Mölder warns partisan bias is killing democratic debate

People’s tendency to view their preferred party and its supporters positively, while seeing opposing parties and their supporters negatively, is undermining democratic debate, University of Tartu political scientist Martin Mölder told ERR’s Vikerraadio in a Friday interview.

When political discussion is shaped by this bias, Mölder said, debate can collapse into people calling one another idiots rather than engaging with each other’s arguments.

Mölder also discussed whether political scientists can separate what politics is from what it ought to be. Concepts such as justice, democracy and freedom are abstract and contested, he said, so people may understand them in different ways.

He said political scientists should primarily act as a mirror for politics, explaining to the public and political participants what is happening. Debates about what constitutes a good political order, he added, belong in the political process.

Mölder said he hopes political theory and the development of ideologies will be revisited in light of what psychology has taught about human nature.

The interview began with a discussion of Plato’s Republic, written nearly 2,400 years ago, and its questions about justice and who should govern.