research paper on political thought

Political Thought

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• Puqu Wang 7  

Part of the book series: Interests Politics Series ((IPS))

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The so-called “thought” should have two meanings, that is, the thought activity as a process and the thought idea as a result. The former can be interpreted as “thinking,” while the latter can be summarized as “viewpoint,” “idea,” and “opinion.”

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George Holland Sabine, A History of Political Theory, Vol. 1, The Commercial Press, 1986, p. 3.

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Selected Works of Tsetung, Vol. 2, People’s Publishing House, 1991, p. 687.

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Selected Works of Marx and Engels Vol. 4. People’s Publishing House, 1995, p. 704.

Selected Works of Tsetung, Vol. 5, People’s Publishing House, 1977, p. 244.

Selected Works of Marx and Engels Vol. 1. People’s Publishing House, 1995, p. 67.

Complete Works of Marx and Engels Vol. 3. People’s Publishing House, 2002, p. 527.

Complete Works of Marx and Engels Vol. 42. People’s Publishing House, 1979, p. 131.

Selected Works of Marx and Engels Vol. 1. People’s Publishing House, 1995, p. 4.

XI JINPING THE GOVERNANCE OF CHINA, Foreign Language Press, 2014, p. 168.

David Easton. (1985). The Decline of Modern Political Theory. The Commercial Press, p. 399.

Alan C. Isaak. (1987), Scope and Methods of Political Science. Zhejiang People’s Publishing House, p. 4.

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Xi Jinping: Decisively Win the Building of a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects, and Win the Great Victory of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era-A Report at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, People’s Daily (October 28, 2017).

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Wang, P. (2022). Political Thought. In: Principle of Interest Politics. Interests Politics Series . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3963-1_14

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Political Philosophy Research Paper Topics

This page provides a comprehensive list of political philosophy research paper topics that aim to guide students through the vast expanse of ideas, theories, and debates that have influenced political thought over the ages. Political philosophy, with its emphasis on societal structures, rights, justice, and governance, offers a rich tapestry of subjects for academic exploration. Navigating these topics is crucial for understanding the foundational principles that have dictated and continue to shape political systems worldwide.

100 Political Philosophy Research Paper Topics

Political philosophy holds an esteemed position in the vast realm of philosophical inquiry, examining the fundamental nature of governance, rights, freedom, and societal structures. As societies evolve, so too does the need for a deepened understanding of the principles that guide them. Diving into political philosophy research paper topics is more than an academic exercise; it’s an exploration into the fabric of our collective societal heritage and a forecast of future trajectories.

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• Origin and evolution of political thought.
• Natural rights and their influence on politics.
• The role of reason in political decision-making.
• The concept of the common good.
• Pluralism and its implications.
• Classical vs. modern political philosophies.
• The notion of political obligation.
• Autonomy and its role in politics.
• Political philosophy and the question of human nature.
• Liberty, equality, and their tensions.
• Rousseau’s Social Contract and the general will.
• Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and property rights.
• Hobbes’ Leviathan and the necessity of a strong sovereign.
• Rawls’ theory of justice and the veil of ignorance.
• Scanlon’s contractualism.
• Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement.
• Contemporary criticisms of social contract theories.
• The role of trust in social contracts.
• Feminist perspectives on the social contract.
• The social contract and non-Western philosophies.
• Classical principles of Athenian democracy.
• Modern representative democracies.
• Merits and criticisms of autocratic governance.
• The rise and implications of technocratic governance.
• Participatory vs. deliberative democracy.
• The challenges of direct democracy.
• Monarchies and their evolving roles.
• Theocracy and its place in modern politics.
• Tribal and indigenous governance structures.
• Supranational entities and global governance.
• The philosophical foundations of human rights.
• Balancing individual freedom and collective responsibility.
• Limitations and responsibilities of free speech.
• Rights to privacy in the digital age.
• Economic rights and their implications.
• Rights of marginalized and indigenous groups.
• Environmental rights and intergenerational justice.
• Philosophical debates on freedom vs. security.
• The right to revolt and civil disobedience.
• Duties and the scope of global responsibilities.
• Socratic views on governance and society.
• Medieval political thought and the divine right.
• Enlightenment thinkers and the rise of republicanism.
• Fascist and Nazi political philosophies.
• Post-colonial political thought.
• Marxism and its global implications.
• Feminist political philosophies through history.
• Confucianism and East Asian political thought.
• African Ubuntu philosophy and politics.
• The political thought of the American Founding Fathers.
• Rawls’ Theory of Justice.
• Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
• Distributive vs. commutative justice.
• The gendered perspective on justice.
• Restorative and retributive justice.
• The philosophy of social and economic equality.
• Capability approach to justice.
• The philosophical foundations of affirmative action.
• Intersecting oppressions and justice.
• The role of luck in justice and fairness debates.
• Classical conceptions of political power.
• Weber’s tripartite classification of authority.
• The problem of political obligation.
• Foucault’s power/knowledge thesis.
• Challenges to political legitimacy.
• The philosophical underpinnings of civil resistance.
• Power dynamics in international relations.
• The concept of soft power.
• Critical theory and power structures.
• The philosophy behind sovereign immunity.
• Just War theory and its critiques.
• Philosophical perspectives on nuclear deterrence.
• Humanitarian interventions and their ethical implications.
• Realism vs. liberalism in international politics.
• Kant’s Perpetual Peace and modern peace theories.
• The politics and philosophy of global institutions.
• Philosophical underpinnings of international law.
• Terrorism, radicalism, and their challenges to political philosophy.
• The ethics of drone warfare.
• Philosophical discussions on global migration and borders.
• Philosophical defenses and critiques of capitalism.
• Marxist theory and its contemporary relevance.
• The evolution and varieties of socialism.
• Anarchist philosophies and critiques of the state.
• Fascism and its ideological roots.
• Libertarianism: principles and criticisms.
• Environmental political philosophies.
• Feminist political ideologies.
• Postmodern political thought.
• The future of neoliberalism.
• Contemporary Issues and Challenges in Political Philosophy.
• The philosophical implications of populism.
• Identity politics and its critiques.
• Political philosophy in the age of information.
• Climate change and political responsibilities.
• Bioethics, technology, and governance.
• Challenges and opportunities of globalism.
• Philosophical perspectives on nationalism.
• The future of democracy in a digital age.
• The rights and roles of AI in politics.
• The political implications of post-truth.

