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Political Science

Jen Wu

Politician Incivility in the United States: Toward a Perspectivist Measure
2024–25 American Democracy Fellowship

Uncivil comments are concerning for democratic government, an area where deliberation and cooperation are key. In the United States, these comments increase affective polarization and anger among those who view them. Furthermore, when making uncivil comments, a politician signals strongly to the public that they are unwilling to backdown and that other party is wrong. Thus, these comments can impede collaboration among members of Congress. However, in politics, unanimous agreement on which comments are uncivil is rare among both politicians and the public. While previous studies in political science have attempted to capture a single measure of incivility, I argue we should focus on a perspectivist measure. A perspectivist measure emphasizes that there is no one standard for assessing incivility; rather, what is uncivil depends on the ways people interpret and perceive language.

I propose a measure that captures different perceptions among Democrats and Republicans. I find the proportion of people who think a comment is uncivil for each party and politician comment. Then, for each comment, I subtract the proportion of Republicans who find a statement uncivil from the proportion of Democrats who find it uncivil. I refer to this difference as the “partisan perception gap in incivility.”

Politician Incivility in the United States: Toward Preserving Disagreement in Evaluation
2022–23 Survey Lab Project

Political science research on incivility considers only one judgement of what is uncivil, either by a single person or group. However, people often disagree about when politicians are uncivil. I argue that when studying politician incivility, we should capture this disagreement. Through two survey experiments, I show that Democrats and Republicans are less likely to find a comment to be uncivil when it is made by a co-partisan member of Congress compared to an out-partisan member of Congress.