In a new book, three political scientists highlight the practice of democracy in our daily lives and argue for its importance
“It strikes us that involvement in community activities—working in one’s church, working at a food bank—provides opportunities for breaking down some of the things that we think divide us,” says Deborah Schildkraut. Photo: Shutterstock
Compromise is historically the bedrock of American politics. You don’t get everything you want, but everyone gets something. But even the most cursory look at politics today shows that compromise is often considered a dirty word—each side wants to win, and all too often anything other than a total win is seen as a loss.
That seems true at the national level, but perhaps it’s not true for all Americans. That’s the viewpoint of the new book Everyday Democracy: Liberals, Conservatives, and Their Routine Political Lives. Written by Jeffrey Berry, James Glaser, and Deborah J. Schildkraut, it tracks the possibilities for a politics that is not immobilized by ideological intransigence.
The book stemmed from initial research by Berry, professor emeritus of political science, and Glaser, former professor of political science and dean of the School of Arts and Sciences who is now executive vice president and provost of Santa Clara University. They were looking at the differing ways that Republicans and Democrats viewed compromise. Schildkraut, John Richard Skuse, Class of 1941, Professor of Political Science, joined them, and they collaborated over the past few years to write the book, recently published by the University of Chicago Press.
“We started thinking about areas where maybe there are fewer differences between ideological adherents than we might expect to find, given how we hear about how we’re polarized and how hard it is to find common ground,” says Schildkraut.
Tufts Now spoke with Schildkraut about the book and what lessons political science might have for the state of democracy in the U.S.
The book is framed around the term “everyday democracy.” What does that mean?
We were thinking about the behaviors and thoughts that are necessary for democratic thinking and action that don’t always come naturally. They’re things you have to work at and practice.
One of those things is compromise, for example. It turns out that there’s a lot more support for compromise generally than there is for compromise in politics.
Why is compromise foundational to the workings of a democratic society?
Part of living in a society that solves conflict nonviolently is that you need to figure out how to work with people you strongly disagree with. That means thinking about the long game, realizing that each policy change, each investment, is not the last word.
You have to be OK with getting some, but not all, of what you want to address the problems that societies face and to be able to resolve conflicts nonviolently. Compromise also requires a level of trust.
“The media will give the impression that everyone is extreme and hates the other side, and that’s not true.”
We are focused on the types of compromises that are more common in day-to-day life, but even that sometimes feels like it’s difficult to achieve in our current polarized era. We’re not saying that compromise is always the answer, but a lot of the time it is.
What can average Americans do to improve the state of democracy?
First, vote—particularly in local elections. You may feel that being informed about what’s going on in your community does not matter for national politics, but it does.
We suggest avoiding hateful media sources, things that seem like they’re designed to spark your outrage—those are not helpful for democracy.
It costs money, but we recommend supporting your local media, to maintain good sources of local news. It’s just so much harder to hold leaders accountable when you don’t know what they’re up to. We have a lot of media telling us what our national leaders are up to. We have declining number of media outlets telling us what our local leaders are up to.
Help the children in your life understand that democracy can be messy. Be aware of the language you use when you’re talking about politics around children. Remind them that people with different life experiences may see the world differently. Teach them that when it comes to elections, you win some, you lose some, and that you need to work with people even if you don’t always like them or agree with them.
And remember that democracy is never done. Even if there’s a time when things seem stable or policies seem to be favoring your preferred outcomes, democracy requires that we continue to do the everyday work.
Do liberals and conservatives practice everyday democracy differently?
On some things, yes, on some things, no. Among liberals, we found greater tendency to stop talking to people they disagree with, but that was less so among conservatives who didn’t hold particularly conservative beliefs. Even after controlling for how conservative someone is, there still was an ideological difference, where conservatives were a little more willing to talk to people on the opposing side.
“Part of living in a society that solves conflict nonviolently is that you need to figure out how to work with people you strongly disagree with.”
We also found that the willingness to cut people off was much higher online than offline. Social media can be a really powerful way to connect with others and learn about the world, but our findings also suggest that people do more to cultivate like-minded interactions online than they do offline. It’s hard to deliberate and compromise with people you disagree with if you cut them out of your life.
In the book you talk about volunteerism and charity. What did you find in those cases?
There was some prior research that suggested that people who identify as conservative are more charitable and volunteer more, and we wanted to explore that. We were able to collect survey data that looked at this in a more fine-grained way, thanks to the Cooperative Election Study, led by our colleague Brian Schaffner.
We found that the prior finding that suggested conservatives were more willing to donate their time and resources to charitable efforts into volunteering didn’t hold up. We found generally similar rates of charitable giving and volunteering, but a real difference in the types of giving and volunteering. Conservatives gave more to religious organizations, while liberals donated time and energy to more secular groups, like social welfare groups and groups related to health and disease.
Why do you consider, say, volunteering, to be practicing everyday democracy?
Volunteering is associated with the sense of coming together to solve problems. It also brings you in contact with others. In social psychology, there’s the idea that the more contact you have with people who are different from you on an equal basis—when you’re working together to achieve common goals—then your ideas about the other groups get more positive.
It strikes us that involvement in community activities—working in one’s church, working at a food bank—provides those types of opportunities for breaking down some of the things that we think divide us.
How have things like social media affected the perception of political division?
The image of how politically divided we all are isn’t entirely accurate. Mainstream media spends a lot of time talking about what happens on social media. So even if people aren’t engaged in social media, they’re still exposed to what’s happening there, and that gives a false impression of how much people think and talk about politics.
We think it’s important to document that many Americans don’t cut people that they disagree with out of their lives. Many Americans do support compromise, and many Americans aren’t drawn to divisive partisan media, and do volunteer in their community and donate to charitable causes. The media will give the impression that everyone is extreme and hates the other side, and that’s not true.