As we delve into the labyrinth of political philosophy research paper topics, we find ourselves confronted with a vast array of ideas, theories, and questions that have shaped societies for millennia. The dynamic interplay of power, rights, governance, and ethics remains as relevant today as it did in the days of Plato and Aristotle. Engaging with these topics is more than an academic endeavor—it’s a journey into the heart of what it means to be human, to be a citizen, and to be a part of the ever-evolving story of civilization. The timeless value of political philosophy serves as a testament to its enduring influence and the essential role it plays in our collective narrative.

The Range of Political Philosophy Research Paper Topics

Introduction

The annals of Western thought have been significantly shaped by the enduring influence of political philosophy. From the early musings of Socratic dialogues to the nuanced debates in contemporary think tanks, political philosophy provides a compass by which societies navigate the turbulent waters of governance, rights, and justice.

Overview of the Historical Evolution of Political Philosophy

Political philosophy, as a distinct discipline, has its roots in ancient civilizations. Early Greek thinkers, notably Plato and Aristotle, laid the groundwork for many debates that persist today. Their considerations of the ideal state, justice, and the nature of leadership set the stage for millennia of discourse. This classical foundation was built upon during the Roman era by philosophers like Cicero and later during the Enlightenment by figures such as Locke, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. Their discussions on social contracts, individual rights, and the separation of powers have left an indelible mark on Western political systems.

The 19th and 20th centuries ushered in a plethora of new ideologies, spurred by industrialization, wars, and revolutions. Thinkers like Marx and Engels critiqued capitalism and introduced revolutionary socialist ideals. Concurrently, the horrors of war led to reflections on nationalism, imperialism, and the ethics of conflict, with philosophers like Hannah Arendt dissecting the roots of totalitarianism and the banality of evil.

Relevance of Political Philosophy Research Paper Topics

A venture into political philosophy research paper topics offers a unique prism through which one can comprehend the evolution and diversity of human governance. Every political system, from monarchies to democracies, springs from a foundational philosophical rationale. For instance, understanding the American Revolution and its aftermath is enriched by a grasp of Lockean principles of life, liberty, and property. Similarly, dissecting the rise and fall of Soviet communism is more insightful when one considers Marxist-Leninist tenets.

Moreover, as globalization melds East and West, there’s an increasing importance in understanding non-Western political philosophies. Confucianism’s influence on East Asian governance models, or the Ubuntu philosophy’s impact on African communal values, are testament to the vast expanse of political philosophical thought.

Contemporary Significance and Challenges Addressed by Political Philosophy

Today, the world is no less complex than it was for our philosophical forebears. We grapple with issues of globalism vs. nationalism, the role of AI in governance, and the sociopolitical ramifications of climate change. These challenges necessitate a philosophical lens. For instance, debates on global migration are enriched by applying Rawlsian principles of justice. Similarly, the ethical implications of surveillance in our digital age can be assessed through Foucauldian concepts of power dynamics.

Political philosophy research paper topics also offer avenues to dissect newer ideologies and movements. The rise of populism in various parts of the world, debates surrounding identity politics, and the philosophical underpinnings of the alt-right or antifa movements provide rich grounds for exploration.

The Role of Political Philosophy in Shaping Public Opinion, Policy-making, and Societal Norms

While often regarded as a high-brow academic pursuit, political philosophy is intrinsically tied to the pulse of the street. The philosophical convictions of thinkers often trickle down to shape public opinion and, by extension, influence policy-making. For instance, the principles articulated in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty inform contemporary discussions on free speech and societal limits.

Additionally, societal norms, like our collective views on privacy, freedom, or equality, are continually shaped by ongoing philosophical discourses. The feminist philosophical movement, for example, has had tangible impacts, reshaping societal norms and pushing for policy changes in areas like workplace rights, reproductive health, and representation.

As the global landscape undergoes rapid and unpredictable shifts, the significance of political philosophy research paper topics becomes ever more pronounced. These topics, rooted in age-old debates yet adaptable to contemporary quandaries, provide invaluable tools for dissecting, understanding, and ultimately shaping the world around us. In a globalized, digitized age, political philosophy remains a beacon, illuminating the path for governance, societal values, and human rights. Its timeless relevance stands as a testament to the depth and breadth of issues it addresses, guiding societies past, present, and future.

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The relevance of political thought to contemporary global challenges.

By: Natasha Vincent

December 20, 2019

I write this post as a follow-up to my first post titled “ An Uncomfortable but Pertinent Introspection into Privilege .” During my first eight-week term at Oxford, I took the Advanced Paper in Theories of Justice as one of my two tutorials for the term. The bespoke course, typically taken by philosophy and/or politics undergraduates, aimed to examine the principles of justice as established by philosophers such as John Rawls. Each week, we examined how these principles applied to different themes and various groups of individuals, from the disabled to future generations.

Academic learning at the undergraduate level at Oxford entails much more individual learning than at Georgetown. I don’t have structured classes here per se, but instead, I have one tutorial a week for each of my two courses in the term. For each tutorial, I had to produce an essay of around 2,000 words, and I spent most of my time reading books and journal articles, delving into different arguments before writing my essay. 

Spending most of my time reading required a lot of discipline to stay focused and, more often than not, my mind drifted off to other passing thoughts. A recurring one, however, was wondering why I was studying the theoretical aspects of justice, which then led to a sort of frustration upon a superficial realization that this would have limited utility in real-world policy. My reasoning went something like this: “If politicians neither quote Rawls nor appeal to his principles of justice when dealing with injustice, then what use is this stuff, really?” 

Then came the tutorial in which my tutorial partner and I went to our tutor’s room at Balliol College, one of Oxford’s oldest colleges. There, our essays for each tutorial were critiqued and our tutor pushed us to probe deeper. I felt somewhat uncomfortable sitting in this room at Balliol which had an old charm to it, discussing these principles of justice without focusing much on their application to contemporary politics. I subconsciously put a limit on how much effort I put into truly understanding justice through the lens of philosophy. Simply put, if these principles of an ideal society did not apply in the real world, I was not buying it.

Admittedly, I lost interest in the tutorial for a good three weeks. In an effort to save myself from further embarrassment, I started reading about the methodology behind political philosophy and began to realize how relevant the field actually is to the real world. Political philosophy offers normative insights on what government should be and how we can apply those principles to create a just society. Just because a chasm exists between political philosophy and actual politics does not mean that political thought exists in its own bubble or that it should be relegated to the past. 

Another of my initial critiques is that political philosophers hail from predominantly privileged, western European backgrounds. The discipline also has inherent institutional and cultural biases, but to dismiss it by virtue of not being entirely representative of global demographics and inclusive of other cultures does not change the status quo; it simply neglects the fact that there is a rich body of scholarship that can be adapted to today’s context. 

