Disrupting Deliberative Discourse: Strategic Political Incivility at the Local Level

• Author: Frank Dukes,Kim Hodge Cowgill,Wendy Willis,Alexandra P. Joosse,Kirk Emerson
• Date: 01 April 2015
• Published date: 01 April 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21114

C R Q, vol. 32, no. 3, Spring 2015 299

© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the Association for Confl ict Resolution

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/crq.21114

Disrupting Deliberative Discourse:

Strategic Political Incivility at the Local Level

Kirk Emerson

Alexandra P. Joosse

Frank Dukes

Wendy Willis

Kim Hodge Cowgill

 is ar ticle focuses on strategic political incivility intended to shut down

or disrupt local arenas for public discourse. Professional facilitators who

design and manage public discourse and democratic deliberation are

the subject of this survey research. Survey questions elicited specifi c

incidences of strategic political incivility and facilitators’ responses to

these events.  e results from this exploratory study suggest that strategic

political incivility at the local level may not be as unmanageable a

problem for professional facilitators as media reports purport. Recom-

mendations for improving practice emerge from this study, along with

promising avenues for future research on uncivil discourse.

Tensions fl ared Monday evening during discussions about a long-range

plan for land use as well as roads, trains and other transportation sys-

tems in Sonoma County and the Bay Area. . . . A vocal group of about

20 tea party activists interrupted the speakers and audience with charges

that the government can’t be trusted. A woman pushed a sign that read

“protect property rights” close to Santa Rosa Councilman Gary

Wysocky, who was in the audience.

“Get out of my face,” Wysocky said.

“Get out of my council,” she said.

300 EMERSON, JOOSSE, DUKES, WILLIS, COWGILL

C R Q • DOI: 10.1002/crq

Police were called to the West College Avenue center after reports

[unfounded] that someone had been struck with a chair.

Press Democrat (Johnson 2012)

 e Occupy Wall Street movement expanded to classroom politics, as

a group disrupted a special meeting of the panel for education policy in

Manhattan on Tuesday night.  e public meeting at Seward Park High

School at 350 Grand Street was supposed to be a meeting for parents

to learn about new curriculum standards. But as soon as Schools Chan-

cellor Dennis Walcott began speaking through his headset microphone,

a diff erent type of microphone drowned him out. Called the “People’s

Microphone,” the protesters’ call-and-repeat chants, now a trademark

of the Occupy Wall Street movement, derailed the Department of Edu-

cation meeting. . . . Loud, angry crowds are nothing new at education

panel meetings but this was the fi rst time that a meeting was ever so

disrupted that it had to be relocated.

NY1: News (Christ 2011)

 ere’s only one ring in the room where the governor’s Marcellus Shale

Advisory Commission meets, but on Wednesday it was a circus. . . .

After noon, the meeting was delayed because commission members

could not squeeze through the scrum of protesters jostling in the hall-

way outside the room. Once it started, the protesters held anti-drilling

placards against the window and chanted “ is is what democracy

looks like.”  en, as the meeting proceeded, anti-drilling activists in

the audience regularly interrupted by speaking out of turn.  e loudest

were ejected by guards, the others simply annoyed those within ear-

shot. It was an organized and eff ective distraction from the topic at

hand—scientifi c evidence of the environmental impact of drilling.

Patriot-News (Gilliland 2011)

Evidence suggests that the twenty-fi rst century has witnessed increasing

incidence and severity of political incivility in national political forums.

But what of political incivility enacted among citizens in local public forums

as illustrated in the quotations that open this article? Has the tenor of politi-

cal discourse on the national political stage and in the media aff ected civility

on the ground in our communities? More specifi cally, has political incivility