Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity

by Lilliana Mason

Political polarization in America is at an all-time high, and the conflict has moved beyond disagreements about matters of policy. For the first time in more than twenty years, research has shown that members of both parties hold strongly unfavorable views of their opponents. This is polarization rooted in social identity, and it is growing. The campaign and election of Donald Trump laid bare this fact of the American electorate, its successful rhetoric of “us versus them” tapping into a powerful current of anger and resentment.
           
With Uncivil Agreement , Lilliana Mason looks at the growing social gulf across racial, religious, and cultural lines, which have recently come to divide neatly between the two major political parties. She argues that group identifications have changed the way we think and feel about ourselves and our opponents. Even when Democrats and Republicans can agree on policy outcomes, they tend to view one other with distrust and to work for party victory over all else. Although the polarizing effects of social divisions have simplified our electoral choices and increased political engagement, they have not been a force that is, on balance, helpful for American democracy. Bringing together theory from political science and social psychology, Uncivil Agreement clearly describes this increasingly “social” type of polarization in American politics and will add much to our understanding of contemporary politics.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Political Science, Psychology, History, Sociology, Academic

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2018

Reviews

[Richard]

Not quite sure you want to read this?

You could listen to the author, Lilliana Mason, interviewed on a number of podcasts:

▶︎ You Are Not So Smart's interview: How Politics Became Our Identity (𝟭ᴴ𝟮𝟬ᴹ𝟬𝟳ˢ)

▶︎ Vox's Ezra Klein interview: The Age of “Mega-Identity” Politics (𝟭ᴴ𝟭𝟵ᴹ𝟰𝟬ˢ)

▶︎ Crooked Media's With Friends Like These: When Ideology is Identity with Lilliana Mason (𝟱𝟵ᴹ𝟭𝟰ˢ)

▶︎ Kevin deLaplante's Argument Ninja: Tribalism Isn't the Problem (𝟱𝟮ᴹ𝟮𝟭ˢ)

▶︎ Independent Voter News' Beyond Partisan Politics: The Dangers of Identity Politics with Dr. Lilliana Mason (𝟮𝟲ᴹ𝟱𝟵ˢ)

▶︎ New Books Network interviews her (𝟮𝟮ᴹ𝟬𝟮ˢ)

▶︎ The Niskanen Center’s Political Research Digest: Are Americans Becoming Tribal, with Identity Politics Trumping All? (𝟭𝟵ᴹ𝟰𝟴ˢ)

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and important

This is one of those very important books. It’s also thankfully readable and short. America’s increasingly sorted partisanship is bad for our country. We are increasingly likely to hang out with people who are like us in politics, race, religion, income, etc., and all of this sorting empowers a team-like mindset, that puts us increasingly at odds with those we disagree with. It would be better if we all committed to being a part of crowds we’re not normally inclined to hang out with, so that we could humanize our “other” fellow Americans, but that is a tough sell. Mason does not offer a lot of recommendations for fixing the problem, which is fair if the fixes are unrealistic. Things might just have to get worse before they can get better. Anyway, social psychology offers a powerful explanation for our partisanship. It’s not about the issues; it’s about the feeling of teams, and us-vs-them.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sure most thinking people have realized that this "us vs. them" mindset we call two-party politics in the US has little to do with Democratic or Republican platforms or stances on any real issues. For many proudly self-identifying liberals and conservatives, it's tribalism not so different from being an Ohio State fan and hating the University of Michigan because Buckeyes hate Wolverines, right? The only difference is that the allegiance to political parties is more emotional (albeit just as specious) and the stakes are a hell of a lot higher: American democracy essentially. This is why we continually read strongly-worded political polemics online from people we're fairly certainly would be unable to identify the three branches of government much less describe the ways they check and balance one another. The actual business of governing matters less to that person commenting on your Facebook thread than whether his chosen tribe is winning or losing.

We know this, of course, but here in Uncivil Agreement is the proof. Turns out, yeah, people are not basing their political preferences or voting records on the issues themselves, barring a few that are always in the public eye like abortion. In fact, people are not actually all that divided on the issues themselves, yet the American public is becoming more and more polarized based solely on tribal identity. Mason does a fair job of indicting both Democrats and Republicans for this tribalism, but it's tough to ignore that the Republican party is far more homogenous in its demographics (white, straight, rural and Christian) and thus more tribally minded and emotionally invested. I mean...remember that time the Republican-controlled Congress threw a temper tantrum over health care and shut down the whole government, which accomplished absolutely nothing beyond making everyday Americans suffer, and conservatives, who'd themselves been screwed in the process, cheered? According to Mason, this is because it's preferable for people with strong tribal allegiances to see everyone suffer than to give an inch to the other side. Horrifying but it certainly squares with what's easily observable in our contemporary discourse. Ohio State fans want the Buckeyes to win more than they want a good, fair game.

