This book could not be more timely. Immediately after Donald Trump won the presidency in 2024, the recriminations began. Democrats could not fathom how their compatriots voted for a convicted felon who attempted to stop the peaceful transfer of political power. How can these two groups possibly come to understand one another, let alone come to respect one another’s positions?
This book’s strength is its interdisciplinary and multi-methodological approach to the concept of mutual respect. Providing empirical grounding for this concept is an important contribution, and political theory provides an appropriately reflective place to start. Both the quantitative and qualitative data make the challenges of mutual respect obvious. Further, the verbatim comments from focus group participants lend a richness to our understanding of how everyday partisans think about one another.
Nonetheless, the goal of mutual respect seems more out of reach now than when this book was written. I question whether it was ever really attainable in the context of the American two-party system where there is always one winner and one loser. As Nathan Gardels commented, “The problem in a two party system is that the rancor and partisan passions of electoral campaigns push voters into zero-sum camps. In reality, people’s views are nuanced. If disaggregated from the rigidity of this procrustean platform, their choices would reflect that.”Footnote 1 Alignment with this “procrustean platform” may, indeed, be weakening. More Americans than ever now refuse to openly identify as Democrats or Republicans. This trend contrasts with the idea that America has divided into two tribes, each hellbent on warfare and mutual destruction.
Mutual respect?
When combining political theory with empirical research, it is difficult to define a concept carefully enough that operational measures can adequately capture it. The authors begin with the concept of mutual respect, and then break it down into recognition respect and civic respect. Recognition respect does not appear to be the central problem. Civic respect refers to the more challenging goal of listening to those with differing political and social views, and trying to understand their positions.
Despite the authors’ extensive efforts, and the fact that their definitions seemed to allow for exceptions and nuance, it was difficult for me to tell on what basis mutual respect could acceptably be withheld. I can respect someone whose views are different from my own on issues such as abortion or immigration. But can or should I try to respect someone’s views who believes the earth is flat or that life on earth began no more than 10,000 years ago? Given that the average American has great difficulty distinguishing between facts and opinions, this distinction is more problematic in practice than it may seem.
The authors suggest that “People who do not respect democratic procedures do not deserve civic respect.” (17). But everyone thinks they are respecting democratic procedures; they simply believe that the other side is violating them. The authors also make reference to “outlandish views” (19) from groups such as QAnon, suggesting that perhaps they are exceptions to what should be respected. However, there is little guidance on which views should be considered outlandish.
What the authors term the “liberal respect paradox” refers to the fact that, even though liberals emphasize equality and mutual respect, they do not respect conservatives’ positions as much as conservatives respect liberals’ positions. This parallels recent political tolerance findings, where Democrats have been found to be more intolerant than Republicans, precisely the reverse of what was found in earlier decades.Footnote 2 Intolerance has shifted to the left because both conservative and liberal Americans report feeling more threatened by groups on the right.Footnote 3 Just as conservatives in the McCarthy era found groups on the left especially threatening and thus appeared less tolerant than liberals, liberals today feel more threatened by right-wing groups than conservatives do, and thus appear more intolerant than conservatives.
I appreciated the attempt to distinguish Democrats who disrespect Republicans because of Trump in particular, from Democrats who disrespect all Republicans or conservatives more generally. Nonetheless, I wasn’t convinced that the experimental design successfully differentiated these possibilities. Because the Republican party is now the party of Trump, the lack of respect Democrats showed toward these groups could still be a function of their attitudes toward Trump.
What has changed?
Spinner-Halev and Theiss-Morse note that they cannot document change over time in levels of mutual respect. Nonetheless, the reason their book is so timely and interesting is that many of us suspect that Americans’ capacity for mutual respect has declined. An alternative thesis is that the character of Americans may not have changed so much as the political environment has altered our understanding of what it means to be a Democrat or a Republican.
