As we have seen, political norms might be a fragile bulwark against a demagogue, but they also reflect a commitment to a set of shared rules and values that is an important indicator of the health of our politics. Without that commitment, preserving our freedoms will become a much more difficult and dangerous task. Political norms are essential to ensure the functioning of democratic institutions. Their importance is especially salient in high polarization settings, where opposing parties need restraints on opportunistic behavior in order to realize mutually beneficial outcomes. While the breakdown of norms has understandably received much attention, less is known about the nature of political norms in the first place. Governments can actively “manage” (try to influence) norms through such things as advertising campaigns, information blitzes, or appeals from respected figures. The critical enforcement mechanism for preserving political norms is ultimately the electorate.1
Edmund Burke argues that it is inner restraint that gives one liberty from his passion: “Men are qualified for liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” Burke argues that men who do not restrain their passions, but rather pursue them are bound to them. This binding to passion is not true freedom. Burke named four institutions that help the individual in his pursuit of true freedom: social, economic, political and religious institutions. These institutions help balance out the individual’s passions, and keep them in check. In doing so, they “provide the means for him to develop fully into the virtuous, free human being that God intended.” These institutions that have developed over time and throughout tradition have freed, rather than imprisoned, man. By providing the individual with the means for virtue, these institutions have shown man how to maintain dominion over his passions.
Norms constrain the party in power by defining when politicians can change policies, and their effect is mediated by institutions that provide “hard” constraints on politicians’ ability to implement preferred policies. We therefore conceive of political norms as informal rules that help preserve mutually beneficial policies. Norms such as constitutional conventions can limit presidential power, but to act contrary to a constitutional convention does not violate any formal rule. Besides institutional checks and balances, constitutional scholars have identified another crucial ingredient for securing long lasting democracies: the development of strong political norms of cooperation among political opponents. Some other group, like the mob or the public press, that had an unofficial but often great influence on public affairs, was called the “fourth estate.” In the 19th century, “fourth estate” came to refer exclusively to the press, and now it’s applied to all branches of the news media.
Though Trump promised to release the returns during his campaign, he repeatedly refused to release his tax return information throughout his presidency, the first major-party U.S. presidential candidate or president since 1976 to do so. The calls for Donald Trump to release his tax returns began early during the campaign and never really let up. It was easy to assume he eventually would make good on his promises to turn them over. Every president since Jimmy Carter had released his taxes; Trump would have to do the same, right? What we’ve learned since then, of course, is that Trump didn’t have to reveal anything. The Constitution doesn’t require disclosure; plenty of federal officials need to submit their tax returns to the Senate, but not the president. Every American president or nominee since Richard Nixon had released his or her tax returns. It’s just a norm.
One of the crucial lessons of the past year, turns out, is just how much of American politics is governed not by written law, but by norms like these. Social scientists have long understood the importance of norms – the unwritten rules and conventions that shape political behavior – but our political system has largely taken them for granted. As a result, we have been slow to recognize how vulnerable these informal constraints on power are to someone who refuses to follow rules that everyone else respects. Trump’s assault on norms started during the campaign, when he encouraged violence among his supporters, attacked the ethnicity of a federal judge (a double norm violation) and called for the imprisonment of his opponent. Once he was elected, many observers assumed this pattern would cease: Surely there are constraints on this kind of behavior from the president.
Severe polarization damages all institutions essential to democracy. It routinely undermines the independence of the judiciary, as politicians attack the courts as biased or pack them with loyalists. It reduces legislatures either to gridlock or to a rubberstamp function. In presidential systems, it frequently leads to the abuse of executive powers and promotes the toxic view that the president represents only his or her supporters, rather than the country as a whole. Perhaps most fundamentally, polarization shatters informal but crucial norms of tolerance and moderation – like conceding peacefully after an electoral defeat – that keep political competition within bounds. Polarization also reverberates throughout the society as whole, poisoning everyday interactions and relationships. Partisan conflict takes a heavy toll on civil society as well, often leading to the demonization of activists and human rights defenders. More seriously still, divisions can contribute to a spike in hate crimes and political violence.
When democracy breaks down, it typically takes many years, often decades, to reverse the downward spiral. In the process, violence and corruption typically flourish, and talent and wealth flee to more stable countries, undermining national prosperity. It is not just venerated institutions and norms that are at risk – it is the future national standing, strength, and ability to compete globally. Democracy rests on certain elemental institutional and normative conditions. Elections must be neutrally and fairly administered. They must be free of manipulation. Every citizen who is qualified must have an equal right to vote, unhindered by obstruction. And when they lose elections, political parties and their candidates and supporters must be willing to accept defeat and acknowledge the legitimacy of the outcome. The refusal of prominent Republicans to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, and the anti-democratic laws adopted (or approaching adoption) in Republican-controlled states – violate these principles.