I say this as a person of color. One of the themes we discussed was colonialism; my ancestors from India certainly encountered historic injustices during the age of the British Empire, but I do think that we need some nuance when discussing postcolonialism. Too often, postcolonial dialogue engages in an oversimplification and a generalized condemnation of “white people,” without critically analyzing the intricacies of history—which instead gives way to the popular rhetoric of contemporary social movements in postcolonial societies that fails to achieve institutional reform.

Things changed for the better after I had a more positive outlook on the tutorial, and I began to truly enjoy what I was studying. I am intrigued to integrate these philosophical insights to my next tutorials at Oxford and my courses during my senior year at Georgetown—in the hopes of learning more about how the gap between political theory and actual politics isn’t as far as we think it is.

About the Author

Natasha Vincent

Natasha Vincent (SFS'21) graduated from the School of Foreign Service in Qatar in 2021, with a major in international politics and a minor in Arabic. Natasha studied at St. Catherine's College in Oxford for the 2019-2020 academic year and shared her insights on British culture through the Junior Year Abroad Network.

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Political Thought

The foundations of the way in which people think about political life can be reconstructed and assessed through three primary models of foundations of political thought. These include the classical antiquity model, the medieval model, and the modern one. Contemporary perspectives in political science continue to question the foundations of political power, and sustain relevancy in modern society.

Political Thought in Greek Classical Antiquity

It is often stated that both philosophy and democracy were born in ancient Greece between the seventh and the fifth centuries BCE. In particular, the city-state of Athens in the fifth century BCE presents a model of democracy that continues to exercise its influence today. Although the thesis of the Greek birth of philosophy and democracy has recently been subject to much criticism by pointing toward the existence of multiple civilizations, the political thought then elaborated has nevertheless been highly influential in Western thinking. It, legitimately, laid the foundations for Western political thought.

The classical model is based on a strong conception of the common good. Against the challenge of the Sophists, who argued that politics and language result from mere conventions, the major thinkers of the classical antiquity argued that political life aims to attain the good within the community. The good of each human being was not seen as opposed to that of the community, but as homogeneous with it. This is because the political life was conceived as the natural condition for human beings, as the result of their specific place in the cosmos. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) famously argued that the human being is a political animal by nature. Living in common is so innate that Aristotle stated that those who can live outside political communities are either beasts or gods.

Plato (427–347 BCE), Aristotle’s master, had put forward similar views. In his Republic, living in common is the result of the very nature of human beings, who are not enough to themselves and need the collaboration of others to provide for their own needs. The society derives from a division of labor, with each person doing only one thing at the time, according to natural disposition, and relying on others for the necessities of life. Politics is thus the supreme and most important art, and its task is that of orienting all the other arts and therefore also the life of the community as a whole.

This is why Plato asserted that rulers must be philosophers or philosophers must become rulers. A just society is a society where every segment of the society performs its specific task in harmony with the others. Like the soul must be ruled by reason, so the polity must be ruled by philosophers, who are the only individuals who know the common good and can therefore orient the whole society toward its attainment. Philosophers do not seek material goods and honors, but only pursue the good of the community.

Aristotle followed his master in this view and also maintained that the political community aims to attain the common good. Aristotle gave this thesis a strong teleological connotation: since the human being is by nature a political being, the state comes before the individual itself. Conceptually speaking, the whole of a body comes before its parts, because without the whole, it does not make sense to speak of a hand or a foot. In his view, equally natural is the relationship of subordination between slaves and masters, women and men. As within the individual the soul dominates the body, so men dominate women and the most intelligent men dominate those who have only physical force and can therefore serve as slaves.

With the decline of the political system of the city-states and the rise of the large empires and monarchies of antiquity, a new model began to emerge. Greek democracy was based on the systematic exclusion of women and slaves from politics. Stoics argued that every human being is endowed with reason, and thus implicitly criticized Aristotle’s conception of natural subordination. Furthermore, in contrast to the ideal of the city-state or polis, they supported the ideal of a cosmopolis where all people can live in peace because they are all equally subject to the law of reason.

The Medieval Model of Political Thought

The rise of Christianity marked a rupture with the classical model, but an element of continuity also characterized the shift. This continuity occurs because both models are based on the idea that politics derives from the specific place of human beings in the cosmos, and therefore conceives of politics in a teleological way. The major difference is that the ordering principle is no longer a reason immanent to the cosmos itself, but the transcendent will of the God of Christianity. This generates problems specific to the medieval model.

In this respect, the Christian message stands in contrast to the classical model. Whilst the latter emphasized force and intelligence and argued for the superiority of the strong over the weak, the Christian message offers a subversion of these values, by evaluating weakness and the equality of all individual human beings in the face of the omnipotence of God. Although the message has a potentially revolutionary content, Christendom did not fully realize this message in political terms. The prevailing idea is that the full equality is an ideal to be realized in the spiritual world, but not necessarily in the earthly one. Jesus’s saying, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” became the object of a lively debate about the relationship between Christianity and secular authority.

In particular, after the creation of a sacred Roman Empire, the problem became that of the relationship between the authority of the emperor and that of the pope. Questions arose whether the temporal authority of the ruler was autonomous, or whether the spiritual autonomy of the pope superseded it. For highly religious thinkers, the prevailing idea is that of the superiority of spiritual authority. Differences, however, emerge with regard to the degree of autonomy recognized in the temporal authority and politics.

According to Saint Augustine (354–430 CE), for instance, without the Christian message, there cannot be justice, and, without justice, there cannot be a legitimate polity. As he argued in the fourth book of his De Civitate Dei, without Christian justice there cannot be a union of citizens under law and for the attainment of the common good. As he provocatively puts it, without justice, a political community is in no way different from a mere association of bandits, which are united just to burgle and then share the loot. Although Augustine’s position was more nuanced on this point, his name became associated with the view of the subordination of temporal power to the spiritual one.

After the diffusion of the Latin translation of Artistole’s Politics, a different position emerges. Authors who had been inspired by Aristotle, such as Thomas Aquinas and Marsilius of Padua, recognized the autonomy of political power. Following Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274) argued that politics is deeply rooted in human nature. In a more radical way, Marsilius of Padua (1275–1343) argued that peace cannot be guaranteed unless political authority is recognized without any superior power. As he wrote in his Defensor Pacis, the law must derive from the will of the citizens or of the prevailing part—both in quantitative and qualitative senses. By rooting the law in the will of individual human beings, Marsilius’s theory anticipates the modern model.