While Uncivil Agreement provides plenty of useful cultural analysis, what it lacks is any sort of engaging narrative or exposition. It's pretty much a summary of a series of surveys about political beliefs and ratings of feelings of warmth and anger. It's fairly interesting stuff, but a better book would marry all this methodology and results with a bunch of concrete anecdotes to show how it all looks in practice. The few times Mason actually does this (like the aforementioned GOP shutdown example) are by far the best parts of the book. And the book is less than 200 pages long, so it wouldn't have been too tough to add another hundred or so pages showing how all this tribalism looks in social media, rhetoric, and communication and voting. If this had happened, this would be a five-star book. Still, I'd recommend reading it to monitor your own sense of political identity and to understand why everyone else seems to have gone so crazy.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Together with The Big Sort and Why We’re So Polarized, this is indispensable reading for understanding what is happening to our country. This provides an outstanding summary of research about why partisan politics is so broken. Highly recommended. We have a great deal of work to do to fix the problem of political tribalism.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the right book for me to read right now, and I highly recommend it. It is really interesting to think about how American politics has gotten so divided. The book argues that it is because the two parties have grown increasingly homogenous in various social identities ('sorted' in political theory terminology), which strengthens the emotional desire for one's 'team' to win at the expense of not really examining actual policy. We might find that Democrats and Republicans can actually reach near agreement on many issues if we truly looked at policy.

In the final chapter, Mason provides some possibilities for how to reduce the polarization, but none of them look all that doable right now, especially with a President Elect who seems to thrive on us vs them-ism, the idea of 'winning', and bad-mouthing anyone of the opposite party (not that the Democrats are perfect in these regards either). For my part, I'm going to switch my news sources to ones that are as un-biased as I can find (AP News) and try to spend more time with people of the opposite party and/or understanding their perspective. It's making me feel much calmer about the state of things, for the moment, at least.

4 stars because wrapping my head around some of the political theory and data took a lot of doing - at least for me, someone who is very much not a political scholar.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book discusses in broad terms some of the reasons why political polarization and identity politics have become more prominent in the US in recent years. The overall message of the book is relevant to anyone engaged in US politics. With that being said, while political science enthusiasts would want to read the book more carefully, I think those with a more casual interest would only want to quickly skim the book instead—the book discusses many political science studies, the details of which are fairly dry. (I skimmed through most of the book.) It's a short read regardless, though.

The overarching argument that the author makes is that, although differences in policy positions do account for some of the rift between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S., a large driver of the rift that acts separately from that is people's individual partisan and social identities. Everyone holds a variety of identities, and in the past few decades, the collection of identities in each person have shifted to align more clearly with one party. Fewer people hold cross-cutting identities, identities that split party lines. Partisan identity along with this increased social distance between the two parties lead individuals to feel much more animosity towards political opponents even when there is overlap in policy positions. This discourages compromise and the ability for us to work together for the collective good.

Some takeaway thoughts that I have after reading the book:
- Ideally, I want to take political stances based on policy rather than on identity. Similarly, I should care more about policy outcomes than party/identity victories. Ultimately, it's the policy outcomes that benefit and harm people.
- This ideal to vote based on policy is optimistic. For one, as mentioned in the book, people's policy positions are vulnerable to identity-based influence (e.g., people feel more sympathetic towards a policy position if they're told that their preferred political party's platform takes that position). Secondly, I don't have the time or knowledge to reason carefully about most aspects of policy. Part of the reason we have a representative democracy is that it's easier on people if we delegate the job of forming nuanced policy decisions to politicians and their staff. I can easily take a stand on certain social issues, but I'm much more pessimistic about my ability to judge economic policy, for instance.
- I don't think it's necessarily bad that the policy stances of the two major parties have drifted farther apart, but the increased overall enmity between the two parties combined with the inadequate incentives to compromise or cooperate together seems quite bad.
- This book reinforces my feeling that I should keep reduce my sense of identity-related attachments so that I can think more carefully about issues and feel connection with a broader range of people.

