Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in its Place

by Robert B. Talisse

We live in an age of political polarization. As political beliefs on the left and the right have been pulled closer to the extremes, so have our social environments: we seldom interact with those with whom we don't see eye to eye. Making matters worse, we are being appealed to--by companies, products, and teams, for example--based on our deep-seated, polarized beliefs. Our choice of Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, Costco or Sam's Club, soccer or football, New York Times vs. Wall Street Journal is an expression of our beliefs and a reinforcement of our choice to stay within the confines of our self-selected political community, making us even more polarized. Letting it bleed into these choices in every corner of our lives, we take democracy too far and it ends up keeping us apart. We overdo democracy.

When we overdo democracy, we allow it to undermine and crowd out many of the most important social goods that democracy is meant to deliver. What's more, in overdoing democracy, we spoil certain social goods that democracy needs in order to flourish. A thriving democracy needs citizens to reserve space in their social lives for collective activities that are not structured by political allegiances. To ensure the health and the future of democracy, we need to forge civic friendships by working together in social contexts in which political affiliations and party loyalties are not merely suppressed, but utterly beside the point.

Drawing on his extensive research, Talisse sheds light on just how deeply entrenched our political polarization has become and opens our eyes to how often we allow politics to dictate the way we see almost everything. By limiting our interactions with others and our experience of the world so that we only encounter the politically like-minded, we are actually damaging the thing that democracy is meant to preserve in the first place: the more fundamental good of recognizing and respecting each other's standing as equals.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy

216 pages, Hardcover

Published October 25, 2019

About the author

Robert B. Talisse is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. His central research area is democratic theory, where he pursues issues concerning legitimacy, justice, and public political argumentation.

A native of New Jersey, Talisse earned his PhD in Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2001. He is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles and 13 academic books. He is also the host of two academic podcasts Why We Argue and New Books in Philosophy. With his frequent collaborator Scott Aikin, Talisse also writes a monthly column at the site 3 Quarks Daily.

Reviews

[Justus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though published in October 2019, reading this during the crazy US election week of November 2020 seemed fitting. There have been no end of books promising to diagnose what ails modern politics (and society) and prescribe a fix. Does Talisse really bring anything new to the table? His argument is that we are doing "too much" politics -- that it has seeped into everything everywhere; that attempts to fix politics by small tweaks -- changes to the Electoral College, for instance, are band-aids doomed to eventual failure; and that the only real solution is to do more activities together (i.e. with other people) where politics has no part. "The problem is that politics has become all that we do together."

If we see to repair our democracy, we rather need to find other things to do together, things in which politics is not merely set aside, but instead has no place.

It is an appealing claim -- there seem to be growing numbers of people upset that politics is "everywhere", in schools, in work places, and so on. We seemingly can't escape it. This isn't a long book (~170 pages) but most of it is dedicated to the diagnosis of the problem. I admit that my patience eventually wore thin -- no one is really arguing that there is a problem. Yes, it is true that you need an accurate diagnosis in order to prescribe the correct medication but I couldn't help but wish that this was foreshortened or rearranged to put his suggested remedy sooner.

Talisse argues that a surfeit of politics is endemic to democracy. That is, it is nearly inevitable. We can't blame it on the rise of social media or 24-hour cable news networks, though they may have hasted matters. We can't blame it on America's unique demographics or remains of the sectionalism of the Civil War, since it seems to affect other countries as well.

Talisse's argument is somewhat convincing -- though it would have had more weight, I think, if he had claimed it was "inevitable" 10 or 20 years ago. But when he turns to his proposed solution, things are less satisfying.

We should "do things together, but without politics". The strawman version is easy to agree with: no one wants to work with a boss who talks about Biden or Trump at work. But Talisse has also dug himself a hole. By showing how pervasive politics has become, it become nearly impossible to actually escape from it. If you drive to work in a pick-up truck instead of a Nissan Leaf, that's politics. If you watch Nascar instead of The West Wing, that's politics.

And who gets to decide which things politics should be left out of, anyway? It seems to me that there is a big difference between politics of "we shouldn't discuss Democrats vs. Republicans at the knitting circle" versus the politics of "hey, why do all our of non-straight, non-white friends quit the knitting circle after less than a week every time". (If you think knitting can't be political see the February 2019 controversy around Karen Templer.)

Talisse actually runs into exactly this problem. Apparently at a public talk, an audience member asked for a concrete example of something we could "do together but without politics" and he suggested cleaning a local park. At which point another audience member called out, "Cleaning parks is for liberals!" Which is kinda, sorta true.

Eventually Talisse sort of throws up his hands and admits defeat when it comes to concrete suggestions.

