The current state of US politics is perhaps best summed up by fictional newscaster Howard Beale in the 1976 satirical film Network: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” The contemporary landscape is replete with indicators of our bitterly divided and rancorous politics—from nontrivial proportions of people who prefer their family members to not date “outside the party” to large numbers of people viewing recent election outcomes as illegitimate when lost by their preferred party.

But what is the accelerant for these trends? And does the bitterness that defines our current politics have observable consequences for the quality of governance? Steven W. Webster attends to these questions in American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics, a meticulous yet concisely argued treatise that explores how we became a nation of Howard Beales and connects the particular ills to the democratic outcomes that result.

Deftly weaving together insights from social and political psychology and political behavior, Webster argues that anger—a negatively valenced emotion characterized by the desire to seek retribution and double down on one’s predispositions—has become an increasingly influential force in American politics. He first pinpoints the reasons why political anger has risen, identifying as culprits partisan sorting along racial, religious, and ideological lines; the rise of partisan media; and the proliferation of virtual echo chambers. He then proceeds to assess how Americans’ anger affects their views of government, the parties they oppose and support, and their commitment to democratic norms. Across his studies, Webster measures anger as both a specific emotional response and as a latent personality trait. Both operationalizations carry similar effects.

From examinations of national survey data and original experiments, Webster uncovers the effects of an increasingly angry electorate on public opinion and political behavior. First, an angrier polity contributes to stark declines in trust in government. Further, anger weakens respect for the norms of tolerance of political outgroups and respect for minority rights. Finally, anger increases partisan loyalty to such an extent that it distorts conventional accountability mechanisms. Notably, Webster makes clear in chapter 3 that even anger that is not tethered to anything remotely political exhibits such effects.

A distinguishing feature of this book is that Webster does not simply describe the normatively troubling implications of these trends: he also makes the effort to explicate the practical implications for governmental outcomes. For instance, in the opening chapter he describes how lessened trust in government contributes to lowered support for social welfare programs, thus dimming the prospects for redistributive policies aimed at ameliorating disparities rooted in race or socioeconomic status. In chapter 6, Webster shows that across presidential, Senate, and House races, partisans who do not favor their in-party candidate nonetheless vote for them at remarkably high levels if they are angry at the out-party candidate. He drives home the alarming implication—by simply engendering partisan anger about their opponent, office seekers unpopular with their partisan base can elide punishment to ascend to or remain in power.

Such insights are quite illuminating for better understanding recent phenomena, from the tenor of debates over policies such as student loan debt forgiveness to Donald Trump’s ability to maintain more of an electoral hold on his base in the 2020 election than many observers predicted. Despite the relevance of this book to current times, Webster ensures the work is not prisoner to the particular moment. From opening chapter 2 with a brief historical overview of the strategic invocation of anger by political elites dating back to the election of 1800 to analyzing trends in how partisan cable news networks have invoked the opposing party dating back to 1999, Webster makes clear that anger has long been an essential force in American politics. The aforementioned trends have only augmented its impact in recent years.

Although Webster effectively traces the recent rise in American anger and makes clear its practical consequences, he does not grapple much with prescriptive ideas. He ends the book, appropriately so, with the declaration that we should “all be worried” (p. 152). Left unattended are possible means of dissipating the anger he views as harmful. From changes to the structure of broadcast media to the reimagining of districts to preclude state and national legislators from being elected by such demographically or ideologically homogeneous constituencies, what might Webster envision to stem the tide of rising political anger?

Despite identifying the specific ways that political anger can be corrosive, Webster leaves unaddressed the potential positive utility of anger for a functional democracy. In chapter 4, his content analysis of open-ended responses in an emotion induction experiment reveals that, even when people are asked to think about politics absent an anger prime, their reflections still evoke anger. He infers that “politics and negative emotions are not entirely separable” (p. 85). But what are we to make of the instances when those negative emotions—specifically anger—are justifiable and useful? Extant scholarship indicates that, by mobilizing people dissatisfied with their political circumstances toward costly actions such as voting, contacting officials, and protesting, anger can promote greater political engagement. Where might Webster draw the fine line that distinguishes anger that is harmful for governance from anger that propels meaningful action on salient issues?

Similarly, in chapter 5 Webster frames as troubling the finding from a Pew report that just over half of Americans believe that democracy is working well in the United States while 61% believe that major changes are needed to the “fundamental design and structure of government” (p. 100). Are these trends cause for alarm because they reflect that Americans’ anger is eroding their confidence in a working system? Or alternately, are these reasonable expressions of concern over actual democratic erosions? I would like Webster to interrogate more deeply whether the anger he examines sometimes constitutes a justifiable response to troubling trends, as opposed to a corrupting influence on people’s views of politics.

Such interrogation would likely involve assessing if all anger is indeed considered equal. For example, when citing in chapter 2 a Pew study indicating that majorities of both Democrats and Republicans report their side has lost on more contemporary issue debates than it has won, Webster can ask which side has a more credible claim to actually losing out on such policy debates. Perhaps the line between anger that is functional and anger that is harmful resides in the divide between those groups that are angry about their views being insufficiently represented in politics, and those groups that have sufficient access to power yet nonetheless cloak themselves in the language of aggrieved victimhood. Although such an analysis constitutes a departure from Webster’s main thesis, it can illuminate whether particular partisan, ideological, or demographic subgroups within the American polity are drivers of the corrosive form of anger.

Ultimately, this book should be defined not by these lingering questions but rather by its success in succinctly contributing insights with profound and clearly communicated implications for our politics. Written at the nexus of psychology and politics in a deliberate and direct manner, American Rage delineates the potential for suboptimal governance that manifests from a polity whose defining characteristic is being mad as hell. This is an essential contribution for students of political psychology, behavior, and democracy.