America’s political scientists are worried about “lethal partisanship”

THE TAGLINE for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) held in Seattle last weekend read “Promoting Pluralism.” Under the sunny geometric windows of the city’s convention centre, and through the poorly lit rectangles of Zoom rooms, scholars met to discuss, among other things, the various threats to American democracy, and whether the country’s polarised political parties could peacefully coexist. Like experts on the use of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, the spectre of some disastrous future hung over the discussions and was made only slightly less alarming by the technical language used to describe it.