Political Thought in The Modern Age

The modern model stands in contrast to both the classical and the medieval one. While the latter grounded politics in the idea of a cosmos teleological ordered for the common good, where every being is assigned its specific place in the hierarchical chain of beings, the modern model places the foundations of politics in the will of individual human beings. The ancient world is by nature closed and hierarchically ordered, yet the world depicted by the modern science is open and infinite, so that human beings can stand in a position of free equals within it.

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) offers the clearest view on this. His political philosophy accompanied the emergence of the modern system of sovereign states, providing a powerful justification for its existence. Hobbes’s phrase autoritas non veritas facit legem (it is the authority and not the truth that makes the law) marks the decline of a model of political thought that had prevailed for centuries. The foundation of political power consists no longer of pursuing a common good, but in the will of the citizens themselves. According to Hobbes, and all the other thinkers who endorse the contractarian model, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and John Locke (1632–1704), a contract that human beings stipulate among themselves—in order to exist in the natural condition of absence of government—justifies political power. Through such a contract, human beings cede part, or all, of their sovereignty to a common power in order to receive from it the protection of their fundamental rights. The conception of such rights varies in the different thinkers, ranging from the mere right to survival (Hobbes), to political freedom (Rousseau), or to private property (Locke), as well as diverge in the forms of government they envisage—an absolutist (Hobbes), a democratic (Rousseau), and liberal one (Locke).

Notwithstanding all those differences, which ultimately derive from their different conceptions of the state of nature, understood as a brutal condition of potential perpetual war (Hobbes) or as a condition where the rights are simply not enough guaranteed (Locke), all these thinkers share the premise that political power derives from the will of individuals. The contractarian model of political order accompanied the rise of European modernity, with its institutions of an emergent system of sovereign states and capitalist economy. While the model did not fail to provoke severe criticism, it also exercised a deep influence on Western political thought.

The criticism raised by German idealists at the beginning of the nineteenth century contributed to the crisis of the contractarian model. In particular, Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) sharply criticized contractarianism for grounding the state in the contract—a category of private law. In his view, grounding the existence of the state in the mere accidental encounter of individual wills amounts to misunderstanding its deeply ethical nature. The state is the reality of an ethical idea, the culminating point of the objective spirit of an epoch. As such, it transcends, in the sense of the German aufheben, not just private law and morality, but also other inferior incarnations of the objective spirit such as the family and civil society.

Hegel thus endorsed the idea of a separation between the civil society and the state—a view that still exercises its influence today. Whilst contractarian thinkers work with the simple opposition between a state of nature and a civil society, thinkers influenced by Hegel maintain a sharp separation between the two. In his critique of the bourgeois society, Karl Marx (1818–1883) radicalized such a distinction by arguing that the state is part of a superstructure which is separated from, but also reflects the relationships of, domination taking place in the economic structure: the exploitation of the proletariat by a capitalist bourgeoisie. In this view, political power is a means for the bourgeoisie to sustain its system of exploitation, and contractarian theories are the mere ideological covering of such a system of exploitation.

The rise of the capitalist economy was accompanied by a new awareness of the deep economic inequalities and forms of exploitation that sustained it. Radical thinkers such as socialists and anarchists saw in political power a means for domination to be expropriated and put in the hands of the proletariat (communism) or to be abolished altogether (anarchism). Anarchism represents the most radical answer to the question of what constitutes the foundation of political power. In this view, the state always implies a form of asymmetry of power so that a minority of the people—those who are part of the state apparatus—dominate over a majority. Anarchists, therefore, see no possible reform of the system of the sovereign states: it must be abolished. In their place, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) and Michail Bakunin (1814–1876) proposed a noncoercive political system based on the free federal associations deriving from the specific needs of the society. In their view, only through a bottom-up organization of society can the freedom of individuals be guaranteed.

Contemporary Trends in Political Thought

A useful way to group contemporary approaches is according to the answer given to the question regarding whether there are foundations for political power. Among those who provide a positive answer, and therefore stand in the tradition of modern political thought, is John Rawls. By reviving the contractarian model after a few centuries of decadence, Rawls argued that a just society is the society that people would chose if put in an hypothetical original position. In this place, known as the veil of ignorance, they do not know their specific position in the society, their comprehensive doctrines, and natural talents. In Rawls’s view, such a society would be based on two principles that provide for (1) the maximum freedom for every individual compatible with a similar system for all, and (2) the arrangement of social and economic inequalities so that they are both to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and attached to offices and positions open to all.

While Rawls’s theory envisages a method for the discovery and the justification of the just form of political power, postmodern thinkers tend to see no possible foundations for it. By criticizing the very attempt to provide rational foundations for the existence of political power, postmodern thinkers argue that the Western canon of political theory is nothing but a myth—the myth of the white man. The very attempt to provide rational foundations for the existence of political power is seen as a result of a logo centric practice, which is the hallmark of Western tradition. Together with questioning the possibility of rational foundations, the merit of postmodernism has been that of casting doubts on the adequacy of the Western models of political thought as a whole. In a world that must accommodate diversity and pluralism of histories and worldviews, there is the possibility that the Western canon is only one among many possible stories.

An intermediate answer is that of authors who work in the tradition of a critical theory of society. Jürgen Habermas’s deliberative democracy attempts to propose a form of democracy that can account for the possibility of public deliberation in a postmetaphysical setting and a condition of pluralism. His attempt to ground democracy in the ideal conditions for speech and deliberation has attracted so much attention that some authors have spoken of a deliberative turn in political philosophy.

The activity of boundary questioning thus deeply contributed to repositioning the foundations of political thought. In a global age, it is not only the possibility of foundations of political thought that is called into question, but also that of its traditional boundaries. Post statist political theory questions the boundaries between the sovereign states by arguing that in a globalizing world, a form of democracy beyond the traditional state boundaries must be found. Feminist political theory questions the traditional boundaries between the public and the private sphere by arguing that this is a means for perpetrating the domination of males in the former and segregation of women in the latter. Finally, there is a variegated set of approaches that point toward a new form of green political theory. Such approaches question traditional ways of conceiving the boundaries between politics and the natural environment, arguing that the latter is not the mere background of the former. In an epoch of artificially induced natural catastrophes, the foundations of political thought must be rethought in order to assure both justice among human beings and their survival.