Any item on a list of nonpolitical activities justifiably will provoke the objection that it is merely the expression of some political leaning or profile; thus the original problem of overdoing democracy simply reemerges.

To be honest, I felt like he doesn't really have an answer here other than "well, let's try anyway". Let's leave that side though, because I think his argument has two bigger flaws. He eventually prescribes an individual solution -- you, the reader, should do this one thing -- without really showing how that could possibly lead to systemic change. Just because I join a boardgame club for 4 hours every fortnight, how does that become the vanguard of a revolution on putting politics in its place? It feels like the causal explanation is missing several steps.

Relatedly, he doesn't make a strong case that "doing things together, but without politics" would actually act as a cure or prophylactic for polarisation. After all, America used to be like that -- with bowling leagues and churches and all manner of non-overtly political things -- and it didn't prevent the drift to the current state of affairs.

I have to admit that this ending was a letdown. You need to read the entire book before he finally gets to suggestions and it is all done and over in just a few pages, leaving me feeling: "That's it?"

One final note I'll add: Talisse is a professional philosopher rather than a journalist or political scientist. I have to say that I've really come to enjoy the style of argument that many philosophers use. They tend to make modest claims, open to their own potential errors, full of phrases like "as far as I can see" or "if my claim is correct". They are respectful of alternate hypotheses and engage with them. I'm sure it is due to cultural norms in their small academic niche but it is still refreshing.

Philosophers, especially modern English-speaking ones, tend to come from analytic tradition that means their arguments are very structured and, well, analytic; which appeals to my engineering-brain. At times this can be, admittedly, a little tiresome as they, for instance, spend several pages establishing that democracy has a site, scope, and reach or exploring the differences between things are "must do" versus "admirable to do".

That said, those nuances matter in some arguments and I do appreciate the attention to detail, especially in comparison to some other strands of writing.

[Jeff Karpinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit repetitive, nearly painfully so in the early chapters, but stick with it. I guarantee you'll discover insights into the over-politicized world we find ourselves in - and how we're all part of the problem.

Robert's solution is simple but not necessarily easy. I started making conscious efforts to "put politics in its place" even before finishing the book.

Bottom line - if you've posted political memes on social media, this book is for you.

[Serge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. I am using it as part of the Ethics Bowl Prep for our 2024-25 squad. Here are my notes
Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in its Place by Robert Talisse

Talisse begins with a Thanksgiving 2016 anecdote about “avoiding or navigating political disagreement over the dinner table.” His thesis is that “the ubiquity of democratic politics, the saturation of social life with activities and projects that are overtly organized around the categories and divisions of current politics” undermines democratic practice (“overdoing democracy undermines democracy”). He argues that “we must reserve spaces within our social environments for collaborative activities and projects in which politics is simply beside the point.” his prescription is as follows: “if we want to improve the condition of democratic politics, we need to occasionally do something together other than politics.”

In Chapter 1, Talisse defines democracy as the supreme social good. He suggests that “ the ability to enact political rule among equals renders democracy a uniquely legitimate form of government. Respect for civic equality ensures political legitimacy which, in turn, makes justice possible. Talisse posits that democracies tend to be socially stable and that democratic government is highly correlated with the absence of mass starvation. In practical terms, democracy is necessary, according to Talisse, for “reliably securing justice, peace, and plenty.”

Talissse uses the analogy of eating cheesecake to explain how it is possible to have too much of a good thing. He introduces the concept of diminishing marginal utility (“with each bite of cheesecake, the value of the subsequent bite diminishes”). Talisse considers another harm of overdoing democracy: the tradeoffs when the pursuit of one good crowds out other goods. We miss opportunities for cross-cutting coalitions when we accentuate our ideological commitments in hyperpolarized and hyper-partisan politics. Talisse suggests that we sometimes take a pathological turn in our obsession with electoral politics. He recommends that “citizens occasionally… retreat, together from politics.” Civic association has suffered in the wake of political obsession.

Talisse offers this instructive definition for political obsession: it is “the tendency to conceptualize the entire social world as already claimed for projects that are irrevocably political… to regard the horizon of shared social endeavor as intrinsically saturated with politics… to conceive of the project of democratic self-government as omnipresent and all-embracing” (p.23) Talisse believes that we court sizeable risks through our steadfast political engagement. One risk is widespread indifference to the plight of the vulnerable. If we do not reserve an apolitical space for work on the margins, it will not occur. Justice is delayed (or denied) by our idolatrous allegiance to political messianism. When politics is everything and everything is politics, we, as citizens, drown in our myopic tautologies.