Other misc notes I took while reading the book:
- In the 2000s, Democrats and Republicans developed much more negative views of their opponents.
- Attaching to group identities, even ones that are arbitrary and meaningless, seems to happen naturally (c.f. Robbers Cave experiment and minimal group paradigm experiments). (Of course, just because something happens naturally doesn't mean that we should support it and acquiesce to it.)
- This book distinguishes between social polarization (increased social distance between Democrats and Republicans) and issue-based polarization (increased policy differences between Democrats and Republicans). Both have increased, but the former has increased more.
- Various social identities (religion, race, neighborhood, etc.) have shifted to align more closely with political leanings, making the parties more homogeneous. This leads to social polarization, since people with cross-cutting identities are more likely to welcome and sympathize with people on the opposing team. They're also more likely to interact and hear opinions from people on the opposing team in the first place.
- One reason why the parties are more polarized is just that they've become better ideologically sorted. The civil rights movement and its rippling aftereffects alienated the southern conservative Democrats of the 1950s. But also along with this came various social realignments too, performing strong identity-based social sorting. Other factors causing this social sorting are clearer partisan leadership and more choice of media sources.
- "though the parties are competing for real interests, they are also competing because it just feels good to win." Having a strong group identity plays a part in influencing people to pursue victory and to feel antipathy towards those in an opposing group. Partisanship seems to play a bigger role in this antipathy than policy differences do. Moreover, this antipathy exists in not just in politicians interacting within the government and just in non-politicians looking at the government but also in non-politicians interacting with, say, their neighbors.
- "While activism is generally a desirable element of a functioning democracy, blind activism is not." People mobilize more easily if their energy to gathered together in a community. On the flip side, if our activism is more strongly driven by identity than by issues, then our ability to change our stances in response to changing conditions diminishes.
- What would help reduce polarization on a societal level? Unfortunately, nothing particularly likely to occur. {1} More contact with political opponents. (Unlikely to occur at scale due to increased social sorting.) {2} Less incendiary political rhetoric. (Unlikely because fiery rhetoric and attack ads are emotionally salient and pushes swing voters.) {3} Superordinate goals. (Modern examples of this are largely unsuccessful. Democrats and Republicans only united for a short time after 9/11, and there's been a shocking lack of bipartisanship during the COVID-19 crisis.). {4} Demographic trends. (Not clear what changes this will bring, and it'll likely take some time to bear fruit. It's possible that the expected increase in minority voters in the U.S., who currently lean heavily towards the Democratic party, will force some kind of political realignment later in this century.)

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess this book disappointed me in a few ways, but here's the argument: Americans are being sorted not just ideologically but socially. This means that we increasingly have mega-identities: if you know someone is evangelical, for instance, you know they are almost certainly a Republican, whereas someone like my wife (Latina, advanced education, woman, secular) is almost certainly a Democrat. Mason argues that this increasing alignment/polarization of all of our identity markers activates our tribalism and makes politics more about winning and domination than policy, all while making compromise and level-headedness impossible. She says we need more people with cross-cutting identity markers, or people with feet in multiple identity camps, who are usually less partisan and angry and more amenable to persuasion (I question this, but hey). She definitely romanticizes the past a bit (there were few golden ages of bipartisan cooperation, and those were made possible largely by suppressing issues like racism or women's rights), but overall she makes a decent case that this is a bad situation that contributes to the rancor and dysfunction of our politics. I have sympathy for any argument that the center of U.S. politics is being hollowed out, but that's pretty much where my agreement with this book ends.

My first issue is that little of these seems new. I've encountered pretty much all of these points in the Big Sort, Why We're Polarized, Prius or Pickup, and other work. I found myself nodding along to a lot of the book and saying "yup, heard this before." This doesn't mean her academic work isn't rigorous, just that if you've already read some stuff on polarization you can probably skip this book. Furthermore, A LOT of this book is just Mason describing different surveys and analyses thereof, and while these are necessary to her case, they are just not that interesting.

My second big issue is that this book is very "both sides-y" in the sense that it sees Democrats and Republicans (or right and left, or whatever description of our political binary) as equally polarized and radicalized. This is simply not a defensible view in the last 10 years. Books like "It's Even Worse than It Looks" and extensive academic work on asymmeterical polarization has shown that while polarization and social sorting are increasing on both sides, the GOP/right has drifted much further to the extreme in both views and behavior. Almost all of the examples that Mason gives of extreme political behavior comes from the right, but that doesn't compute into her overall argument.

Thus, the dysfunction of our politics is much more attributable to the increasing extremism and anti-democratic tendencies of the right and the GOP, who have also blocked reforms at the national level that would ease polarization (such as anti-gerrymandering legislation). The Democrats have their extreme wing, but the extremes on the right have taken over the GOP and now dominate it in the age of Trump. Here's exhibit A of asymmetrical polarization: they chose Trump, twice, and still basically worship him, and he has stomped all over any norm or institution all while demonizing his opponents to a degree simply unprecedented in modern U.S. history. Mason's book comes off as an intellectualized version of that guy who's like "all politicians are crooks and morons" while ignoring that one side is doing way more damage to norms and institutions than the other. It seems like she was trying really hard to be fair, but this came at the expense of being accurate (a trap that much of our media fell into during the 2016 campaign).

Finally, this book has a very chicken-egg dynamic when it comes to the analysis of people's political behavior. She is so insistent that ideology/views don't matter but that social alignment/group identity do that she makes a lot of hair-splitting claims. For example, she says that membership in the groups of pro-life or choice are more important for shaping action on these issues than the ideology of pro-life or pro-choice. But if you are in a pro-life group doesn't that mean you must have had that ideology in the first place? Mason sees the causation as coming from the group membership, but it's really hard to differentiate group alignment with ideological alignment in terms of causation. I also say this as a historian who doesn't really think you can make a science of the social by finding the one variable that is the "real" driver of behavior.