References:

• Bakunin, Mikhail. Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the Activist-founder of World Anarchism. New York:Vintage Books, 1972.
• Dryzek, John S., Bonnie Honig, and Anne Phillips, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Gaus, Gerald F., and Chandran Kukathas, eds. Handbook of Political Theory. London: Sage Publications, 2004.
• Goodin, Robert E., Phillip Pettit, and Thomas Pogge, eds. A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007.
• Habermas, Jürgen. Between Facts and Norms. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992.
• Hegel, Georg W. F. Elements of a Philosophy of Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• Hobbes,Thomas. Leviathan. London: Penguin Books, 1985.
• Lipset, Seymour Martin, ed. Political Philosophy: Theories, Thinkers, and Concepts. Washington D.C: CQ Press, 2001.
• Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
• Miller, David, ed. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.
• Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. Selected Writings. London: Macmillan, 1970
• . Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• Tucker, Robert C. The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. New York:W.W. Norton, 1978.
• White, Stephen K., and Donals Moon. What Is Political Theory? London: Sage Publications, 2004.

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Loyola University Chicago

Department of philosophy.

PHIL 327: Topics in Political Philosophy

The Generic Catalog Description

This course will concentrate on a specific issue in political philosophy. Typical topics include civil disobedience, war and peace, theories of political revolution, theories of utopia, and punishment and criminal justice.

PHIL 327: Topics in Political Philosophy: Liberalism and Feminism (class is linked with Dr. Ingram's PHIL 480)

This course will examine the liberal and feminist traditions in contemporary social and political philosophy.  We will begin by considering the foundational liberal social contract theory of John Rawls.  We will then address the ways that feminists have incorporated and rejected liberal thought within their theories of justice and care.  The course will also address radical feminist approaches that question the dominant liberal rights-based framework.  We will consider issues such as distributive justice and the family, the gendered basis for care and caregiving, multiculturalism and feminism, and liberal versus radical feminist positions on pornography.  Readings for the course will draw from the Anglo-American tradition in philosophy, possibly including works by authors such as John Rawls, Susan Moller Okin, Martha Nussbaum, Eva Kittay, Catharine MacKinnon, and Shulamith Firestone.

PHIL 327: Topics in Political Philosophy: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy

How should we, as social beings, live together?  This is the fundamental question of political philosophy.  This course will address this question directly.  Following the example of Plato, we will think about an Ideal Society.  Specifically, we will ask, given the knowledge and resources that we possess, what is the best form of society that we, in the United States today, might construct? 

Virtually everyone would agree as to the basic political structure of our ideal society.  It should be a democracy.  Democracy has proven itself to be a durable and contagious ideal.  The history of the past several centuries has witnessed a steady deepening of democracy to include all citizens of a society and a steady spread of democracy--at least as an ideal--throughout the world.

There may be agreement about political structure, at least in broad outline, but there is no agreement about that other fundamental feature of a society--its economic structure.  It is this disagreement that will be the focus of this course.  Should our economic structure remain capitalist?  If so, to what sort of capitalism should we aspire, a conservative free-market economy that gives keeps governmental intervention to a minimum, or a more liberal version that would, among other things, allow the government to regulate the economy more and significantly redistribute income and wealth.  Or should we aim for something more drastic.  Should we aim for a "green" economy that incorporates both capitalist and socialist structures.  Or should we try to move beyond capitalism altogether?  Does there exist an economically viable socialist alternative to capitalism, or has the socialist project been wholly discredited?  If an economically viable alternative to capitalism does exist, is it worth fighting for?

To clarify the issues, we will read three books and a set of articles, each representing a contending view: conservative, liberal, green and socialist.  The conservative position is represented by the most influential economist of the post-World-War-Two period, Milton Friedman. We will read his classic statement, which is still, as you will see, highly relevant. The liberal position is represented by several figures, the philosopher John Rawls, the British philosopher/political scientist, Brian Barry and the economist James Galbraith.  The green position will be represented by another classic text, E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful.  The socialist position will be set out in David Schweickart’s After Capitalism. 

These readings will comprise the first two-thirds of the course.  During the last third the class will divide into four groups, each of which will draw up a blueprint for its own Ideal Society, based (at least loosely) on one of the above perspectives.  The course will culminate in a Great Debate, in which each group attempts to defend its vision against the alternatives.

PHIL 327: Topics in Political Philosophy: Globalization Ethics

Thomas Wren

In this course we will explore economic and cultural issues of globalization, with particular attention to their normative dimensions of economic and cultural issues such as nationalism, colonialism, immigration,  cultural identity, group rights, and related topics such as global ecology.

We will draw on a variety of sources, including videos as well as books and articles. We will begin the course with excerpts from classic works such as Aristotle's Politics , Rousseau's Social Contract , Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Pea ce, and perhaps Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Communist Manifesto .    We will then look at texts from contemporary authors such as John Rawls. Jurgen Habermas, Thomas Pogge, Iris young, and  Seyla Benhabib.  The readings will be supplemented with several videos about some of the disturbing by-products of globalization.

This class will meet with Dr. Ingram's graduate seminar (PHIL 480) for lectures and video presentations, though not for the scheduled discussion sessions. 

Philosophy 327: Critical Theory: Classical and Contemporary Readings

David Ingrim

The course will survey some of the major themes and thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School of critical social theory. Besides examining issues  - most notably the dialectic of enlightenment, the authoritarian personality, and the problem of technology - that preoccupied first-generation critical theorists  Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, we will also discuss problems of communicative intersubjectivity, moral development, and self-identity that have dominated the thought of second-generation critical theorist Jürgen Habermas. We will then examine a major contemporary work on globalization and global solidarity by one of Habermas’s former students, Hauke Brunkhorst.

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Guest Essay

Why Losing Political Power Now Feels Like ‘Losing Your Country’

By Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.

Is partisan hostility so deeply enmeshed in American politics that it cannot be rooted out?

Will Donald Trump institutionalize democratic backsliding — the rejection of adverse election results, the demonization of minorities and the use of the federal government to punish opponents — as a fixture of American politics?

The literature of polarization suggests that partisan antipathy has become deeply entrenched and increasingly resistant to amelioration.

“Human brains are constantly scanning for threats to in-groups,” Rachel Kleinfeld , a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a September 2023 essay, “ Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says .”

“As people affectively polarize, they appear to blow out-group threats out of proportion, exaggerating the out-group’s dislike and disgust for their own group, and getting ready to defend their in-group, sometimes aggressively,” Kleinfeld argued.

Kleinfeld acknowledged that “a number of interventions have been shown in lab settings, games and short experiments to reduce affective intervention in the short term,” but, she was quick to caution, “reducing affective polarization through these lab experiments and games has not been shown to affect regular Americans’ support for antidemocratic candidates, support for antidemocratic behaviors, voting behavior or support for political violence.”

