Why People Are Irrational about Politics

Perhaps the most striking feature of the subject of politics is how prone it is to disagreement—only religion and morality rival politics as a source of disagreement. There are three main features of political disagreements I want to point out: (i) They are very widespread. It isn’t just a few people disagreeing about a few issues; rather, any two randomly-chosen people are likely to disagree about many political issues. (ii) They are strong, that is, the disagreeing parties are typically very convinced of their own positions, not at all tentative. (iii) They are persistent, that is, it is extremely difficult to resolve them. Several hours of argumentation typically fails to resolve political disputes. Some have gone on for decades (either with the same principles or with different parties over multiple generations). This should strike us as very odd. Most other subjects—for instance, geology, or linguistics, or algebra—are not subject to disagreements at all like this; their disputes are far fewer in number and take place against a backdrop of substantial agreement in basic theory; and they tend to be more tentative and more easily resolved. Why is politics subject to such widespread, strong, and persistent disagreements? Consider four broad explanations for the prevalence of political disagreement: