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[W]e present the singular spectacle of doing and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, both united in the same persons.
-Pericles, Funeral Oration
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Few notions are as widespread today as the conviction that despite the near universality of political rights and expanded opportunities for participation, the cultivation of even minimal civic capacities is inadequate. Empirical evidence ... supports the familiar claim that democratic competence and civic commitment are in decline.
-Nancy Rosenblum, "Navigating Pluralism"
DEMOCRACY IN TROUBLE?
I begin juxtaposing Pericles' celebratory elegy depicting the excellence of Athenian citizens in the fifth century B.C. to a contemporary assessment of American citizenry. The comparison, if accurate, provides little comfort for all who see in the furtherance of democracy the fullest realization of freedom and self-rule. But perhaps this juxtaposition is unfair. After all, few Athenians were eligible for the status of citizen (women and slaves, among others, were excluded). Similarly, at the founding of our republic, not many Americans were citizens with the right to vote. Today, at least in the United States, more people than ever before are citizens. A larger proportion of the population can secure the status of citizen as restrictions and exclusions on the basis of property, gender, literacy, youth, race, ethnicity, or extended residency requirements disappear. And the Progressive Era reforms added protections to preserve citizens' autonomy (e.g., ballots prepared the state listing all candidates for each office, secret ballots, and rules keeping campaign workers at a distance from the polls so that they cannot pressure voters). As citizens, Americans are generally better able to exercise their political rights as they freely wish than in earlier times.
As each decade passes, an ever-larger proportion of the populace gains a full high school education, and access to a college education increases year year (however great the concern about the quality and substance of that education). The public has more sources of information with wider and more varied points of view, all more immediately available than at any previous time. The ability of the government and of social and economic elites to dictate the news, to present a common and united front, to demand and gain deferential acceptance from the populace has never been weaker. Collectively the electorate has fewer constraints on the practice of political rights that at any earlier time.
Yet commentators of all sorts proclaim the sad state of contemporary politics. The canonical accounts argue that voters are generally ill informed, less interested and active in politics, more moved either habit or momentary passion than thoughtful judgment (Berelson, Lazarsfeld & McPhee 1954; Camell et al. 1960; Lippmann 1922; Neuman 1986). The electorate is decried for being too passive, too ill informed, too ready to be moved symbolic (i.e., emotional) appeals, too disinclined to listen to real policy discussion, too ready to be distracted the drama of personality and the politics of slash and burn. Politics seems to be more and more a drama of manipulation those capable of framing the issues to their advantage, to elicit the desired emotional response (Mann & Orren, eds., 1992; Krosnick & Brannon 1993; Krosnick & Kinder 1990; M. Edelman 1964, 1988; Nelson, Clawson & Oxley 1997). All in all, contemporary politics seems to many to be more an effort to manufacture public support than a forum of public deliberation dedicated to thoughtful public judgment (Ginsberg 1986).
As we get closer to realizing the goal of an extensive rather than a restricted electorate, we seem to find politics more rather than less deeply entwined with emotional manipulation. Politics appears to be increasingly dominated ever more sensationalized media, sensationalized policy debates, candidates' efforts to defeat their opponents emphasis on scandal and hyperbole, special interests' resort to scare tactics to raise money, gain support, and defeat policies they oppose. Few would apply Pericles' description of Athenian citizens to today's American citizenry.
But is this diagnosis accurate? It is widely held and has fueled the considerable attention of democratic theorists, political scientists, democracy critics, and reformers alike. Friends of democracy seek suitable corrective devices. Predominant among them has been "deliberative democracy." But for a therapy to be efficacious it must be based on a sound diagnosis. The current array of diagnoses relies on three dominant metaphors: biological growth (insufficient nurture), force (the intrusion of wealth and demagoguery), and nature (we are what we are). Each of these metaphors is attached to one or more of the three primary therapies for our contemporary discomfort. Reformers are attracted to the first and the second (e.g., more education or greater media responsibility and campaign finance reform to limit distraction). Conservatives and others rely on the nature metaphor to argue that citizens are inherently incapable of performing their reasoned obligations and therefore democracy must be restrained. Many are the conventional solutions that have been presented. The main options seem to be:
A retreat to less democracy replaced greater reliance on elites
(Schumpeter 1943; Sartori 1987)
Greater reliance on experts (Lippmann 1922; Warren 1996)
Reforms to achieve better forums for public education (Bartels et al.
1998; Fishkin 1991)
Yet more democracy, the participatory and radical solution (Barber 1984)
But the efficacy of any of these approaches depends on the soundness of the underlying diagnosis. And, as may too often happen, our most confident diagnosis may prove unsound.
