IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pophec/v19y2020i1p36-61.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What are the chances you’re right about everything? An epistemic challenge for modern partisanship

Author

Listed:
  • Hrishikesh Joshi

    (Bowling Green State University, USA)

Abstract

The American political landscape exhibits significant polarization. People’s political beliefs cluster around two main camps. However, many of the issues with respect to which these two camps disagree seem to be rationally orthogonal . This feature raises an epistemic challenge for the political partisan. If she is justified in consistently adopting the party line, it must be true that her side is reliable on the issues that are the subject of disagreements. It would then follow that the other side is anti-reliable with respect to a host of orthogonal political issues. Yet, it is difficult to find a psychologically plausible explanation for why one side would get things reliably wrong with respect to a wide range of orthogonal issues. While this project’s empirical discussion focuses on the US context, the argument generalizes to any situation where political polarization exists on a sufficiently large number of orthogonal claims.

Suggested Citation

  • Hrishikesh Joshi, 2020. "What are the chances you’re right about everything? An epistemic challenge for modern partisanship," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 19(1), pages 36-61, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:19:y:2020:i:1:p:36-61
    DOI: 10.1177/1470594X20901346
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470594X20901346
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1470594X20901346?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Schurer, Stefanie, 2012. "The stability of big-five personality traits," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 11-15.
    2. Mueller,Dennis C., 2003. "Public Choice III," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521894753, October.
    3. Ludeke, Steven G. & Rasmussen, Stig H.R., 2018. "Different political systems suppress or facilitate the impact of intelligence on how you vote: A comparison of the U.S. and Denmark," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 1-6.
    4. Dan Kahan, 2012. "Why we are poles apart on climate change," Nature, Nature, vol. 488(7411), pages 255-255, August.
    5. Sam Allgood & William Bosshardt & Wilbert van der Klaauw & Michael Watts, 2012. "Is Economics Coursework, or Majoring in Economics, Associated with Different Civic Behaviors?," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(3), pages 248-268, July.
    6. Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis, 2013. "A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9474.
    7. Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis, 2013. "A Cooperative Species," Introductory Chapters, in: A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution, Princeton University Press.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marco Tomassini & Alberto Antonioni, 2019. "Computational Behavioral Models for Public Goods Games on Social Networks," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, September.
    2. Sanjit Dhami & Ali al-Nowaihi, 2016. "Social responsibility, human morality and public policy," Discussion Papers in Economics 16/20, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    3. al-Gharbi, Musa, 2019. "Resistance as Sacrifice: Towards an Ascetic Antiracism," SocArXiv wd54z, Center for Open Science.
    4. Jonathan B. Wight, 2016. "Joanna Masel: Bypass Wall Street: A biologist’s guide to the rat race," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 233-237, October.
    5. J. Allister McGregor, 2014. "Human wellbeing and sustainability: interdependent and intertwined," Chapters, in: Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz & Eric Neumayer & Matthew Agarwala (ed.), Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 14, pages 217-234, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Eugen Dimant, 2020. "Hate Trumps Love: The Impact of Political Polarization on Social Preferences," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 029, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    7. Werner Gueth & Hartmut Kliemt, 2021. "Sustainable Procedures of Corporate Social Responsibility," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202108, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    8. Daniel B Klein & Xiaofei (Sophia) Pan & Daniel Houser & Gonzalo Schwarz, 2015. "A demand for encompassment: A Hayekian experimental parable about political psychology," Rationality and Society, , vol. 27(1), pages 70-95, February.
    9. Smaldino, Paul E. & Turner, Matthew Adam, 2020. "Covert signaling is an adaptive communication strategy in diverse populations," SocArXiv j9wyn, Center for Open Science.
    10. Neuteleers, Stijn & Mulder, Machiel & Hindriks, Frank, 2017. "Assessing fairness of dynamic grid tariffs," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 111-120.
    11. DeAngelo, Gregory J. & Dubois, Dimitri & Romaniuc, Rustam, 2020. "The perils of democracy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 328-340.
    12. Andrew Buskell & Magnus Enquist & Fredrik Jansson, 2019. "A systems approach to cultural evolution," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-15, December.
    13. Mariella, Vitantonio, 2022. "The agrarian origins of social capital," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 543-568.
    14. Yan Chen & Peter Cramton & John A. List & Axel Ockenfels, 2021. "Market Design, Human Behavior, and Management," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(9), pages 5317-5348, September.
    15. Christian Cordes & Wolfram Elsner & Claudius Graebner & Torsten Heinrich & Joshua Henkel & Henning Schwardt & Georg Schwesinger & Tong-Yaa Su, 2021. "The collapse of cooperation: the endogeneity of institutional break-up and its asymmetry with emergence," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 31(4), pages 1291-1315, September.
    16. Pugno, Maurizio, 2020. "Enjoying life takes time and needs people, but economic progress runs and offers things," MPRA Paper 104378, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Maurizio Pugno, 2021. "The economics of eudaimonia," Chapters, in: Luigino Bruni & Alessandra Smerilli & Dalila De Rosa (ed.), A Modern Guide to the Economics of Happiness, chapter 4, pages 46-66, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Raja R Timilsina & Yutaka Kobayashi & Koji Kotani, 2022. "Non-kinship successors for resource sustainability," Working Papers SDES-2022-2, Kochi University of Technology, School of Economics and Management, revised Jan 2022.
    19. Silvia Sacchetti & Colin Campbell, 2015. "Creating Space for Communities: Social Enterprise and the Bright Side of Social Capital," Journal of Entrepreneurial and Organizational Diversity, European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises, vol. 3(2), pages 32-48, February.
    20. Vaios Koliofotis, 2021. "Applying evolutionary methods in economics: progress or pitfall?," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 203-223, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:19:y:2020:i:1:p:36-61. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.