The Clash of Rights
About this book
Why do citizens in pluralist democracies disagree collectively about the very values they agree on individually? This provocative book highlights the inescapable conflicts of rights and values at the heart of democratic politics.
Based on interviews with thousands of citizens and political decision-makers, the book focuses on modern Canadian politics, investigating why a country so fortunate in its history and circumstances is on the brink of dissolution. Taking advantage of new techniques of computer-assisted interviewing, the authors explore the politics of a wide array of issues, from freedom of expression to public funding of religious schools to government wiretapping to antihate legislation, analyzing not only why citizens take the positions they do but also how easily they can be talked out of them. In the process, the authors challenge a number of commonly held assumptions about democratic politics. They show, for example, that political elites do not constitute a special bulwark protecting civil liberties; that arguments over political rights are as deeply driven by commitment to the master values of democratic politics as by failure to understand them; and that consensus on the rights of groups is inherently more fragile than on the rights of individuals.
Paul M. Sniderman is professor of political science at Stanford University. Joseph F. Fletcher is associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. Peter H. Russell is University Professor in the department of political science at the University of Toronto. Philip E. Tetlock is professor of psychology at Ohio State University.
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Information
Table of contents
- CONTENTS
- PREFACE
- ONE. INTRODUCTION
- TWO. THE THESIS OF DEMOCRATIC ELITISM
- THREE. THE CONTESTABILITY OF RIGHTS
- FOUR. EQUALITY: A CHAMELEON VALUE
- FIVE. THE POLITICS OF EQUALITY
- SIX. GOVERNANCE AND IDENTITY
- SEVEN. THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE AND GROUP RIGHTS
- EIGHT. VALUE PLURALISM
- Appendix: Study Procedures
- Illustrations
- Notes
- Bibliography
- INDEX