Talisse does not propose a minimalist view of democracy. In its proper place, democracy should aspire to liberty and justice for all. Aspirational democracy will create consensus and will enjoy rhetorical success when it avoids augmentation or expansion of its constitutional (social contract) boundaries. We should pledge our lives and our property to the realization of democratic commitments rather than partisan victories. Social and political order depend on decency, decorum, and discretion.
In Chapter 2, Talisse turns to the idealized language of civic duty and moral obligations. Talisse argues that “democracy invokes a duty for citizens to participate in certain kinds of political activities in advance of exercising their political power by casting a vote.” (p.38)
Talisse defines the proper scope, site, and reach of democratic political practice. He reviews popular expectations about democratic practice. For example, “nearly every view of democracy includes in its conception of democracy’s site the action of voting.” Many polities also require citizens to acquire and process (through civic education) information to exercise the franchise responsibly. Other polities require service (including but not limited to military service) as an outward and visible sign of civic allegiance. The voting booth and the battlefield, thus, could be conceived as the sites of democracy, par excellence.

Still, Talisse cautions, “the precise borders of democracy’s scope and site will be arguable, and one should expect a certain degree of plasticity in every account.” The workplace and the classroom are contested sites of democracy because of heated political debate and messaging about the circumscribed limits of “peaceful, nondisruptive, and legal acts of expressing political critique.” In both spaces, we may be overextending the reach of democratic practice. Talisse invokes Rousseau when he writes that” democracy is the proposition that political rule can be made consistent with the fundamental moral equality of all persons; it is the claim that legitimate government among moral equals is indeed possible.” (p.51)

Talisse next turns his attention to equal-vote majoritarianism (“this view holds that self-government among equals is achieved when, with respect to any collective decision, each individual who will be bound by the decision gets exactly one vote, each votes his or her preference, the votes are equally counted, and the majority rules.”). Talisse concedes that “equal-vote majoritarianism renders democracy consistent with a background culture in which vast inequalities– of power, standing, resources, influence, and the like– are prevalent.” Talisse defends a conception of democratic public engagement wherein equal voice complements equal vote. He names this ideal the participationist model of democratic practice. Still the participationist model offers little remedy if public engagement only serves to magnify durable bigotry, discrimination, and unjust bias.

Beyond public engagement, what is required is public deliberation (Habermas is implicit in Talisse’s reasoning). The deliberation model requires public collective reasoning. Talisse proposes time, place , and manner restrictions for this political speech. While the “readiness and capacity to publicly exchange political reasons is taken to be a hallmark of the kind of respect that citizens must show toward one another,” its ubiquity can make it corrosive. In our contemporary politics, “citizens readily diagnose persistent political disagreement in ways that impugn the deliberative practices and rational capacities of their opponents; they attribute to those politically on the other side various degrees of ignorance, pigheadedness, irrationality , and benightedness.” Talisse describes the self-deception by which citizens “take themselves to be reasoning and arguing in earnest [when] in fact” they reinforce their prejudices, marginalize their critics, and assemble silos of like-minded fellow citizens.”(p.66). Given this known risk, Talisse agrees with those theorists who “encourage political engagement among diverse citizens and discourage political deliberation among homogeneous groups of citizens.” This can only succeed, Talisse cautions, if we put politics in its place.

Talisse begins Part II (Diagnosis) with this observation about political saturation: “although democratic citizens are nearly constantly communicating their politics to one another, only very rarely do they occupy spaces that are politically mixed.” (p.74) Talisse suggests that “extended political activity under conditions of political saturation erodes certain capacities that are required for proper democratic citizenship.” Dysfunction abounds and new technologies that “expand the local” exacerbate the dysfunction and magnify belief polarization. Talisse cites Cass Sunstein when he writes that “social media platforms have enabled individuals to construct “echo chambers” and “information cocoons” that allow citizens to insulate themselves from ideas and information that run counter to, or even merely different from, their own perspectives.” (p.86)

One political impact of these assortative, partisan, civic silos is the tendency “to attribute negative traits– including dishonesty, lack of patriotism, incivility, laziness, and untrustworthiness to citizens on the other side of the divide.” This degenerative infiltration of politics is a hallmark of our “lifestyle politics” era. The intermingling of political identity signaling with consumer behavior is a harbinger of the degree of political saturation that plagues us. Talisse uses the language of colonization (“our social environments have been colonized by the categories and allegiances of our politics”). In such an environment, political compromise is seen as capitulation.

