Deliberate with the Enemy? Polarization, Social Identity, and Attitudes toward Disagreement

• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917721371
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917721371

Political Research Quarterly

2018, Vol. 71(1) 3 –18

© 2017 University of Utah

Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1065912917721371

journals.sagepub.com/home/prq

Article

When citizens and accountable officials disagree, and also

recognize that they are seeking deliberative agreement, they

remain willing to argue with one another with the aim of

achieving provisionally justifiable policies that they can

recognize as such.

—Gutmann and Thompson (1996)

There’s nothing short of Trump shooting my daughter in the

street and my grandchildren—there is nothing and nobody

that’s going to dissuade me from voting for Trump.

—Lola Butler, Donald Trump supporter

(quoted from Barbaro, Parker, and Martin 2016)

During the run-up to the 2012 Presidential election, the

radio show This American Life produced an episode on

polarized politics titled “Red States Blue State.” In one

particularly evocative scene, interviewer Lisa Pollack

profiles Frank Mills and Ron Sexton. The two men were

close friends who repeatedly discussed political issues on

the phone. This is until, as Pollack describes on-air, “Ron

urged Frank to support a Republican candidate for

Congress. Frank balked. Didn’t Ron know he supported

Democrats?

Frank Mills: And he (Ron) said, “Who did you vote for for

president?” And I said, “I voted for Obama.”

Lisa Pollak: Apparently this had not come up before.

Frank Mills: And then he said, “You must be a Socialist.”

Lisa Pollak: He said this seriously or jokingly?

Frank Mills: No, seriously. “You must be a Socialist.” And I

said, “How can you make that assumption?” He says, “Well,

you voted for Obama. He’s a socialist, and therefore you

are.” And then I took it as if he had called me a dirty name.

And we got into an argument. And then after a while, he

said, “Well, I’m writing you off my list, Frank. Don’t ever

talk to me again. You’re no longer a friend of mine,” is how

that conversation ended. (Glass 2012)

The story of Frank and Ron may be common in

America, and, for many, it may be troubling. With the rise

of partisan polarization debated by academic and popular

commentators alike, many point to a link between diver-

gent political views and an incivility and breakdown of

political discourse. Dating back to the ancient Greeks,

721371PRQXXX10.1177/1065912917721371Political Research QuarterlyStrickler

research-article2017

1University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ryan Strickler, Department of Political Science, University of South

Carolina, 349 Gambrell Hall, Columbia, SC 29208-4114, USA.

Email: strickpr@email.sc.edu

Deliberate with the Enemy? Polarization,

Social Identity, and Attitudes toward

Disagreement

Ryan Strickler1

Abstract

As of late, political theory, research, and practice have taken a deliberative turn, extolling the benefits of idealized

public discourse. This paper explores how mass polarization impacts the preconditions for such discourse. Drawing

from social identity theory, partisanship is conceptualized as having distinct, yet interrelated social and ideological

dimensions. Through both online and telephone-based survey experiments, the paper then examines how these

two dimensions affect attitudes toward discussion that theorists prioritize. Strong social attachments to one’s party

consistently drive antideliberative attitudes toward disagreement; ideological partisan attachment, however, does

not have this effect. The results suggest that the rise of social identity polarization has driven the public away from

discursive norms that would support a deliberative democratic system.

Keywords

polarization, deliberative democracy, social identity, partisanship, public opinion

4 Political Research Quarterly 71(1)

political theorists have extolled the virtues of deliberative

democracy, predicated on the ability of political decision

makers to see divergent perspectives as legitimate and to

be open to opinion change (Dryzek 2010; Gutmann and

Thompson 1996; Rawls 1993). The closed-mindedness

and lack of consideration evinced by Frank and Ron calls

this possibility into question.

It is also perhaps puzzling, as many public opinion

scholars demonstrate that while conservatives and liber-

als may have increasingly sorted into their “correct” party

based on ideology, the public writ large is as moderate as

it has been in the past half-century (Fiorina 2011). The

acrimony may be real, but it is relatively untethered to

ideological or issue position conflict—in other words, “a

nation that agrees on many things but is bitterly divided

nonetheless” (Mason 2015, 128). To help explain this

puzzle, a body of recent research in political psychology

(Huddy, Mason, and Aarøe 2015; Iyengar, Sood, and

Lelkes 2012; Iyengar and Westwood 2015; Mason 2015,

2016) has drawn a distinction between the ideological

and social identity bases of partisanship to suggest that it

is not Democrats’ and Republicans’ political views, but

social identities, that are polarizing.