In any consideration of means to improve the deliberative engagement of citizens, reason and its application are of course the central concern. And with any discussion of reason comes attention to emotion, because emotion is conventionally understood to be intractably a part of human nature as well as distinct and antagonistic to the use of reason. Thus it is profoundly discouraging to find that given the circumstances for the wider and freer use of reason to formulate judgments about how to constitute the public good and implement justice, the public seems little inclined to set aside the persuasive force of passion. And because it is conventionally accepted that passion has more influence than reason, at least for some people (not, of course, for ourselves), and that such is human nature, solutions must be sought elsewhere than in human nature.
In general, contemporary theorists seek to change the public space in which politics is enacted. It has long been recognized that the media play a vital role in conveying information to the public in this diverse and extended society (Lippmann 1922). And because this information can not only inform but engage the public, attention to the media has led to grave concern regarding their performance (T. Patterson 1993). That concern in turn has led to considerable interest in reforms of the media.
If only the media would give more space to fuller discussion of the issues.
If only the media would allow the candidates to speak in their own
voices.
If only the media would focus less on scandal, less on who is ahead,
less on whose television performance is compelling (or not), and less
on personality, the gaffe of the moment.
If only the media would provide full disclosure of the interests associated
with each espoused position.
We also get repeated proposals to improve public discussion special efforts to induce an otherwise reluctant public, or at least some part of the public, to deliberate rather than to react instantly (Fishkin 1991). And we get repeated calls for campaign reforms to control money, to improve the quality and frequency of presidential debates. The common thread is the belief that if only we could secure a more perfect public space for freer public discussion (Habermas 1979, 1984), perhaps we would gain a more rational politics, if not a more rational electorate. In sum, we are presented with three possibilities:
1. Conservative rejection (i.e., citizens can't)
2. Reformers' optimism (i.e., citizens would if we just controlled the
flood of money or the private interests or the sensationalism of the
press)
3. Radical aspiration (i.e., we can if we spread democracy throughout
the society, politics, workplaces, and all other domains of associational
activity)
EMOTION: SO FAMILIAR AND SO IGNORED
Of course most of these diagnoses and their attendant therapies, accepting as they do the willingness of citizens to rely on emotion, are directed at reducing the frequency and intensity of emotional appeals in the domain of politics. Common to most of these diagnoses is the presumption of a detrimental relationship between emotion and politics. Though emotion is an undeniable and unavoidable part of human nature, and although it does, in some instances, have a positive impact on representative government, on balance, emotion should be constrained and excluded from final judgments on public matters.
Although emotion plays a frequent and starring role in discussions of politics, the actual role of emotion is rarely given serious reexamination (Bruce & Wilcox 2000). Rather some implicit propositions, so widely shared and understood that no further attention is warranted, seem to accompany most discussions of American and democratic politics. Let's consider briefly here three examples, two bearing on the nature of public deliberation and one on the nature of justice. James Fishkin (1991:21), in arguing for deliberative polling, writes that "first, the deliberative competency of mass publics is suspect. It is a dubious accomplishment to give power to the people under conditions where they are not really in a position to think about how they are to exercise that power. Second, aroused publics might, on occasion, be vulnerable to demagoguery. They might be stirred up to invade the rights or trample on the essential interests of minorities." What is doing the arousing? What is doing the stirring up? Emotion is a troublemaker, intruding where it does not belong and undermining the undisturbed use of our deliberative capacity.
Jürgen Habermas's (1979, 1984) position is widely known: for the public to make rational decisions, something close to the perfect speech situation must be created. A perfect speech situation is one in which rational deliberation among all participants is the sole determinant of public policy. In such a situation people express reasons and practice deliberation, private and public, rather than just assert preferences or respond to force, implied or explicit. It is presumed that emotions cannot enter such rational deliberation without contaminating the process. Explicit in Habermas's thought is the presumption that emotions undermine rationality.
Brian Barry (1995) offers an epigraph from Karl Popper: "[If] a dispute arises, then this means that those more constructive emotions and passions which might in principle help to get over it, reverence, love, devotion to a common cause, etc., have shown themselves to be incapable of solving the problem .... There are only two solutions: one is the use of emotion, and ultimately of violence, and the other is the use of reason, of impartiality, of reasonable compromise."
Here we have a common and widely accepted claim: Political conflicts, if not immediately settled "constructive" emotions, are thereafter, if emotion persists, certain to lead to violence and injustice. Since the search for justice must rest on reason, and since reason is presumed to require the absence of its longtime antagonist, emotion, then a discussion of justice need not engage emotion except to demand its exclusion? And indeed, apart from that epigraph, Barry has nothing more to say about emotion.
