Political tribes are claimed to reason along distinct axes, so each finds its own arguments obvious and the others unintelligible rather than wrong.
Kling's proposal is that progressives reason along an oppressor and oppressed axis, conservatives along civilisation and barbarism, and libertarians along liberty and coercion. The prediction is about incomprehension rather than disagreement: an argument stated in one language does not register as an argument in another, which is why each side concludes the others are arguing in bad faith.
In practice
- A case made entirely in terms of harm lands on an audience listening for whether an institution is being preserved.
- Three people who agree on every fact reach three conclusions and each finds the other two inexplicable.
- Possible explanations
- The proposed explanation is that each tribe reasons along its own axis, so arguments phrased in one language are unintelligible in another and each side finds its own conclusions obvious.
- In its favour
- It is a useful heuristic for reading political argument, and it overlaps with moral foundations research, which finds measurable differences in which considerations groups weight.
- Against it
- It is a typology built from observation rather than measurement, published on a blog, and the three-way division fits American politics of one period better than it fits other places or times.
- Standing
- Published on a blog rather than in a reviewed literature, and spread by linking. A typology built from observation rather than measurement, and adjacent to moral foundations theory, which has been tested and disputed on its own structure.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works