Democratic Civility in Times of Populism and Polarization

This paper demonstrates the potential of democratic civility as a means of safeguarding democracy in times of populism and polarization. I construe democratic civility as a normative framework for interactions among citizens in civil society, anchored in a commitment to relating to one’s fellow citizens as respected adversaries. Conceptualizing democratic civility in this way advances the scholarly literature in three ways. First, by anchoring norms of civility in disagreement, democratic civility allows us to appreciate the transformative potential of populism and polarization while retaining sufficient normative resources to restrain their challenge to democracy. Second, democratic civility highlights shortcomings in recent critical and radical contributions to debates on civility and strikes a balance between skeptics and proponents of civility. Finally, democratic civility reveals how scholarship on democratic defense and depolarization has neglected the merits of civil society and provides a normative blueprint for evaluating new avenues for safeguarding democracy.