The Sentimental Citizen: Emotion in Democratic Politics

1 Introduction

[1] Introduction [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 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”    begin by 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.1 And the Progressive Era reforms added protections to preserve citizens’ autonomy (e.g., ballots prepared by the state listing all candidates for each office, secret ballots, and rules keeping cam1 I 1. Many devices have been proposed, some most inventive, to restrict the electorate to some presumably qualified members, among them property requirements, religious affiliation with an approved or state-supported church, literacy tests, registration requirements that make it onerous to register , and public violence against despised groups to discourage them from exercising their right to vote. As Rogers Smith (1997) has detailed, these devices were not just historical artifacts; they represented intentional efforts to resist the democratizing of the American electorate. paign 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.2 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 by 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.3 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 by habit or by momentary passion than by thoughtful judgment (Berelson, Lazarsfeld & McPhee 1954; Campbell et al. 1960; Lippmann 1922; Neuman 1986). The electorate is decried for being too passive, too ill informed, too ready to be moved by symbolic (i.e., emotional) appeals, too disinclined to listen to real policy discussion, too ready to be distracted by the drama of personality and the politics of slash and burn. Politics seems to be more and more a drama of manipulation by 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.4 Politics appears to be increasingly dominated by ever more sensationalized media, sensationalized policy debates , candidates’ efforts to defeat their opponents by emphasis on scandal   sentimental  2. I advance this argument as a statement of improvement rather than final achievement. Many inequities and iniquities remain to be overcome. 3. As Tocqueville foretold; see esp. his introduction to Democracy in America (1974). 4. Since Aristotle, as Sinopoli (1992) notes, the republican tradition...