Taking her argument a step further, Kleinfeld wrote:

Interventions to reduce affective polarization will be ineffective if they operate only at the individual, emotional level. Ignoring the role of polarizing politicians and political incentives to instrumentalize affective polarization for political gain will fail to generate change while enhancing cynicism when polite conversations among willing participants do not generate prodemocratic change.

Yphtach Lelkes , a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, succinctly described by email the hurdles facing proposed remedies for polarization and antidemocratic trends:

I don’t think any bottom-up intervention is going to solve a problem that is structural. You could reduce misperceptions for a day or two or put diverse groups together for an hour, but these people will be polarized again as soon as they are exposed once more to campaign rhetoric.

The reality, Lelkes continued, is that “a fish rots from the head, and political elites are driving any democratic backsliding that is occurring in America. Most Republican voters do not support the antidemocratic policies and practices of their elected officials.”

In their March 2024 paper, “ Uncommon and Nonpartisan: Antidemocratic Attitudes in the American Public ,” Lelkes, Derek E. Holliday and Shanto Iyengar , both of Stanford, and Sean J. Westwood of Dartmouth found that public opposition to antidemocratic policies is not adequate to prevent their adoption:

More ominous implications of our results are that 1) public support is not a necessary precondition for backsliding behavior by elites, and 2) Americans, despite their distaste for norm violations, continue to elect representatives whose policies and actions threaten democracy. One explanation is that when partisanship is strong, voters place party and policy goals over democratic values. Indeed, one of the least-supported norm violations — removing polling places in outparty-dominated areas — has already been violated by elected officials in Texas, and there are concerns about pending similar laws in other states. Such unconstrained elite behavior suggests that threats to democracy could well manifest themselves in both parties in the future.

The level of public support for democratic institutions will be a crucial factor in the 2024 elections. President Biden is campaigning on the theme that Trump and his MAGA allies are intent on strengthening authoritarian leadership at the expense of democracy.

Political scientists and reform groups seeking to restore collegiality to political debate and elections have experimented with a wide variety of techniques to reduce partisan hostility and support for antidemocratic policies.

These efforts have raised doubts among other election experts, both about their effectiveness and durability. Such experts cite the virulence of the conflicts over race, ethnicity and values and the determination of Trump and other politicians to keep divisive issues in the forefront of campaigns.

I have written before about the largest study of techniques to lessen polarization, which was conducted by Jan G. Voelkel and Robb Willer , sociologists at Stanford, along with many other colleagues. Voelkel and Willer are the primary authors of “ Megastudy Identifying Effective Interventions to Strengthen Americans’ Democratic Attitudes .” Given the heightened importance of the coming election and the potential effects of polarization on it, their study is worth re-evaluating.

Voelkel, Willer and 83 others

conducted a megastudy (n=32,059) testing 25 interventions designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes. We find nearly every intervention reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting sympathetic and relatable individuals with different political beliefs. We also identify several interventions that reduced support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence, most strongly by correcting misperceptions of outpartisans’ views — showing that antidemocratic attitudes, although difficult to move, are not intractable.

Their own data and their responses to my inquiries suggest, however, that the optimism of their paper needs to be tempered.

In the case of the “six interventions that significantly reduced partisan animosity,” the authors reported that two weeks later “the average effect size in the durability survey amounted to 29 percent of the average effect size in the main survey.”

I asked Voelkel to explain this further, posing the question: “If the initial reduction in the level of partisan animosity was 10 percentage points, does the 29 percent figure indicate that after two weeks the reduction in partisan animosity was 2.9 percentage points?” Voelkel wrote back to say yes.

In an email responding to some of my follow-up questions about the paper, Voelkel wrote:

I do not want to overstate the success of the interventions that we tested in our study. Our contribution is that we identify psychological strategies for intervening on partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes in the context of a survey experiment. We still need to test how big the effects could be in a large-scale campaign in which the psychological mechanisms for reducing partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes get triggered not once (as in our study) but ideally many times and over a longer period.

Voelkel cautioned that “one-time interventions might not be enough to sustainably reduce affective polarization in the mass public. Thus, successful efforts would need to be applied widely and repeatedly to trigger the psychological mechanisms that are associated with reductions in affective polarization.”

Willer sent a detailed response to my queries by email:

First, to be clear, we do not claim that the interventions we tested have large enough effects that they would cure the problems they target. We do not find evidence for that. Far from it. I would characterize the results of the Strengthening Democracy Challenge in a more measured way. We find that many of the interventions we tested reliably, meaningfully and durably reduce both survey and behavioral indicators of partisan animosity.

Willer wrote that “the interventions we tested were pretty effective in reducing animosity toward rival partisans, particularly in the short term. However, we found that the interventions we tested were substantially less effective in reducing antidemocratic attitudes, like support for undemocratic practices and candidates.”

Other scholars were more skeptical.

I asked Lilliana Mason , a political scientist at Johns Hopkins and a leading scholar of affective polarization: “Are there methods to directly lessen polarization? Are they possible on a large, populationwide scale?”

“If we knew that,” she replied by email, “we would have definitely told people already.”

There is evidence, Mason continued, that

it is possible to correct misperceptions about politics by simply providing correct information. The problem is that this new correct information doesn’t change people’s feelings about political candidates or issues. For example, you can correct a lie told by Donald Trump, and people will believe the new correct information, but that won’t change their feelings about Trump at all.

“We think of affective polarization as being extremely loyal to one side and feeling strong animosity toward the other side,” Mason wrote, adding:

This can be rooted in substantive disagreements on policy, identity-based status threat, safe versus dangerous worldview, historical and contemporary patterns of oppression, violations of political norms, vilifying rhetoric, propagandistic media and/or a number of other influences. But once we are polarized, it’s very difficult to use reason and logic to convince us to think otherwise.

Similarly, “there are methods that reduce polarization in academic research settings,” Westwood, an author of the March paper cited above, wrote by email. He continued:

The fundamental problems are that none “cure” polarization (i.e., move the population from negative to neutral attitudes toward the opposing party), none last more than a short period of time and none have a plausible path to societywide deployment. It is impossible to reach every American in need of treatment, and many would balk at the idea of having their political attitudes manipulated by social scientists or community groups.

More important, in Westwood’s view, is that

whatever techniques might exist to reduce citizen animosity must be accompanied by efforts to reduce hostility among elected officials. It doesn’t matter if we can make someone more positive toward the other party if that effect is quickly undone by watching cable news, reading social media or otherwise listening to divisive political elites.

