Civility, Conflict, and Democracy
[Originally published at Democracy & Society on January 31, 2019. Read the full article here.]
Recently, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib faced a barrage of criticism from pundits and the media for her plans to “impeach the motherf*****” referring to President Trump. Also recently, continuing his campaign tactic of name-calling as President, Mr. Trump called a Democratic member of Congress “little Adam Schitt.” And before both of these incidents, there was already a lively discussion on the importance of civility in U.S. politics and democracy.
To determine whether civility matters in democracy, it’s important to work from what democracy is or ought to be. Political scientist and democracy theorist Adam Przeworski defined democracy as contingent, institutionalized uncertainty. As a regime-type, democracy requires the participants in political, social, and economic conflicts to pursue their interests through the nonviolent means of elections and other deliberative bodies (union-business arbitration, the media). All societies have conflicts, but different regimes have different means of channeling those conflicts into or away from state power.
Authoritarian regimes exist because certain sides of salient conflicts in society have recognized that they can dominate the other side through force or popular legitimacy. Democratic regimes emerge when the balance of power within conflicts in society have sufficiently shifted, often due to international pressure, to require compromise by the previously dominant side or face open rebellion and civil war. Subsequent regime transitions, either democratic or partially democratic, acknowledge this shift in power. The advantage of democratic transitions for those already dominating conflicts is that they can avoid a total realignment of the conflict through a civil war and often maintain a relative advantage through the new institutional structure for a long time. Democracy is not, then, a way to resolve conflicts, but rather a way for conflicts to be resolved without violence over time through nonviolent political means. As Carl von Clausewitz once said, “War is politics by other means,” but in a democracy politics is war by other means.