polarization. Yet one worry persists: can political friendship really exist in contemporary democracies? The objective of this paper is to answer this question in the affirmative. To this end, I investigate whether members of modern polities have reasons to form friendly bonds with one another. The paper has four parts. The first establishes a fundamental desideratum that any consideration must satisfy to count as a reason for political fellows to partake in political friendship. The second evaluates and rejects a line of argument that presents bonds of mutual identification and belonging among political fellows as reasons for political friendship. The third evaluates and rejects a line of argument due to Paul Ludwig that presents the shared utility of political community as a reason for political fellows to engage in friendly practices with one another. Finally, I introduce my own novel argument—the “argument from membership”—for why political fellows have a reason to care for one another. I argue that membership in a functioning political community is indispensably valuable for any individual in virtue of playing a constitutive role in the individual’s attainment of their final ends. I hold that, as constituent parts of the same political community, political fellows have a reason to value one another and, accordingly, to care for one another’s well-being.
Democratic theory tells us that citizens should be engaged, informed, passionate, reasonable, willing to speak up, ready to listen, and militant but also restrained. Yet we are rarely told how they might achieve this. The challenge is particularly relevant for theories that distinguish between the liberal and democratic principles of our regime with their contradictory ideals of citizenship. This article draws on Plato's reflections on drinking wine with friends in the Laws to argue that the political psychology suggested therein fits the complex ideal of citizenship in a liberal democracy. Furthermore, it shows how extrapolitical and even disreputable social practices can not only help prepare citizens for political life but also enable them to deal with the inequalities that inevitably contaminate it. Weaving together law, contestation, reason, and passion, the Platonic account articulates the psychological burdens of citizenship in a liberal democracy and suggests ways to cope with them.
El proposito de este trabajo es exploraruna tension y un deseo. La tension es la queencontramos entre nuestra capacidad paracambiar de opinion, componente crucial caside cualquier interpretacion del progreso, y latendencia que parecemos exhibir a atrincherarnosen las creencias que estan en el centrode la identidad politica con la que nosidentificamos en un contexto determinado.Nos gustaria ser capaces de detectar y jubilarnuestros prejuicios, de avanzar hacia posicionesmas inclusivas y que nos hicieran mejoresciudadanos. Y, sin embargo, nos vemos arrastrados,en ocasiones contra nuestro mejorjuicio, hacia posiciones que heredamos de laspersonas con las que compartimos las cosasque nos importan. A lo largo de este trabajonos preguntaremos como es posible intervenirsobre esta tension para retener aspectosnecesarios de ambas tendencias. En concreto,pensaremos como es posible intervenir eneste aparente problema cumpliendo un deseo:queremos combatir el mal discurso conmas discurso. Las estrategias de intervenciondestinadas a contrarrestar los efectos negativosde la polarizacion que desarrollaremostendrán como objetivo mejorar la calidad dela deliberacion democratica. El dialogo conaquellas personas con quienes estamos endesacuerdo nos parece un ideal democra?ticoirrenunciable. No hay, en este sentido, progresosin desacuerdo.
O avanço das Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação (TICs) proporcionou novas formas de interação para a sociedade. A visão otimista sobre as potencialidades democráticas da internet foi substituída por visão crítica, focada em ameaças trazidas ao exercício democrático. A desinformação, que não é criação tecnológica, encontrou espaço propício para disseminação massiva no ambiente digital. Este artigo discute a desinformação em contexto eleitoral, o tratamento concedido ao tema pela legislação brasileira e as iniciativas governamentais e não governamentais que atuam para enfrentar o problema. Inicialmente, o texto mapeia discussões contemporâneas sobre as implicações dos meios digitais ao ambiente democrático. No passo seguinte, apresenta uma gramática mínima do conceito de desinformação. Posteriormente, discute as normas brasileiras (in)capazes de regulamentar a questão e projetos de lei (PL) em tramitação no Congresso. Por fim, com intuito de ampliar a discussão sobre eventuais medidas para minimizar a desinformação, abordamos iniciativas para conter o problema.
This chapter will set up the main argument of the book by outlining the problems with existing theoretical approaches to polarization in online discussion. It will argue the need to view polarization online beyond a problem caused by technological affordances and examine it holistically as an affective practice. The chapter will conclude by arguing for a conceptualisation of polarization that moves away from viewing this phenomenon as a difference between the policy positions of political parties or even purely an intense dislike of the opposing side. It will argue a different approach from the frame of rational deliberative discussion when examining online political discussion common on social media platforms and instead advocate for understanding polarization as an affective positioning which informs online commenting behaviour through its role in identity performance. It will argue that it is this method of understanding polarization that is more effective for examining its pervasiveness in the interactions of citizens on social media platforms such as Facebook, the central focus of this book
The purpose of this paper is twofold: to reconstruct Dewey’s conception of experimentalism, mainly through his pedagogical writings, on the one hand; and to show the relevance of this reconstruction to current reassessments of Dewey’s political thought, on the other. The grounds for our perspective have a double character too. Firstly, we reconstruct the links between experimentalism and education on the basis of the first edition of How We Think (1910, MW 6), perhaps one of Dewey’s most noteworthy pedagogical texts. Secondly, we critically address three different reassessments of Dewey’s experimentalism in contemporary political thought, namely: 1) Pappas’s defense of Dewey’s substantive idea of democracy; 2) Forstenzer’s proposal of Deweyan experimentalism as an appropriate methodology for political philosophy; and 3) Anderson’s vindication of Deweyan experimental democracy in the context of social epistemology. It is sustained that in HWT Dewey places experimentalism as a kind of antidote against dogmatism and unreflective ways of reasoning. Thus, he links experimentalism with anti-dogmatism placing a special role in schooling for at least two reasons: 1) it is in the schooling phase that children are still sensitive to the development of certain habits; 2) dogmatism seems inevitable in any society but the educational phase is a key instance to try to avoid it. Neither (1) nor (2) are present in contemporary reassessments of Deweyan experimentalism.
The proliferation of conspiracy theories poses a significant threat to democratic decision-making. To counter this threat, many political theorists advocate countering conspiracy theories with ‘more speech’ (or ‘counterspeech’). Yet conspiracy theories are notoriously resistant to counterspeech. This article aims to conceptualise and defend a novel form of counterspeech – narrative counterspeech – that is singularly well-placed to overcome this resistance. My argument proceeds in three steps. First, I argue that conspiracy theories pose a special problem for counterspeech for three interconnected reasons relating to salience, emotion and internal coherence. Drawing on recent work in social epistemology, philosophy of emotion and cognitive science, I then demonstrate that narrative forms of counterspeech constitute an apt response to this diagnosis. Finally, I forestall two objections: the first questions the likely effectiveness of narrative counterspeech; the second insists that, even if it were effective, it would remain unacceptably manipulative. Neither objection, I contend, is ultimately compelling.
Dit hoofdstuk gaat over ontwikkelingen in politieke polarisatie in de Nederlandse bevolking op de langere termijn. In hoofdstuk 1 kwamen verschillende mogelijke manifestaties van polarisatie aan bod en vier daarvan gaan we hier onderzoeken: groepspolarisatie, issuepolarisatie, ideologische polarisatie en affectieve polarisatie. Voor opvattingen over enkele maatschappelijke kwesties en de politiek stellen we drie vragen: 1) groeien bevolkingsgroepen in hun opvattingen uit elkaar?; 2) raakt de bevolking als geheel meer verdeeld?; 3) wordt de samenhang tussen opvattingen sterker? Daar voegen we als vraag aan toe: 4) krijgen we meer hekel aan andersdenkenden?
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