Talisse makes a useful distinction between belief polarization and political polarization in Chapter 4. Political polarization is a measure of the political distance between political opponents and belief polarization occurs within a like minded group and besets individuals who talk only or mainly to others who share their fundamental commitments. Consequently, some individuals shift to a more extreme version of their initial beliefs. Belief polarization entails an intensification of commitment, an ardor that makes deliberation as collective reasoning less likely. One of the barriers to compromise in such a scenario is social comparison. Belief polarization encourages individuals to seek corroboration and makes such individuals vulnerable to confirmation bias. Talisse remarks that belief polarization has a Humean face: affected individuals become slaves of their passions, agents of political distrust, cynicism, and incivility.

At the end of Part II, Talisse challenges Dewey’s claim that “democratic ends require democratic methods for their realization.” Talisse instead argues that “democracy suffers from an ailment for which democracy cannot be a remedy.” Talisse suggests that our democratic practice is “stunted internally.” He enjoins the reader to seek nonpolitical remedies to political saturation. The first remedy considered is civic friendship. Recognizing that democracy involves conflicts of value and that losses engender disappointment, frustration, affront, and grievance, democratic citizens must nurture capacities for 1) reasonableness and 2) democratic sympathy. Talisse holds that “civic friends need not know each other or interact in any direct way… Nonetheless their friendship consists in te mutual respect they show one another in regarding each other as sharers in a social enterprise, entitled to play an equal role in shaping and directing that enterprise.” (p.150)

The contrary disposition is civic enmity whereby citizens regard their “political opponents and critics as ipso facto unfit for democratic citizenship. “ According to Talisse “ it is the view that no degree of deviation from one’s own political viewpoint is consistent with proper democracy.” Talisse defines friendship as a correlate good (“its pursuit and flourishing require the pursuit and flourishing of other goods”). Talisse believes that “the capacities that constitute civic friendship are arrested and smothered when relations among citizens are singularly fixated on their civic roles, and thus their allegiances and divisions qua citizens.” Talisse recommends that “to the degree that we are able, we…try to engage in positive acts to mute the explicitly political corroborations to which we expose ourselves in the ordinary course of daily life.” (p.161) Talisse acknowledges that civic friendship may be conflicted or distressed. It is nevertheless possible. “Desaturation,” Talisse concludes, “can be initiated only by changing ourselves.”

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Democracy is a good thing, but it can become so much better if a gang liked by Talisse would rule instead, by the people and for the people, of course. In other words, you are paying taxes so Talisse would have the comfortable life he wants and in turn he can give you the benevolent dictators to rule this unruly Democracy of today.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very strong on framing the issues and summarizing research in the first section.
Considerably weaker in the shorter prescriptive second section.
And minus most of a star for the writing style.
Neither recommended nor disrecommended.

[Vaibhavi Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book basically tells you two things, one how political beliefs has entrenched every sphere of our personal sphere and second, how it made us soo extreme which led us into the denial of every opposite view or dissent mainly due to eco chamber, social media, and all..
It also emphasis that world has entered a post truth era where we are overridden by the emotional content feed to us by political parties and social media thus preventing us to act rationally. Thus the overdose of Democracy, politics and media is basically killing democracy.
This book really goes well with Social dilemma(Netflix), and also explains the case of Cambridge Analytic nexus with Trump election campaign. But in the Background your can also see how the Indian political system is functioning right now.
& Yes... it does make you realise that the very essence of democracy in the oldest as well as the biggest democracies is crumbling down .......unless we educate ourselves to be rational enough to see the TRUTH.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, I wasn’t sure what to make of this book when I picked it up, specifically because of a couple reviews I saw here on Goodreads. However I can tell you with the utmost assurance that the author is not intent on creating some kind of plutocracy, or philosopher king situation. In fact, he dispels that idea early on.

The only reason I would mark this book down is that the idea of the “more informed v less informed” citizen comes up, and regardless of the proliferation of disinformation, I acknowledge that as citizens we all have an experience and purview that is worthy.

This being said, he channels Robert Putnam in his belief that we need to be together as citizens to make a difference in the health of our democracy. It is really hard to hate someone if you see them as an equal member of your community.

Go join a weird club. Volunteer somewhere new. It is just crazy enough to work.

[Caleb Diffell · Rating 4 out of 5]

An open letter calling for rebuilding civil society through individual effort to cultivate apolitical spaces. It's good but I think Yuval Levin's focus on institutions is more on the mark and should bear more fruit.

[Makenzi Burget · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although this book made some good points and asked good questions, it is effectively a philosophical discussion of polarization that I found redundant. The author acts as if he is giving solutions when, in the end, he mostly poses constructs of a solution.

[Rochelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Centrist

As a true centrist I found this book energizing as to why I disagree with so many. The pervasiveness of political polarization has made me the rarity I feared I was. This book describes the phenomenons by which it occurs. A good read.
I also grew up in the same small suburb with the author. Nice job old friend.