There was also very little effort to set up the historical context of polarization, in contrast to excellent books like Klein's Why We're Polarized and Rosenfeld's the Polarizers. In sum, while I admire academics who try to publish for a broad audience, this book disappointed me, and I don't particularly recommend.

[Patricia Roberts-Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read this book.

[Daniel Egemo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Politics as football fandom. Us versus them.

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Review of the Audiobook

Published by Tantor Audio in 2019.
Read by Rebecca Gibel.
Duration: 5 hours, 57 minutes.
Unabridged.

Lilliana Mason is an associate research professor at Johns Hopkins University. She collects, analyzes and breaks down the raw data that tells us what we already know about American politics right now - we are polarized.

For me, the most interesting part in when she looks at what that means and who is actually being polarized here. If you are a true political junkie - the type of person that reads a lot of news, watches the Sunday morning talking head shows and the has clearly identifiable ideological positions you can be very partisan, but are unlikely to be truly polarized.

The true insight in this book came from a deep look at the most polarized people - the people that truly believe that the other party is a clear and present danger to the country and that all Republicans are clearly Nazis or all Democrats are clearly communists. You run across the people in the comment sections on social media all of the time.

It turns out those people don't really have ideological positions. Instead, they simply identify with their "team" and will support it no matter what happens or even if they flip-flop ideologically. They are literally the most ignorant of the ideological positions their party takes, they just support the party...

Read more at:
https://dwdsreviews.blogspot.com/2022...

The linked review includes related links and more

[William Guerrant · Rating 3 out of 5]

A missed opportunity.

I heard an interview with this author several years ago and was impressed with her research and analysis. As the subject of increasing political polarization is certainly pressing now, I decided it was a good time to read the book. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.

There are only 141 pages of text, the other 42 pages being appendices, endnotes, references, and an index. That, by itself, is no problem. But even with all the lengthy material at the end, the book is still cluttered with sentences like this: "The work on ambivalence by Lavine, Johnston, and Steenbergen (2012) allows for partisans to dislike their own party for a variety of reasons, weakening the bond between party and partisan. Groenendyk’s 2013 book contributes to this synthesis of the instrumental and expressive models of partisanship, as he identifies the motivations that may lead partisans to avoid partisan bias." And this: "The regression model predicting social-distance bias (SDB) is as follows: SDB = a + B1(PID) + B2(IE) + B3(IC) + B4(IE*IC) + Bi(controls) + e."

Instead of presenting her arguments and findings in a way that would be comprehensible (and therefore potentially beneficial) to ordinary readers, the author has produced yet another example of what is wrong with most academic social science writing these days.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Americans’ political identification has come to line up with their other categories of identity such as race, religion, and region. Mason presented a lot of evidence that the increase in "sorting" produces a sort of "team spirit" that desires the victory of one's own group and the defeat of the other. This effect is more powerful than the issues dividing the parties, which are not always well-known or systematically thought out by people who have a strong partisan affiliation.

I wish that I was better with statistics and the methods of social science so that I could better understand the strengths and weaknesses of her study. I'm convinced that she has identified an important emotional and psychological factor in American political life, though I need to think more about whether it is as central as she thinks it is.

You can listen to or read the highlights of a thoughtful conversation with Mason here: https://www.econtalk.org/lilliana-mas...

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of data to demonstrate a foreseeable thesis: emotions are a key player in politics. Partisan ties, which have grown increasingly emotional for voters, now carry greater significance than policies. This is not a book about how to fix irrational behavior, so much as document through study after study, poll after poll, how much the political landscape in the US has changed over time. Surprise: it's a mess! If nothing else, this is a reminder of the importance to interact with people you disagree with and to redirect politically charged emotions to more pragmatic, policy-minded efforts.

[Kelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this book and enjoyed it quite a bit. Certain portions, involving research and statistics, were difficult for me to follow without seeing them. There were also references to graphs/tables that weren't in front of me. I probably would have gotten more out of it if I had read, rather than listened to it. Mason offers some psychological and historical context for the current level of political division in our country.

[Xanthe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very accessible and thorough, the author shows her work by including countless graphs and charts so all the data for her conclusions is right there. There's a lot to chew on from this short, but extremely dense analysis of partisan attitudes in US politics.

[J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Political discussion over recent years has become increasingly . . . fraught. . . to the point of intense hostility. The breakdown of civil discourse has become a point of concern for social scientists.

Political scientist Lilliana Mason seeks to explain this yawning cultural and political chasm with her book Uncivil Agreement. In the book, she lays out the case that this polarization is only tangentially rooted in “genuine policy disagreements,” and is instead more about how we feel about ourselves and our political identities.