Journalism has long been regarded as an important force in government, so vital to the functioning of a democracy that it has been portrayed as an integral component of democracy itself. In 1841, Thomas Carlyle wrote, “Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all”. The fact of the matter is that democracy requires informed citizens. No governing body can be expected to operate well without knowledge of the issues on which it is to rule, and rule by the people entails that the people should be informed. In a representative democracy, the role of the press is twofold: it both informs citizens and sets up a feedback loop between the government and voters. Without the press, the feedback loop is broken and the government is no longer accountable to the people. The press is therefore of the utmost importance in a representative democracy.
Journalism serves as a public ‘watchdog’ by monitoring the political process in order to ensure that politicians carry out voters’ wishes, and that they don’t abuse their positions. Journalism helps level the playing field by amplifying the voices of those who do not have the means to dominate the marketplace of ideas. The exchange of viewpoints through debate to help citizens reach conclusions. It’s Journalism’s job to provide citizens with a range of these such viewpoints. The media are a source of information; politicians depend on it for pure information and they can profit from the momentum generated by media information. The idea that political elites and institutions follow the media, and that the media thus possess at least some form of political power means that media coverage affects the political agenda is empirically proven in both majoritarian and in proportional democracies.
The media can create cognitive dissonance, the feeling of uncomfortable tension, which comes from holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time. The cult of individualism makes us particularly prone to cognitive dissonance because our personal identity is very important. We see ourselves as stable self-contained beings. However, advertising that we may be missing something, or not fitting in creates anxiety. Television tends to feed an information diet (of self-approval) similar to consuming too much sugar inducing short-term euphoria and happiness while distracting from reality. The weakness of the mass media remains an inability to transmit tacit knowledge and an inability to deal with complex issues, so they tend to focus on the unusual or sensational, and the promotion of anxiety and fear. Confirmation-bias draws us in to the one-sided outlets, and the cognitive dissonance pushes us away from conflicting ideas. Cognitive dissonance stops us from hearing other opinions that conflict.
Misinformation is not like a plumbing problem you fix. It is a social condition, like crime, that you must constantly monitor and adjust to, observes Tom Rosenstiel. Cognitive biases reflect mental patterns that can lead people to form beliefs or make decisions that do not reflect an objective and thorough assessment of the facts. For instance, people tend to seek out information that confirms pre-existing beliefs and reject information that challenges those beliefs. This bias is the tendency in all of us to believe stories that reinforce our convictions – and the stronger the convictions, the more powerfully the person feels the pull of the confirmation bias. The FTC has accused Facebook of breaking antitrust law by gobbling up many smaller social media start-ups and acquiring several large, well-established competitors, in what amounts to a concerted effort to build a social media monopoly.
The concept of information manipulation has largely remained the same through time; however, the speed at which it spreads and the magnitude of influence it holds today makes it very different from its historical counterpart. Today established political parties are using social media to spread disinformation, suppress political participation, and undermine oppositional parties. With every click, like and follow, we leave our digital footprints all across social media and the web. This is a fertile ground for deception – technology that leverages your online activities combined with the power of big data, supercomputing and artificial intelligence. Lies are always coercive for the one being lied to: Lies seek to persuade not by appealing to our freedom to choose but by compelling us via deception to narrow our field of choice. As such, lies give power to the liar and take power away from the persons being lied to. In turn, this shift in power accumulates over the course of repeated lies.
The political landscape has been transformed by social media which often works to change or influence opinions when it comes to political views because of the abundance of ideas, thoughts, and opinions circulating through the social media platform. This transformation has resulted in an increased rise of populism around the world. Subsequently, the active role of the audience as made possible by social media has become a great opportunity for populist actors to spread their political messages or agendas. The role of news and social media is central to the populism movement because it represents political strategies in novel and exciting forms. Hence, sharing messages in social networks impacts an individual’s emotions, which ultimately results in actual real-world actions. This finding serves to rule out any naïve understanding of social networks as a mere way of contacting “old friends” and family members or in positioning commercial brands.
The Trump era has been defined by its obliteration of political norms, the accepted way for the country to be governed, elections to be conducted, and political rivals to treat one another. Many of Trump’s critics have suggested that with his disregard for the norms and institutions of American politics, he’s the real anarchist. Once in power, populists like Trump seek to limit the ability of citizens to demand that elected representatives act responsibly and transparently. Yes, Donald Trump flouted norms that exist for good reason and that ought to be maintained. What Trump brought attention to was political institutions and norms are more fragile than many thought. An active civil society depends on active, engaged citizens committed to liberal democracy. Citizens who care about norms and values need to be willing to organize, stand up to power and use their voice to express discontent, and hold elected representatives to high moral standards.
1Political Norms, Giovanna M. Invernizzi, Michael M. Ting, (September 2, 2020) https://giovannainvernizzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Norms.pdf