Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity
Categories: Politics & Social Sciences
Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (2018) is a book by political scientist Lilliana Mason. Mason shows how American partisan identities have fused with racial, religious and cultural identities, turning politics into a team sport. Using survey experiments and election data, she argues that social sorting, more than disagreement over taxes or spending bills, hardens hostility between Democrats and Republicans.
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- Fareed Zakaria: “My book of the week is "Uncivil Agreement" by Lilliana Mason. There are many books now explaining why Americans are so divided. This slender academic treatise strikes me as the most persuasive. It points out that our political identity has now been fused with our social identity. If you tell me who you voted for, I can tell you where you live, shop, eat and pray. That turns out to produce extreme polarization and gridlock.”