Imagine that there is a tendency to talk about animals in terms of a binary: those that live on land, and those that live in water. There are obviously problems with that—what about amphibians? The response might be that we can make the model more accurate by making it a continuum rather than a binary. So, we have tortoises at one end and whales at the other and amphibians would be in the middle. But, what about birds? What about animals that live on things that float in the water? We can keep trying to find a place for every animal on the continuum, or we might decide to introduce another axis. But the most important question is not: where does each animal go on this map, but what the hell are we trying to do with this taxonomy? What is the purpose of the map?
If we’re interested in how various animals might be affected by global warming, then the land/sea axis is not useful, but others might be, such as degrees of adaptability in species, or a map that shows what species are most likely to lose water sources. If we’re trying to trace lines of evolution, then we’d have a very different map. There isn’t one taxonomy of animals that is useful for every purpose.
I have frequently argued that we shouldn’t talk about our complicated world of policy options in terms of a binary or continuum of identity. And I’m often asked: well, how should we map out politics? That is, how should we come up with a taxonomy of political affinities?
And my answer is: we shouldn’t.
The goal of a two-dimensional model of political affinities is to create a simple and simplistic way of categorizing people. Why are we trying to do that? What good does that way of thinking about politics do?
I’ll start with what harm it does. By making policy commitments a question of identity we sabotage policy deliberation. And that’s often the goal.
Instead of the difficult and sometimes tedious work of thinking and talking about policies in terms of need, feasibility, solvency, costs, options, compromise, and so on, instead of policy disagreements being about the policies, we can simply dismiss people who disagree with us on the grounds that they’re a bad kind of person. It makes marketing of candidates and policies easier, since a policy or candidate can get sold to the public on the grounds that a sort of person (liberal, conservative, Christian, libertarian, and so on) must necessarily buy that policy/candidate.
I’m not saying we can’t map anything about policy preferences, voting patterns, rhetorical practices, or all sorts of other very interesting and potentially useful specific characteristics, any more than I’m saying we can’t create useful taxonomies of animals. I’m taking issue with the tendency to impose one map of voters or American as though it applies in all situations and includes all the relevant variables–that policy, ideology, and identity are necessarily connected. I’m not proposing a different taxonomy or map. I’m not proposing one with multiple axes. I’m proposing that we argue policies.
The binary or single-axis model of politics also makes media coverage much easier. It probably arose from the odd models of “objectivity” in much American political coverage, models that framed assessment of policies as “biased” and the horse race model as “objective.” For instance, to report that Chester Burnette said that Hubert Sumlin collaborated with squirrels is “objective,” but to point out that Burnette accuses every single opponent of being a squirrel conspirator is “biased.” For reasons that remain puzzling to me, speculating on Burnette’s motives for the accusation is “objective” (the horse race frame).
A reporter doesn’t have to study squirrels or investigate the facts about a conspiracy in order to report that Burnette accused Sumlin, or to speculate what political motives were behind that accusation. And describing a political conflict as pro- v. anti-squirrel is much more attention-getting than doing the close analysis that would be actually helpful for voters.
In addition, the continuum model is useful for marketing because it evades deliberation in favor of a simplistic model of decision-making. If one sees the purpose of the public sphere as selling a policy or candidate, then presenting the situation as absolutely clear, very simple, and a binary of good/bad is the most attractive for political figures.
The whole situation is far more complicated than a single axis can capture because there are at least four areas that matter, and people all over the map of each area. I’ll mention just four: rhetorical preferences, models of governance, policy orientations, models of citizenship,.
Rhetoric. The models of governance and policies have a strong connection to how we think about rhetoric. I’ve talked about policy deliberation, but one model of policy rhetoric is that it is never deliberative (the “power determines policy” model)—people are always looking out for their own interests—so public discourse is, at best, negotiation and bargaining. The governing elite settle on a policy through dominance and aggression and then take it to the public, where the policy is sold to the public, again with no holds barred.
Even models of governance that assume elites who deliberate reasonably often assume that it is purely marketing once it is taken to the public. The public only has the option for a thumbs-up or down, but no deliberation because they (we) aren’t capable of deliberating.