Though this polarization cycle was given a strong jolt to it by the Trump campaign and presidency, Mason sees the Trump era as a culmination of at least fifty years of demographical sorting and coalescence. One study, the Robbers Cave study o 1954, is used repeatedly as a template for Mason’s view of social and political sorting. In this study, a group of boys of nearly identical demographic composition (sex, education, physical and emotional fitness) were separated at a camp, given names (the “Eagles” and the “Rattlers”) and given some competitive projects to engage in. The boys were not prompted to dislike or despise one another in any way by the experimenters. Nevertheless, with only the prompts of “isolation and competition,” the groups formed hostile in-groups that affected their ability to judge reality objectively. In one case they overestimated the amount of beans their teammates gathered while underestimating the amount gathered by the “opposing” group.

Mason sees social polarization as defined by prejudice, anger, and activism that affect our abilities to “fairly judge” our political opponents and less able to pick up on the common ground we might share. She focuses on social environments that have led to dramatically increasing partisanship, as well as the psychological effects of the identities themselves. She sees a decline in “cross-cutting cleavages” or “cross-pressures,” where people interact in social groups that contain members of the “opposite party,” as contributing to this polarization. These cross-pressures promote tolerance. She cites social psychologists giving evidence of in-group bias where even “minimal group membership” creates negative associations with outgroup individuals.

Partisanship as it currently manifests itself should be considered a “mega-identity,” and that American citizens affected by this have an often inaccurate and exaggerated view of the socially homogeneity of the outside group. This leads to “imaginary conflicts” taking the imaginative space away from actual conflicts, since both sides progressively lose contact with one another. Mason asserts that Americans should return “back to a state of civil competition, rather than a state of victory-centric conflict.”

Mason does not think that issue-based sorting (when partisans hold policy preferences more and more consistently with their party) or issue-based polarization (when party policy preferences become increasingly “bimodal” and extreme) are the correct ways to analyze the current situation. Side-stepping this, she places social-identity based elements as the central factor in explaining how partisans grow socially distant despite often trivial policy disagreements. Mason identifies three major elements of social polarization. The first is when two groups are in “zero-sum competition” leading to partisan prejudice. This is the idea that there can be only one winner. The second element is that when a group’s status is under question, a member will take political action to save face for the group. Finally, intergroup emotions theory stipulates that group members “take on” the emotions on behalf of the entire group. This “emotional reactivity” lets the individual feel anger or fear when the group is attacked and euphoria if the group is victorious.

Beginning by using ANES data from 1952 to 2018, Mason demonstrates how the two parties have changed and “grown increasingly socially distinct.” The data convincingly shows that by 2012, traditional categories of division such as the Protestant and Catholic and southern and non-southern had receded in importance to social division, to be replaced by much more “ideological, religious, income-based, and racial differences.” She emphasizes that this was not merely a swapping out of one set of divisions for another set, because the new partisan alignments were far more powerful than the divides of previous 60 years.

For explaining this new sorting, Mason cites Bill Bishop’s work, which demonstrated how in the 1960s and 1970s in particular, there was a marked drop in trust of the government among both Democrats and Republicans. Alongside this, she musters Robert Putnam’s work, which suggested the decline of civic organizations led to a growing isolation and independence. However, the result of this was not so much a falling away from partisanship, but a retreat into “homogeneity.” This is the self-sorting of Americans into neighborhoods and communities where they felt familiar, and with less potential for intermingling with the “othered” political group. Finally, Mason cites the diversity of media sources allowing for more partisan capture, where Americans gravitated to narratives that only reinforced their own side of the story.

In this context, values like “cooperation” hold less of a premium in the minds of Americans, which functionally has led to policy and governance mattering less than perceived tribal group wins or losses. Using linear regression models, she teases out the functions of factors like issue extremity and constraint’s effects on partisan social identity. For example, one chart shows how when a “weakly identified partisan” is given “strong positions” on five political issues, a sense of their magnitude, and an easily-defined liberal and conservative answer, the subject is 21% more willing to interact with ingroup members than outgroup members. However, a strongly identified partisan presented with a frame that the issues are moderate and trivial, is still 29% more willing to engage with ingroup than the outgroup. Mason suggests this is the “social-distance” bias at work. Because the strong partisan’s access to social contact and shared social identities with the other political tribe is so weak, the presentation of policies and their importance is negligible. Mason suggests this is what President George Washington warned Americans about when speaking of the “frightful despotism” of partisan loyalty and factions.

Mason cites Marilynn Brewer’s work to support her position that the more an individual’s multiple identities are in alignment with the larger group, the more intolerant and biased people are towards those outside the larger group. The less that the larger group reflects those multiple identities, the less this phenomenon manifests itself. For instance, someone who is Irish and Catholic is more likely to be xenophobic towards non-Irish people than someone who is Irish and Jewish (since these two identities are less often aligned in a larger group identity). (Mason, 103). She goes on to construct "sociopartisan" sorting scales, which set out to calculate the ”objective alignment” between nonparty social identities (whether they are “high” or “low” sorting), and the “subjective strength” of the nonparty social identities. Her thesis is that as the country grows more “sorted,” our capacity for fairly or empirically assessing one another is weakened.