This paper demonstrates that the polarization of par-

tisan social identities is driving the public away from

deliberative discursive ideals. In particular, the focus is

on the concept of reciprocity (Gutmann and Thompson

1996), broadly defined as a good faith willingness to

give reasons and respond to disagreement in dialogue

with an open mind. Online and telephone survey experi-

ments show that those with strong social attachments to

their party are more likely to condition displays of reci-

procity on party cues rather than argumentative sub-

stance. Those with high partisan social identity salience

(“Social Partisans”) are both more likely to view inparty

disagreement with reciprocity as well as less likely to

view outparty disagreement with reciprocity, as com-

pared with those with lower social identity salience.

This partisan deliberative bias, however, is not consis-

tently present for those with stronger ideological attach-

ments to their party. These results highlight the negative

effect of mass social polarization on interparty dialogue

as well as deliberative decision making across the U.S.

political system.

Deliberative Democratic Systems

and Mass Discourse

Increasingly, democratic theory has taken a “deliberative

turn” (Dryzek 2010, 3), placing public discourse and

decision-making processes at the forefront of political

thought, empirical political inquiry, and real-world insti-

tutional development. Rather than focusing on elections

or rights, deliberative democratic theorists focus on

political communication and decision making. It is about

reason-giving (Thompson 2008); decisions are not made

by fiat, but with collective, interactive discussion, and

with justification toward those who disagree. Normative

theorists vary in their requirements for the quality of rea-

sons given, the role (if any) of power or bargaining, the

proper site for this discussion, as well as the primacy of

consensus as a discursive goal (Bächtiger et al. 2010). In

a seminal work, though, Gutmann and Thompson (1996)

argue that a key to ideal deliberation is a norm of reci-

procity. While this basic moral concept broadly means

that “we should return good for good, in proportion to

what we receive” (Becker 1986, 4), Gutmann and

Thompson (1996, 55) apply it to the realm of democratic

politics by stating that “when citizens deliberate, they

seek out agreement on substantive moral principles that

can be justified on the basis of mutually acceptable rea-

sons.” Recognizing the collective nature of democratic

decision making, political reasoning is given in terms that

those that disagree could, at least in theory, accept.

Consensus is sought, but in recognizing the reality of

moral disagreement (particularly in contemporary

American politics—see Jacoby 2014), reciprocity only

requires the honest effort to forge moral agreement, and

mutual respect for competing legitimate viewpoints when

consensus fails. While the term is Gutmann and

Thompson’s, the concept is nearly universally accepted

in deliberative literature, with roots in Habermas’s (1993)

theory of communicative rationality.

Scholarship on deliberation has traditionally focused

on discursive norms such as reciprocity for formal politi-

cal institutions. A reason for this is, for deliberative

democracy to matter, it cannot be just idle talk; delibera-

tive norms have to be consequential in government deci-

sion making. Many studies of deliberation, thus, have

focused on decision-making practices of legislative bod-

ies (Bächtiger et al. 2007) or specific empowered public

bodies such as juries (Sunstein 2002), advisory boards

(Warren and Gastil 2015), or deliberative polls (Fishkin

1995). This being said, theorists have increasingly broad-

ened their scope of inquiry and adopted a “systems”

approach (Mansbridge et al. 2012; Neblo 2015). In this

view, “deliberative democracy is more than a sum of

deliberative moments” (Mansbridge et al. 2012, 26); it is

rather a set of normative criteria that apply across a pol-

ity. For any component of a political system, the question

is not whether it is normatively ideal on its own but

whether it helps to foster policy making that is guided by

values such as high epistemic quality, mutual respect

across peoples and perspectives, and inclusive, impact

participation in political discourse. There is thus a divi-

sion of discursive labor, and components that may seem

ill-suited for deliberative democracy can potentially (but

not necessarily) serve a larger purpose.1