Respect is in trouble. Many Americans think that respecting other citizens is a virtue of a democratic society, yet many struggle to respect opposing partisans. It is especially liberal citizens, who hold respect as central to their robust view of democratic equality, who struggle the most to grant respect to others. Egalitarian theorists sing paeans about the importance of respect but say little about the conditions that make respect possible or the trade-offs between respect and other values. Political scientists study tolerance, not respect, and they rarely study how democratic citizens view each other as fellow citizens, which is at the center of democratic respect. In this presentation, Jeff Spinner-Halev presents the arguments and finding from his forthcoming co-authored book with Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. This book brings together a political theorist and a political psychologist to examine democratic respect through national surveys, focus groups, survey experiments, and the views of political theorists. Democrats and Republicans are less divided than many believe, but they alienate one another because they moralize different issues. Liberals moralize social justice, conservatives champion national solidarity, and this worldview divide makes it difficult to respect anyone who disagrees. While respect is both far-reaching and vital to a democratic system, it is much harder to grant than many theorists recognize. This book examines the importance of respect, the tensions between justice and respect, and a theoretical path forward that is challenging but far from impossible for political theorists and citizens to traverse. 

 

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