Partisan civility and civic education*

ABSTRACT

Education is central to creating well-informed citizens capable of participating in social and political life. However, civic education in some liberal democratic societies has often focused on teaching students the mechanics and structure of party politics, overlooking many of the public virtues that help to sustain democratic life. In this article we examine one such virtue, i.e., civility, and its role in party politics. We focus especially on partisan ‘civility as politeness,’ which entails the norms of politeness and etiquette that regulate partisans’ speech and behaviour during electoral campaigns and within legislatures. We analyse partisan civility as politeness and explore its connection with two other dimensions of partisan civility, i.e., ‘moral civility’ and ‘justificatory civility.’ We conclude by developing recommendations on how to advance civility in party politics by creating well-informed citizens and politicians who recognize the importance of civility in democratic life.

KEYWORDS:

• Partisanship
• Party politics
• Civility
• Civic education

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Nancy E. Snow, Lucas Walsh and an anonymous reviewer for their insightful and constructive comments on earlier versions of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ACARA (n.d.-a), ‘Australian Curriculum,’ retrieved from https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/; ACARA (n.d.-b), ‘Ethical Understanding,’ retrieved from https://australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/ethical-understanding/; ACARA (n.d.-c), ‘General Capabilities,’ retrieved from https://australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/.

2. Here we draw on Bardon et al. (2022).

3. Rawls (2005, p. 243, note 32) argues that ‘any reasonable balance of these three values [Rawls also considers a third value, “the ordered reproduction of political society over time”] will give a woman a duly qualified right to decide whether or not to end her pregnancy during the first trimester…[because]…at this early stage of pregnancy the political value of equality of women is overriding.’

Additional information

Funding

This work was part of a larger collaborative project titled ‘Civic Virtue in Public Life: Understanding and Countering Incivility in Liberal Democracies’. The research was funded as part of the Self, Virtue and Public Life Project, a three-year research initiative based at the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma, made possible with generous support from the Templeton Religion Trust.

Notes on contributors

Matteo Bonotti

Matteo Bonotti is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Monash University, Australia. His research interests include political liberalism and public reason, civility, linguistic justice, free speech, food justice, and the normative dimensions of partisanship. His work has appeared in such journals as the American Political Science Review (2016), The Journal of Politics (2019, 2021), the British Journal of Political Science (2022), and Political Studies (2020). He is the author of Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies (Oxford University Press 2017) and the co-author of Healthy Eating Politics and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach (Oxford University Press 2021) and Recovering Civility during COVID-19 (Palgrave Macmillan 2021).

Steven T. Zech

Steven T. Zech is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Monash University, Australia. His research focuses on how communities respond to political violence and terrorism at the local level and he has conducted extensive fieldwork on self-defense forces in Peru, as well as militias in the Philippines and the United States. His work has appeared in journals such as International Studies Review (2016), the British Journal of Political Science (2022), the Journal of European Public Policy (2021), Terrorism and Political Violence (2017, 2021), Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2019), and Defence and Peace Economics (2019). He is the co-author of Recovering Civility during COVID-19 (Palgrave Macmillan 2021).