Referring to the Voelkel-Willer paper, Westwood wrote:

It is a critically important scientific study, but it, like nearly all social science research, does not demonstrate that the studied approaches work in the real world. Participants in this study were paid volunteers, and the effects were large but not curative. (They reduced partisan hatred and did not cure it.) To fix America’s problems, we need to reach everyone from fringe white nationalists to single moms in Chicago, which is so costly and logistically complicated that there isn’t a clear path toward implementation.

One problem with proposals designed to reduce partisan animosity and antidemocratic beliefs, which at least three of the scholars I contacted mentioned, is that positive effects are almost immediately nullified by the hostile language in contemporary politics.

“The moralized political environment is a core problem,” Peter Ditto , a professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine, wrote by email:

Unless we can bring the temperature down in the country, it is going to be hard to make progress on other fronts, like trying to debias citizens’ consumption of political information. The United States is stuck in this outrage spiral. Partisan animosity both fuels and is fueled by a growing fact gap between red and blue America.

Ditto argued that there is “good evidence for the effectiveness of accuracy prompts (correcting falsehoods) to reduce people’s belief in political misinformation,” but “attempting to reduce political polarization with accuracy prompts alone is like trying to start a mediation during a bar fight.”

Attempts to improve political decision making, Ditto added, “are unlikely to have a substantial effect unless we can tamp down the growing animosity felt between red and blue America. The United States has gone from a politics based on disagreement to one based on dislike, distrust, disrespect and often even disgust.”

Citing the Voelkel-Willer paper, Jay Van Bavel , a professor of psychology and neural science at N.Y.U., emailed me to express his belief that “there are solid, well-tested strategies for reducing affective polarization. These are possible on a large scale if there is sufficient political will.”

But Van Bavel quickly added that these strategies “are up against all the other factors that are currently driving conflict and animosity, including divisive leaders like Donald Trump, gerrymandering, hyperpartisan media (including social media), etc. It’s like trying to bail out the Titanic.”

Simply put, it is difficult, if not impossible, to attempt to counter polarization at a time when partisan sectarianism is intense and pervasive.

Bavel described polarization as

both an illness from various problems in our political system and an outcome. As a result, the solution is going to be extremely complex and involve different leadership (once Trump and his inner circle leave the scene, that will help a lot), as well as a number of structural changes (removing gerrymandering and other incentive structures that reinforce extremism).

Affective polarization, Bavel added,

is really just a disdain for the other political party. Political sectarianism seems to be an even worse form because now you see the other party as evil. Both of these are, of course, related to ideological polarization. But affective polarization and political sectarianism are different because they can make it impossible to cooperate with an opponent even when you agree. That’s why they are particularly problematic.

Stanley Feldman , a political scientist at Stony Brook University, pointed to another characteristic of polarization that makes it especially difficult to lower the temperature of the conflict between Republicans and Democrats: There are real, not imaginary, grounds for their mutual animosity.

In an email, Feldman wrote:

There is a reality to this conflict. There has been a great deal of social change in the U.S. over the past few decades. Gay marriage is legal, gender norms are changing, the country is becoming more secular, immigration has increased.

Because of this, Feldman added:

it’s a mistake to suggest this is like an illness or disease. We’re talking about people’s worldviews and beliefs. As much as we may see one side or the other to be misguided and a threat to democracy, it’s still important to try to understand and take seriously their perspective. And analogies to illness or pathology will not help to reduce conflict.

There are, in Feldman’s view,

two major factors that have contributed to this. First, national elections are extremely competitive now. Partisan control of the House and Senate could change at every election. Presidential elections are decided on razor-thin margins. This means that supporters of each party constantly see the possibility of losing power every election. This magnifies the perceived threat from the opposing party and increases negative attitudes toward the out-party.

The second factor?

The issues dividing the parties have changed. When the two parties fought over the size of government, taxes and social welfare programs, it was possible for partisans to imagine a compromise that is more or less acceptable even if not ideal. Compromise on issues like abortion, gender roles, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and the role of religion is much more difficult, so losing feels like more of a threat to people’s values. Feldman continued:

From a broader perspective, these issues, as well as immigration and the declining white majority, reflect very different ideas of what sort of society the United States should be. This makes partisan conflict feel like an existential threat to an “American” way of life. Losing political power then feels like losing your country. And the opposing parties become seen as dangers to society.

These legitimately felt fears and anxieties in the electorate provide a fertile environment for elected officials, their challengers and other institutional forces to exacerbate division.

As Feldman put it:

It’s also important to recognize the extent to which politicians, the media, social media influencers and others have exacerbated perceptions of threat from social change. Take immigration, for example. People could be reminded of the history of immigration in the U.S.: how immigrants have contributed to American society, how second and third generations have assimilated, how previous fears of immigration have been unfounded. Instead there are voices increasing people’s fear of immigration, suggesting that immigrants are a threat to the country, dangerous and even less than human. Discussions of a “great replacement” theory, supposed attacks on religion, dangers of immigration and changing gender norms undermining men’s place in society magnify perceptions of threat from social change. Cynical politicians have learned that they can use fear and partisan hostility to their political advantage. As long as they think this is a useful strategy, it will be difficult to begin to reduce polarization and partisan hostility.

In other words, as long as Trump is the Republican nominee for president and as long as the prospect of a majority-minority country continues to propel right-wing populism, the odds of reducing the bitter animosity that now characterizes American politics remain slim.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here's our email: [email protected] .

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Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Wednesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post. @ edsall

The Politics of Fear Itself

Fear is not what’s driving Americans to support Trump—it is, instead, how many justify their support.

Sign up for The Decision , a newsletter featuring our 2024 election coverage.

A few months ago , I had an email exchange with a person who works in the right-wing-media world. He said that crime was “surging,” a claim that just happened to advance the Trumpian narrative that America during the Biden presidency is a dystopia.

I pointed out that the preliminary data showed a dramatic drop in violent crime last year. (Violent crime spiked in the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency, during the coronavirus pandemic, and has declined in each year of Joe Biden’s presidency.) During our back-and-forth, my interlocutor at first denied that crime had dropped. He sent me links showing that crime rates in Washington, D.C., were increasing, as though a national drop in crime couldn’t be accompanied by an increase in individual cities. He insisted the data I cited were false, implying they were the product of the liberal media. “Perception is reality,” he told me. “Nobody is buying the narrative that crime is getting better.”

Eventually, after I responded to each of his claims, he reluctantly conceded that crime, rather than surging, was dropping—but ascribed the source of the progress to Republican states. I corrected him on that assertion, too. (Crime has dropped in both red and blue states.) He finally admitted that, yes, crime was decreasing, and in blue states too, but said the drop was inevitable, the result of the pandemic’s end. So he blamed Biden when he thought violent crime was increasing and insisted Biden deserves no credit now that violent crime is decreasing.

