This Open Access book examines many of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic through the distinctive lens of civility. The idea of civility appears often in both public and academic debates, ...and a polarized political climate frequently leads to allegations of uncivil speech and behaviour. Norms of civility are always contested, even more so in moments of crisis such as a global pandemic. A focus on civility provides crucial insight and guidance on how to navigate the social and political challenges resulting from COVID-19. Furthermore, it offers a framework through which citizens and policymakers can better understand the causes and consequences of incivility, and devise ways to recover civility in our social and political lives.
In this article, we offer a normative analysis of environmental politics through the lens of civility. First, we explain what civility is by identifying its three key dimensions: civility as ...politeness, moral civility and justificatory civility. We then examine various instances of environmental politics and activism through the lens of civility, by focusing on the complex intersections between its three dimensions as well as the hierarchical relationship that exists between them, with moral civility taking precedence over justificatory civility and the latter over civility as politeness. This analysis, we argue, can help us to formulate more nuanced judgements about the desirability of different instances of civil and uncivil environmental politics and activism, and to develop educational strategies for preparing policymakers, environmental activists and citizens more generally to be civil participants in environmental politics.
Globally, infection and death rates from COVID-19 vary dramatically. While states had broadly the same information about the virus at the start of the crisis, responses were very different. What ...caused such disparity in policy actions and outcomes? While various factors may account for divergent responses, we highlight the importance of narratives employed by key policy actors. First, we review the literature on policy narratives. We suggest it can be usefully augmented with consideration of localisation and public justification. We apply this augmented framework using case studies of Germany and the United Kingdom. Chancellor Angela Merkel's narrative was more successful at persuading German citizens to embrace government policies to counter COVID-19 than was Prime Minister Boris Johnson's in the United Kingdom. This difference held important implications for policy outcomes in each country. We conclude by discussing the benefits of this augmented approach to analysis of policy narratives.
This study analyzes whether climate disasters and climate-induced food scarcities influence individuals’ willingness to fight for the state in a pro-government militia in the Philippines. We find ...that experiencing a disaster or subsistence loss corresponds to an increased willingness to join, even when accounting for other prominent explanations in the literature. This outcome, we argue, reflects the impact of climate change on the opportunity costs of conflict participation, especially in regions dependent on agriculture for income and food production, as diminished livelihood opportunities and subsistence resource access increase the viability of conflict participation as a strategy for livelihood diversification.
Calls for civility feature prominently in public discourse, and the concept has received growing attention by political philosophers recently. But what does it mean to be civil? The existing ...literature distinguishes between two main understandings of civility: civility as politeness and civility as public-mindedness. The objective of this article is to show that these conceptions and the different normative claims associated with them can all fit together. We argue that civility and incivility should be disaggregated in order to uncover fruitful connections between different aspects of the concept. We introduce a distinction between two dimensions of civility as public-mindedness (moral and justificatory), as well as a new distinction between the means and ends of civility. We examine the complex connections between the different dimensions of (in)civility and show that the disaggregation of civility and incivility tells us what kind of (in)civility matters, as well as when and why.
Like many countries, the Philippines faced severe economic, social, and political challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020 President Duterte issued an executive order announcing a ...national state of emergency that introduced a highly restrictive system for community quarantine and lockdown. While these measures led international observers to rank the Philippines' pandemic response among the worldʼs most stringent, it is unclear whether subsequent health outcomes were sufficient to justify the severity. In this article, we evaluate discrepancies between COVID- 19 policy goals and outcomes in the Philippines via a compelling but under-utilized method of democratic deliberation, the 'mini-public'. The mini-public that we held brought together a random sample of citizens who heard testimony from local public health experts and political leaders, and then used this information in conjunction with their own experiences to identify policy shortcomings and develop recommendations for policymakers. The most substantial challenges to the government's pandemic response were reported to be inadequate enforcement and under-resourcing of government officials tasked with policy implementation. These challenges created a disconnect between policy objectives and their performance in practice. We conclude by summarizing the mini-public participants' recommendations.
Examining militia relationships with the government and civilian populations can help scholars and policymakers better assess differences in militia form, function, and behavior. In this article, we ...examine the Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Units (CAFGU), a pro-government militia in the Philippines, to better understand how militia participants view insurgents, politicians, state security forces, and civilians based on their experiences serving in the group. We argue that analyzing these beliefs is critical to understanding how militias influence civilian security and the risk of political violence in conflict-contested areas, as well as the trajectory of civil conflict in states like the Philippines that rely on militias to perform core security functions. We base the analysis on surveys and interviews with CAFGU members and civilians living in the Eastern Visayas, a region of active and ongoing conflict, where insurgents and other armed militants advance their aims through acts of violence and terrorism. In doing so, we contribute to a growing literature on the role that militias play in civil war, as well as the implications that follow when states choose to arm "civilians" to aid in counterinsurgency and conflict suppression.
Conspiracism and Civility Bonotti, Matteo; Zech, Steven T
Political studies review,
05/2024, Volume:
22, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Conspiracism has become a topical issue in democracies around the world, eliciting debate in political theory and philosophy regarding its normative and practical implications, especially its ...potential negative effects on democratic systems. In this article, we analyse conspiracism through the lens of civility. The public virtue of civility plays a key role in democratic politics and in public life more generally, by helping to sustain democratic institutions and facilitating social interaction despite disagreement. If conspiracism undermines civility and contributes to incivility, as we argue in this article, that might have distinctively deleterious effects on democratic life. We begin by unpacking the concept of civility into three key dimensions: (a) civility as politeness, (b) moral civility and (c) justificatory civility. We then illustrate how conspiracism can contribute to incivility and harm democracy in each of the three dimensions but also how it can sometimes be harmless or even helpful for democracy.
What motivates civilians to fight in a progovernment militia? This article draws on survey and interview data from active members of Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Units (CAFGU), a progovernment ...militia in the Philippines, to evaluate why individuals enlist. We find poverty and unemployment to be key drivers of group membership, and the biggest attraction a steady paycheck. This situation presents a moral hazard for the Philippine government and other states that rely on impoverished citizens to wage counterinsurgency: while doing so can be cost-effective, the need to keep costs low might also impede efforts at socioeconomic or political reform.
Education is central to creating well-informed citizens capable of participating in social and political life. However, civic education in some liberal democratic societies has often focused on ...teaching students the mechanics and structure of party politics, overlooking many of the public virtues that help to sustain democratic life. In this article we examine one such virtue, i.e., civility, and its role in party politics. We focus especially on partisan 'civility as politeness,' which entails the norms of politeness and etiquette that regulate partisans' speech and behaviour during electoral campaigns and within legislatures. We analyse partisan civility as politeness and explore its connection with two other dimensions of partisan civility, i.e., 'moral civility' and 'justificatory civility.' We conclude by developing recommendations on how to advance civility in party politics by creating well-informed citizens and politicians who recognize the importance of civility in democratic life.
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