For some, there are rules about rhetorical practices. There is, for instance, the “niceness” crowd. These are people who believe that policy discourse specifically, and public discourse generally, should avoid vehemence of any sort, even including vehement criticism. It’s very much about tone—there should be no “name-calling,” “personal attacks” (they generally have a very broad and misguided understanding of ad hominem), “offensive” language. They sincerely believe that we can and should get through every conflict without hurting someone’s feelings, or making them feel bad. Their assessment of the “civility” of the discourse is largely affective—how they feel in response to something that is said.
I have to point out that “niceness” is often confused with “reasonable” or “rational,” although it is not necessarily either, and reasonable/rational discourse is not necessarily very nice. (This confusion is the consequence of the rational/irrational split.) They often argue that this method of discourse is much more effective. It sometimes is. It sometimes isn’t. It tends to be more effective in cases of minor disagreements or fairly straightforward misunderstandings, and it can be very effective for lowering the temperature. It’s a very good strategy in interpersonal conflicts.
In public policy, however, it is often unintentionally conservative, although niceness is often advocated by people who consider themselves liberal or progressive. And I think that self-identification is sincere. But, as both Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King observed, power doesn’t give up power without a fight. Issues of “tone” are often determined by status—as even John Stuart Mill noted, people lower in status get held to higher standards of civility and deference. Tone policing rolls downhill.
Advocates of “niceness” often end up blaming victims for not having been nice enough, with the argument that had people behaved with “civility” then everything would have worked out fine. Many critics of abolition took issue with their tone, even though deliberately nice treatises critical of slavery were condemned just as vehemently as the vehement ones. So, there were vehement condemnations of abolitionists’ vehemence, and for a long time the historical narrative was that proslavery rhetoric and policies became more extreme because abolitionists provoked them. Tone policing rolls downhill.
This is getting long enough, so I’ll simply mention a few other ways of thinking about public rhetoric. Even people who agree it should be deliberative (rather than marketing, for instance) disagree about the rules of deliberation. Should personal experience be included, should it be entirely grounded in technocratic expertise, should advertising campaigns about elections or public policies have monetary limits, should some forms of media be held to standards of fairness?
Governance. This one is the old argument—should a government be oriented toward authoritarianism, pluralism, egalitarianism, and, if so, by what criteria (religious, technocratic, military, ethnic, economic, ancestral, etc.)? If power is to be shared, on what grounds and through what methods (e.g., direct v. representative, direct election of representatives, frequent v. infrequent elections, pure democracy, mixed government, shared on some kinds of issues but not others, shared among institutions)? At the center of disagreements about governance is the question of pluralism: is there a position from which the Truth is obvious (in which case people in that position should have most if not all of the power), or do we get to better policies in multiple perspectives are included?
Policies. Obviously, there’s considerable overlap with governance, but the distinction is that governance is a kind of meta-policies (how policies will be determined, debated, and enforced, not what the policies are). Policy disagreements are generally about the distribution of goods—security, healthcare, rights, education, infrastructure, and so on. As with governance, there is often an ideological conflict between fairness and privilege. Should policies privilege the already privileged, strive to increase egalitarianism, apply equally regardless of privilege? There are also questions about whether policies should be oriented toward the long-term consequences, or we should let the future look after itself. Similarly, should people try to think about policies in terms of the potential impacts on everyone, or is it all just a free-for-all battle with no hold barred? Power determines policy.
Citizenship. Many people assume that citizenship should be restricted to people like themselves (anti-pluralist), whereas others argue for the benefits of diversity. There are overlaps with models of governance and rhetoric, in that some people believe that only certain kinds of people (landowners, wealthy people, men, people of a certain religion—it’s always their in-group) are capable of the kind of deliberation necessary for policy determination. Many people assume that diversity creates conflict, and therefore citizens must be uniform. However, since the conflicts that arise from diversity are almost always on the part of people who are trying to homogenize or purify the group, it isn’t diversity that creates conflict, but fear of diversity. In addition to different ideas about who can be a good citizen, there’s considerable disagreement as to what a good citizen does, and here we’re back at the questions above (think about long-term or short-term, look out for themselves, look out for everyone, be active in politics, be active only in areas of politics in which they’re expert, rely on their gut for decisions, carefully investigate policy questions).
These are all just a few of the variables in how people think about politics. And, just to be clear, my goal is not to propose a better or more accurate map of political identities. My point is that any single map is not helpful for having a world in which we can agree to disagree productively. We need to argue policies.