The breadth of political perspectives considered acceptable in today’s public sphere is fundamentally different from 25 years ago. To understand this shift, it is useful to draw on Daniel Hallin’s theory of three spheres of issue coverage. Within the “sphere of consensus” are the issues Americans take for granted, such as the view that democracy is desirable. The “sphere of legitimate controversy” is the limited range of opinions and topics on which rational and informed people can be assumed to hold differing views.Footnote 4 Journalists naturally cover these issues by describing differing opinions. Outside the sphere of legitimate controversy is the “sphere of deviance” including topics and opinions that are considered unworthy of consideration. Journalists treat these ideas as marginal, laughable, or dangerous.Footnote 5
With the explosion in the number of television channels, social media content generated by users, and extensive online commentary, virtually any opinion can now find an audience. The decline of journalistic gatekeeping means that it is difficult to argue that anything now falls within Hallin’s “sphere of deviance.” Indeed, the more deviant, the better, from the perspective of making one’s ideas widely known and highly visible to others. Even norms of civility can be safely ignored. While people may claim they dislike uncivil discourse, incivility draws attention, the most lucrative commodity in today’s crowded media environment.Footnote 6
Even if one held constant the distribution of issue positions in the American public, their impressions of others’ opinions have become increasingly extreme. Meta-perceptions, that is stereotypes about what others think, are greatly exaggerated for outparty partisans, making them much easier to disrespect.Footnote 7 Filters on elite discourse have come off at the same time, perhaps because they too value public attention above all else. Whatever politicians say publicly is de facto considered within the realm of legitimate public controversy. So, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expresses the view that community water fluoridation is dangerous, or left-wing Americans suggest that the Hamas attack was a “false flag” staged by Israel, these views become within the sphere of legitimate controversy. When Trump holds forth on Arnold Palmer’s penis, this topic makes its way into news sources of all kinds.
The narrow range of largely moderate, milquetoast political opinions to which Americans were exposed was a long-term concern of political science. Bland politicians were criticized for not offering “a dime’s worth of difference,” as George Wallace put it. The range of political statements considered fit for public discourse today is much broader. But even in elections in the twentieth century, people viewed those who voted for their opponents as benighted, misinformed, or evil. They were just more polite about saying such things in mixed political company. For example, in 2004, election losers almost all voiced sour grapes rather than mutual respect. John Kerry’s supporters suggested that people voted for Bush “because they are uneducated” or because they “are not informed.” This was by far the most popular explanation. Bush supporters said Kerry received little support “because they probably knew Kerry was a liar; he lied every time he opened his mouth.” Some of Bush’s supporters explained his victory as “God’s will.” Many then as now blamed TV ads, biased media, and misinformation. Perhaps what we think of as the apparent decline of mutual respect is because the range of ideas in public circulation is now far broader, and perceptions of the opposition more extreme, as opposed to some fundamental change in people’s willingness to respect the other side.Footnote 8
Front versus Back Stage Behavior
Nonetheless, Americans need to harmoniously coexist amidst this deluge of highly disparate viewpoints. I offer as one possibility Erving Goffman’s “front stage” and “back stage” distinction.Footnote 9 Front stage behavior is how one acts when they know that others are observing. Back stage behavior is how people act when no one is looking or when in a private context where we do not fear being judged. This difference seems to be the essence of what are now called “safe spaces,” contexts in which people can express themselves without fear of judgment. Back stage contexts are generally free of disagreement.
Back stage and front stage behaviors are not intended to advocate dishonesty; front stage behavior is simply a means of smoothing over potentially conflictual everyday interactions in a pluralistic world. Discomfort arises mainly when we do not, intuitively, know if a given context is front or back stage. Politics has traditionally been a “front stage” social context, where the public can and should demand front stage behavior from elites and public alike. However, another important part of politics takes place back stage, where those of like mind plot, plan, and organize. There, they may signal their mutual alliance by trash-talking their opponent. MAGA rallies are a great example of the energy and belonging that citizens derive from such activities. Citizens can bond as mutual fans or as people with mutual enemies. The problem is that MAGA rallies take place in public. In this way, the public learns to model disrespect in front stage rather than strictly back stage contexts.
When Theiss-Morse and Spinner-Halev discuss mutual respect, I was not clear on whether they were advocating it in front stage or back stage behaviors, or both. Their focus groups, for example, were comprised of either all liberals or all conservatives. Survey responses were likewise anonymous and “back stage.” What people say in homogeneous contexts is not the same as what they say in mixed political company. It is not surprising that people make such dismissive comments in a homogeneous environment. But when such rhetoric occurs at a televised event in Madison Square Garden, it is shocking and problematic mainly because it is public.
People may have always deemed their political opponents ignorant and uninformed. What is different now is that partisans did not formerly engage in back stage behavior in highly public venues. I would argue that it is enough to respect the whole person, if not their politics. If politics could be kept front stage, as part of public life rather than as private grievance, this might go a long way toward peaceful maintenance of a pluralistic democracy.
Open access
