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The Fragmenting of the Civil Sphere: How Partisan Identity Shapes the Moral Evaluation of Candidates and Epistemology

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Politics of Meaning/Meaning of Politics

Part of the book series: Cultural Sociology ((CULTSOC))

Abstract

The 2016 US presidential election upended a number of scholarly expectations about electoral politics. Many academics and pundits predicted that president Donald Trump’s flaunting of democratic norms, from his rhetoric on the campaign trail to his financial conflicts of interest, would undermine his candidacy. How do we explain Trump’s appeal to his core supporters and Republicans more generally? First, this chapter argues that Trump was able to exploit partisan identity becoming the key basis for moral evaluation among the democratic public. Second, this chapter argues that partisan identity has fractured civic epistemology, the basis upon which people understand and agree upon political facts and truths.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Daniel Kreiss

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  1. Daniel Kreiss
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Correspondence to Daniel Kreiss .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Jason L. Mast

  2. Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Jeffrey C. Alexander

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Kreiss, D. (2019). The Fragmenting of the Civil Sphere: How Partisan Identity Shapes the Moral Evaluation of Candidates and Epistemology. In: Mast, J.L., Alexander, J.C. (eds) Politics of Meaning/Meaning of Politics. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95945-0_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95945-0_13

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-95944-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-95945-0

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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