Mason emphasizes that policy attitudes are not that effective in altering thinking towards Democrats and Republicans, which conflicts with the folk idea many have that our polarization is due to disputes about the conclusions to rational and measured weighing of policy options. Mason rejects that polarization is established by the mass electorate’s policy attitudes, per Alan Abramowitz, or that the polarization is limited to highly policy-polarized elites, per Morris Fiorina. Instead, she suggests political scientists focus on how citizens are prejudiced in their estimation of their political enemies, and it is social isolation and polarization driving these misapprehensions. Mason links this to the emotion of anger, which alongside the reduction of cross-cutting identities has weakened the ability to “reasonably discuss important issues at hand.”

Her solution is to address the emotional relationships among partisans and bridge understanding, as well as decentering the most “intransigent” well-sorted partisans from a central place in the political arena. She goes on to address the problem of how lower assortment is correlated with a lower level of activism, while those with high ideological and partisan overlap are more likely to engage in activism. She also shows how receiving threat-based messages is more likely to create political action in someone than a message with no threat. Mason distinguishes a vigorous, responsible, outcome-based political participation from the reactionary activism she is studying. She calls the latter “blind activism.” Political actions can feel good, producing a dopamine rush for the individual, without having any positive impact towards an individual’s desired political outcomes.

. . .

Anyway. Very interesting read.

[Ashleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the book that I needed but I actually couldn’t completely finish. I think we are all looking for answers in these dramatically political times and I was hoping that this book would be the fix.

She makes interesting points backed by research, but it felt more like reading a political science or social psychology dissertation. VERY academic. It could have been better if translated into laymen terms and perhaps had humor diffused throughout if you are trying to sell this to the masses.

And I think the masses *could use* a lot of this information!

My biggest takeaway from the book is that we have a natural tendency to divide ourselves into groups. Your views are influenced by the people and content you choose to be around. Today, we have pushed ourselves into these bubbles more so than ever before. So to defeat that, we need to break out of our bubbles and interact across groups more.

[Chad Schultz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard about this book on the NPR politics podcast. It relates to a topic I've been thinking about a lot lately: the differences between conservatives and liberals.

This book discusses a bit of the history to how our political parties became as polarized as they are today, and a number of studies and statistics. In my opinion, this book could benefit from fewer numbers and more stories.

A key refrain of the book is that conservatives and liberals tend to be very different in more than just political party, we actively avoid each other, and we would be better off if we mixed more - living in the same neighborhoods, going to the same social groups, and so on. I'm not convinced by that point, personally.

This is an intellectually interesting book, although it brings up a common frustration of mine: the news media and many book authors - typically liberal, educated and well-reasoned - make arguments for how we should stop fighting and learn to listen to the other side and be open to changing our point of view... in other words, they are saying what conservatives need to hear, but are speaking to a liberal audience, in a way designed to persuade liberals. Ironic.

[Kevin Whitaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dry and very dense, but a solid and rather concise overview of an increasingly important issue

Three takeaways:
1. Key thesis: Partisanship is no longer just a political identity, it is a “mega-social identity” comprising race, religion, class, geography, culture...
2. Polarization on specific political issues is not increasing (at least through ~2010ish, the time period available in the literature when this book was published), but the social distance between parties is increasing (causing increased partisan bias, activism, and emotional reactivity)
3. Why? Perhaps the increase in "choice" in general (what media to consume, where to live, what religion, etc.) allowed people to customize their social circles tightly, while at the same time parties became more ideologically consistent (making it easier for people to understand where they belong)

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a lot of interesting information in it, including data suggesting that people are often more divided by partisan identity than they are on issues, showing that they form opinions on issues in connection with experiences of belonging to party. The downside of the book, as with much political theory on polarization is that its normative argument is that the goal is to reduce polarization and increase compromise rather than to create structural changes in the society. Another way of reading the data, as she describes increasing social identity alignment with party identity is that the parties are becoming more reflective of real conflicts over material interests, thus making compromise more difficult.

[Kyle Weil · Rating 3 out of 5]

A more psychology-based version of Why We're Polarized, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity provides an academic-based perspective on how the US political system has shifted from an issue-based party system to an identity-based one. Mason uses a plethora of academic studies in conjunction with her own data analysis using YouGov and ANES survey data. The majority of the book distills these scientific analyses into insights regarding the US political system.

The main takeaway from Uncivil Agreement was that the Democrat and Republican parties have grown increasingly socially distinct from each other. As this distinctness increases, entitativity increases likewise. This creates ingroup-outgroup biases and behaviors where people view their party as the in-group. This engenders views of superiority and increases the animosity members feel to the outgroup. These group dynamics create a self-recurring cycle where people in the in-group are less likely to associate with those in the out-group. As social distance increases, they become more ingrained into the in-group. Members begin to identify with the ingroup and see attacks of their party as personal attacks, leading to increased reactivity and defensiveness. This increases emotional reactions towards the other group, namely anger and enthusiasm. These emotions are the main drivers behind political activism.

Since the focus is now on group identity, actual ideology or policy becomes less important. People care more about maintaining their group's superiority and winning at any cost, even if that leads to a worse-off outcome for the nation as a whole.

Overall, this was an informative albeit repetitive read. I definitely found some interesting nuggets of data (red states have higher fertility rates than blue states); however, this was more a technical read for those with a psych or data-science based background (it's not necessary but makes it an easier read). I would recommend Why We're Polarized over this but it's a good read if you want to learn about how group psychology affects our political system.

[Izzy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This sociologist’s collection of studies and so forth is presented in excruciating detail. The points she makes are valid, I am sure, although whether they are worth a book versus a column in the newspaper, may be the question. The congruence of anger, enthusiasm and social group homogeneity (sortedness, not sordidness) would predict Trump team memvership, and bode unwell for a thoughtfully functioning democratic republic. What she doesn’t get to are some of the main drivers out there: sound bites that for some are presented as ‘issues’, and manipulative propaganda and cynical as well as naive use of social media to create those emotions. It would have been interesting as well to read about her take on the impact of the COVID pandemic on support for consistently masking when in public to protect the community, and getting immunized for the same purpose vs support for individual rights, whatever the impact on one’s fellow members of the community. This book was probably written shortly after the unexpected victory of Trump, in 2016, and is trying to explain some of the sociological factors that led to his victory; it is already, I think dated to some degree by the specificity of the circumstances that led to its writing for example, it omits the increasing use of Gerrymandering and voter restriction, mostly by today’s Republican legislatures, as a means to hold onto power as long as possible, changing demographics be damned. It is a little tedious as well as tendentious, with all of her references, many to studies that are 70 years old or more, and which we are to take as still valid. All said though, it would make a very interesting NY Times Sunday magazine article, and its main points are probably well to be taken. The examples of the Government shutdowns of 1995 and 2013 are her best examples of winning for the sake of winning, the health of the nation or its people be damned.

[Richard Subber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mason offers penetrating analysis of the partisanship that is driving America deeper into political chaos. The evidence of her sincere, fact-based examination is that she conspicuously does not offer a "how to fix it" conclusion.
This is academic prose—not easy and not entertaining. It is, rather, abundant data, knowledgeably organized and carefully illuminated. Our national sociopolitical chaos is deeply rooted in human nature and frightening when exposed to conscious consideration.
Uncivil Agreement tells the despairing story: too much of our political wrangling and competition has little if anything to do with "issues" and "policies" and laws. Too much of our partisan political motivations is essentially human emotions—fear, anger, and antipathy to people who are outside one's own group.
National political figures like Trump and Sanders and others are—deliberately or inadvertently—stoking angers and fears instead of inviting citizens to vote responsibly for candidates and policies that will benefit them and also benefit the citizens of our country. Too much explosive partisanship is group-oriented (“my group” vs. “other groups”) and reinforced by social interactions and overlapping group identities that not only exclude but also demonize the “other” groups. It’s not simply racial prejudice, but that’s a big part of it.
Mason provides essential understanding of what's going on in the fearful tumult of American politics. If you read only the final chapter ("Can We Fix It?"), you will learn much of value.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

It might be unfair to give this three stars since it was written right after Trump came to office. But it wasn’t until the end of the book that she even addresses racism and it’s power to polarize. The rest of the time she treats democrats and republicans as equals, causing the same problems, though toward the end, she makes passing comments that the polarization is probably worse among republicans.

Given what we know now, republicans would rather die than take a shot, republicans would rather be economically ruined than provide health care and fair wages to themselves, republicans would rather have women and minorities die at the hands of their policies than feel bad that they are losing power, I feel like this book is rather dated. Literally republicans would throw away the whole republic to spite democrats. And I don’t see the opposite happening. Whatever thoughts about socialism democrats seem to have, the policies tend to popular, no one wants to give up their social security and medicare, their safe roads and safe drinking water. One comment she made at the end is that a better economy might heal the rift. It explains the whole policy of republicans to continually tank the economy regularly.

All that being said, the book was technical, written specifically for political scientists. It was outdated. And I didn’t think it took into account some of the real factors driving polarization.

[Jacquelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was assigned to read this book for a class on statistical measurements of democracy. I usually do not like class readings, but I gained a lot from this book. I think everyone should invest more time in learning about how political polarization can and may lead to the downfall of US Democracy.

The topics Mason discussed and the tables she featured were highly interesting, especially since it is difficult to find such comprehensive research on polarization and ingroup-outgroup relationships. I learned about how ingroup partisans with alighted identities are more likely to feel strong emotions for and serve as an activist for their party, even if they don’t feel strongly about the issues. I also learned about how strong partisans with aligned identities often do not prefer to socialize with members of the outgroup party.