Thus we seem to have settled on the need to secure a politics without emotion if we are to realize a politics of judgment and justice. A defensible democracy, at least at those moments of political judgment, especially in determining collective outcomes (i.e., the public good) as well as matters of justice, seemingly has to shield such judgments from the contaminating effects of passion. But if rationality is to be the sole arbiter between conflict-laden claims and contending views of justice, then it is hard to see how democracy can be sustained if citizens willingly continue to rely on emotion. Though citizens are free to use reason, they do not appear to do so, at least not sufficiently to satisfy democracy's critics and friends.
This is the current dilemma and why so much academic research is concerned with how the public makes political decisions (Jackson & Marcus 1975; Krouse & Marcus 1984; Lodge, Steenbergen & Brau 1995; Marcus & Hanson, eds., 1993; Thompson 1970). It is also one reason that such an enthusiastic and concerted effort has been mounted to find successful rational voter models (Rabinowitz & MacDonald 1989; Foster 1984; Aldrich 1993). For given the antagonistic relationship presumed to exist between emotion and reason, if voters can be shown to vote rationally, at least at those moments they cannot also be passionate.
It is time to reexamine this tradition of treating emotion and reason as hostile forces. Reason is commonly portrayed as a fragile force for progress, justice, and greater democracy, which requires protection against the intrusive and destructive impulse of emotion. While a longstanding conception, it is not the only one, and a new conception opens up new prospects.
BREAKING THE VISE OF RECEIVED WISDOM:
ABLE CITIZEN, EMOTIONAL CITIZEN
The current view holds that the application of deliberative reason necessarily excludes emotion. If this view can be shown to be false, then the contradiction between the needs of democratic politics and the nature of the public can be resolved. The radical assertion of this book is that people are able to he rational because they are emotional; emotions enable rationality. Our emotional faculties work more in harmony with our capacity to be rational than in antagonism to it. Rationality is not an autonomous faculty of the mind, independent of emotion; rather, rationality is a special set of abilities that are recruited emotion systems in the brain to enable us to adapt to the challenges that daily confront us. The practice of citizenship must acknowledge the role emotion plays in the development of rationality: if emotionality enables rationality, then the effort to exclude passion will also undermine our capacity to reason.
The proposition that emotion is the key to good citizenship must seem implausible to many citizens. Indeed, after we review the conventional understandings of emotion, judgment, and reason, this solution shall seem even less plausible. The agreed-upon principal tasks that are assigned to citizenship-reason, judgment, and justice-make it a daunting task to persuade you that democracy rests on this different understanding of emotion and its relation to rationality. But with that claim comes an even more surprising result: the current practice of citizenship is demonstrably far more accomplished, far more rational, even while being more emotional, than is generally observed. Rather than being in a sorry state, bereft of sufficient reason, the electorate uses reason far more fully than has been understood, though its use is masked its partnership with emotion. My principal task is to demonstrate this to be the case.
If democracy is in trouble, it is not because people are emotional and therefore irrational. There are other places to look if we would but give up our attachment to conventional wisdom. But before we can address the issue of strengthening democracy, we need to have a new understanding of human capacities.
DESIGN OF THE BOOK
The goal of this book is to make the case for the unlikely claim that the solution to good citizenship is located in our capacity to feel. To do so I advance a new understanding of emotion that draws on the work of neuroscientists. I will advance not only a new conception of emotion, one unfamiliar to most people, but also a new conception of democracy, one that finds a central and valued, if sometimes dangerous, use for our emotional faculties. The book's argument is divided into two parts. Chapters 2 and 3 review the conventional accounts of the meaning of emotion, its relation to thought and action, and its presumptive dangers for political judgment and justice. These conventional views have an ancient heritage, yet despite their age, they remain potent in constructing the arena of possibilities. Their age and familiarity often mask how they work to construct and restrict the realm of politics.
Thereafter I advance a new account of how the brain generates emotion and its effects on consciousness generally and on judgment specifically. The central implication of this radical revision is that emotion enables citizens to be capable of, in the words of Pericles, "doing and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, both united in the same [citizens]." The arguments, analyses, and evidence for that claim are advanced in Chapters 4-6. Chapter 7 considers the particular role of revulsion, an emotional reaction that can be quite intractable and quite destructive. Chapter 8 offers a revised view of democracy and human nature, a view that, because it finds a hospitable match between our faculties, emotional and rational, and the demands of citizenship, provides an escape for our current dilemma.
Excerpted from THE sentimental CITIZEN by George E. Marcus Copyright © 2002 by The Pennsylvania State University
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.