Rogé Karma: The great normalization

I consider where we ended up a victory, but only a partial and temporary one. His fundamental storyline hasn’t changed. Virtually every day he insists that life in America under Biden is a hellscape and that his reelection would lead to its destruction.

Welcome to MAGA world.

I mention this exchange because it reveals something important about the MAGA mind. Trump and his supporters have a deep investment in promoting fear. At almost every Trump rally, the former president tries to frighten his supporters out of their wits. He did this in 2016 and 2020 , and he’s doing it again this year. “If he wins,” Trump said of Biden during a rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, “our country is going to be destroyed.” Trump also said this of Biden: “He’s a demented tyrant.” After Trump’s victories on Super Tuesday, he told an audience of his supporters , “Our cities are choking to death. Our states are dying. And frankly, our country is dying.”

Other politicians have been fearmongers, but none has been as relentless and effective as Trump. He has an unparalleled ability to promote feelings of terror among his base, with the goal of translating that terror into votes.

But as I recently argued , Biden has been president for nearly three and a half years, and America has hardly entered a new Dark Age. In some important respects, in fact, the nation, based on empirical evidence, is doing better during the Biden years than it did during the Trump years. And evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, who comprise the most loyal and embittered parts of the Trump base, enjoy perhaps the greatest degree of religious liberty they ever have, and they are among the least persecuted religious communities in history . The number of abortions, of particular concern for evangelical Christians, declined steadily after 1990 . A t the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, during which there was a decrease of nearly 30 percent, the number of abortions reached its lowest level since Roe v. Wade was decided, in 1973. (During the Trump administration, the number of abortions increased by 8 percent .)

For many Trump supporters, then, fear is not so much the cause of their support for the former president as a justification for it. They use fear to rationalize their backing for Trump. They have a burning need to promote catastrophism, even if it requires cognitive distortion, spreading falsehoods, and peddling conspiracy theories.

But why? What’s driving their ongoing, deepening fealty to Trump?

Part of the explanation is partisan loyalty. Every party rallies around its presidential nominee, even if the nation is flourishing under the stewardship of an incumbent from the other party.

But that reasoning takes us only so far in this case. For one thing, it’s nearly inconceivable to imagine that if any other former president did what Trump has done, Republicans would maintain their devotion to him. Richard Nixon committed only a fraction of Trump’s misdeeds, and the GOP broke with him over the revelation of the “smoking gun” tapes . It was not his liberal critics, but the collapse of support within the Republican Party, that persuaded Nixon to resign.

Beyond that, Trump was not an incumbent this cycle. In 2020, he lost the presidency by 72 electoral votes and 7 million popular votes; Republicans lost control of the Senate, and Democrats maintained their majority in the House. In the past, when a one-term president was defeated and dragged his party down in the process, he was shown the exit. But despite Trump being a loser, Republicans remain enthralled by him. So something unusual is going on here.

H uman beings have a natural tendency to organize around tribal affiliations. Some are drawn to what the Danish political scientist Michael Bang Petersen calls the “ need for chaos ,” and wish to “burn down” the entire political order in the hopes of gaining status in the process. (My colleague Derek Thompson wrote about Petersen and his work earlier this year.) And social scientists such as Jonathan Haidt point out that mutual outrage bonds people together. Sharing anger can be very pleasurable, and the internet makes doing this orders of magnitude easier.

For several decades now, the Republican base has been unusually susceptible to these predispositions. Grievances had been building, with Republicans feeling as though they were being dishonored and disrespected by elite culture. Those feelings were stoked by figures such as Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan, who decivilized politics and turned it into a blood sport . And then came Trump, the most skilled and successful demagogue in American history.

An extraordinary connection between Trump and his base was forged when he descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in the summer of 2015 and employed his dehumanizing language. Almost every day since then, he has selected targets at which to channel his hate, which appears to be inexhaustible, and ramped up his rhetoric to the point that it now echoes lines from Mein Kampf . In the process, he has fueled the rage of his supporters.

Trump not only validated hate; he made it fashionable. One friend observed to me that Trump makes his supporters feel as if they are embattled warriors making a last stand against the demise of everything they cherish, which is a powerful source of personal meaning and social solidarity. They become heroes in their own mythological narratives.

But it doesn’t stop there. Trump has set himself up both as a Christ figure persecuted for the sake of his followers and as their avenging angel. At a speech last year at the Conservative Political Action Conference , Trump said, “In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution.”

“You’re not selling ‘Morning in America’ from Mar-a-Lago,” Steve Bannon, one of the MAGA movement’s architects, told The New York Times ’ Charles Homans. “You need a different tempo. He needed to reiterate to his followers, ‘This is [expletive] revenge.’”

Malice, enmity, resentments: These are the emotions driving many Trump supporters. They’re why they not only accept but delight in the savagery and brutishness of Trump’s politics. They’re why you hear chants of “Fuck Joe Biden” at Trump rallies. His base constantly searches for new targets, new reasons to be indignant. It activates the pleasure center of their brain. It’s a compulsion loop.

Which brings me back to the exchange I described at the beginning of this essay. My interlocutor was clearly rooting against good news; though he would deny it, the implication of his response was that he wanted crime to get worse. Not because he was rooting for innocent people to die, though that would be the effect. What appeared to animate him—as it has for the entire Biden presidency—is the awareness that good news for America means bad news for MAGA world. Worse yet, good news would be celebrated by people—Biden, Democrats, Never Trumpers—he has grown to hate. But hate is an unattractive emotion to celebrate; it benefits from a polite veneer.

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In this case, the finishing coat is fear, the insistence that if Biden is president, all that Trump’s supporters hold dear will die. This isn’t true, but it doesn’t matter to them that it’s not true. The veneer also makes it easier for Trump supporters—evangelical Christians, “constitutional conservatives,” champions of law and order, and “family values” voters among them—to justify their support for a man who embodies almost everything they once loathed.

Even as Donald Trump’s politics has become more savage, his threats aimed at opponents more ominous, and his humiliation of others more frequent—he has become ever more revered by his supporters.

I imagine that even some of the Republican Party’s harshest liberal critics could not have anticipated a decade and a half ago that the GOP would be led by a man who referred to a violent mob that stormed the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power as “political prisoners,” “hostages,” and “patriots.” It’s been an astonishing moral inversion, a sickening descent. And it’s not done.