The only downside of this book was its readability. I understand it was trying to tread the fine line between an academic work and a popular work, but sometimes I found it difficult to understand as someone who does not have a statistical background. I wish some concepts such as matched versus probability-based results were better explained. However, this may not have been Mason’s intent in the first place, as a book like this does tend to have a more academic audience.

All in all, I found this a very compelling academic read and learned quite a lot about polarization and it’s effect on democracy.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a powerful academic study of polarization. Mason begins with a puzzle--some prominent political scientists find us at the mass and elite level, desperately polarized, and increasingly so over the last 40 years. Others find not much growth in disputes over policies at the mass level, but find that elites are polarized. Mason argues that the key missing factor is emotional/social polarization, caused by the sorting of all our identities into partisan archetypes.

She amasses a mound of data to show that she is right, and is quite persuasive. She shows that those who are socially sorted (ie, belong to very few or no social groups who are more tilted to the opposite party) are far more polarized, far more extreme, more likely to be active in the party. And she finds that social sorting is increasing.

It is a book that is NOT necessarily for a general reader because of the large numbers of charts and tables and the numerous references to standard works of political science. But for the reader willing to tolerate those things (or attracted to them) this is a book worth your time.

In places, it is not particularly well written, and the prose seldom rises to the grandeur of the argument she is making. But these are quibbles. This is an incredibly important work of political science, and deserves the acclaim it has earned.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find the book interesting, but ultimately not useful. Lilliana, the author, has produced an incredible longitudinal dataset on the shifting political attitudes and identities in the U.S. Her general insight is that, in the past decade or so, the social identities affiliated with each political party are becoming more and more consistent, both ideologically and socially. It means that a republican is becoming less likely to also hold social identities that are commonly affiliated with the democratic party, and his or her life requires less interaction with democrats. And vice versa. The upside of identity purity and consistency is that partisans are more motivated to participate in politics. Everything else being equal, better mobilization and active participation should be better for democracy. But the downside is that the mobilization is based on the desire to "make my team win," instead of actually pursuing worthwhile policy goals for the general public. In fact, baed on Lilliana's dataset, it seems that policy preferences are a bad indicator of party identification and vice versa. That said, her causal and psychological explanation and recommended remedies are based on a fairly shaky set of social psychology that I would not bet on. This is ultimately a book with good quality set of data to describe now a familiar phenomenon: we are in the era of political tribalism.

[Luke VanHouten · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book's thesis was probably relevant when it released in 2018, but good luck explaining how socio-political polarization is supposedly the problem for the dictatorial overreaches of Trump's executive in his second term. Sure, polarization got him in office, and it within congress today is likely why he is so focused on expanding the power of the executive, but all of this makes Mason's book a pretty useless read in 2025. Her quant is mediocre and overbearing; I'm tired of reading political science books where the author over-relies on quant for their extremely obvious point adequately made clear by their words. Mason's somewhat inocuous bothsidesing through vague language is also frustrating. She'll refer to partisanship as a whole and then all of her examples will be Republicans breaking norms or doing other unhinged stuff, while Democrats keep trying to play fair. Ironically, the book about polarization would have been a better read had it been explicitly partisan.

3 stars for making a useful point when released
2 stars for being a boring, irrelevant slog today

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone interested in Political Psychology or anyone who would like to understand our current political climate. Also, for those who may be dissuaded by some of the reviews praising the book for its content but complaining it lacks some sort of narrative, one should recognize that this isn't necessarily a popular science book like Paul Bloom's "Against Empathy" or even Drew Weston's "The Political Brain." Liliana Mason began studying social and partisan sorting for her dissertation and this book reads more like an academic paper than a narrative for public consumption. The data analysis is necessary in order to provide evidence for her argument and should be understood as such. Nevertheless, if you're hesitant I would highly recommend you listen the both of her interviews on the "You are not so smart" podcast in order to get an idea as to whether or not you want to take the few hours to read this short but fruitful text.

[Bryan Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd give this a 5-star rating for relevance (in 2024 even more so than when it was written in 2018, because the polarization that constitutes the central thesis of the book is significantly greater now, after the pandemic and nearing the second Trump presidency), but a 3-star rating for readability. This is not one of those pacey "author goes on Colbert" pop political books (lest the cover art trick you, as it did, to some extent, me). There are A LOT of charts, and graphs, and regression analyses. 40% of the book (at least the Kindle version) is back matter/bibliography.

The central idea here is that the country has quickly become irreconcilably polarized, and that political partisanship is no longer about anything resembling "issues", but instead, all about "winning" (So much winning). We no longer see the opposite side as having any common interests at all, because we no longer associate with members of that side. There is a concluding chapter on possible solutions, but as the author admits, they aren't all that realistically possible - perhaps a large-scale global (or even national) challenge would unite us and remind us that we're all in this together. Maybe, like, a life-threatening pandemic? Yeah, no. We're just going bunker down in fortified positions.

So long America, it was a decent (but really, not great) run.