Democracy-Appealing Partisanship: A Situated Ideal of Citizenship

Abstract

This study develops a context-grounded ideal about how citizens ought to communicate in legislative hearings about contentious issues. We begin with an overview of the dominant model of good citizen discourse, democratic deliberation, and argue why it is an inappropriate norm for public hearings in state legislative bodies. After overviewing grounded practical theory (GPT), the meta-theoretical approach used, and providing background on the demands of public meetings, we describe the public hearing that is the focal data. That hearing was the 18-hour, 2009 Hawaii hearing on a bill that proposed to recognize committed relationships of same-sex couples through civil unions. The analysis of citizen testimony evidences a discourse strategy, democracyappealing partisanship, which speakers on both sides of the issue used to manage the challenges they confronted in speaking out. This strategy involved advocating strongly for one viewpoint as an appeal to either majority rule or minority rights and/or either freedom of religion or separation of church and state were made. In concluding, we describe the problem to which this strategy is responsive, justify the norm of democracy-appealing partisanship, and offer implications for future studies using GPT.

Contesting hydrofracking during an inter-governmental hearing: Accounting by reworking or challenging the question

“…I overlooked Wilbur’s (2013) felicitous characterization: ‘Policy is where science meets politics.’ Instead of a strictly scientific discussion, we get the DEC’s staunch defense of their draft of the EIS. While the DEC’s defensive tactic may seem problematic, as Tracy and Hughes (2014) have pointed out for lay citizen participation at public hearings, both advocacy and deliberation have their place in democratic decision-making. The same point could be made for inter-governmental hearings: the DEC can be heard as advocating for their draft of the EIS.…”

“…Hearings, such as the one examined here, bring together multiple and often competing points of view. Research on public hearings has largely focused on lay citizen input, or lack thereof, and on governmental decision-making (Boholm, 2008; Buttny, 2010; Diez and Stern, 2008; Llewllyn, 2005; Tracy and Hughes, 2014). Surprisingly, studies of hearings involving different units of government have received scant attention.…”

‘Answer in any way you want’: Discursive tensions in conversations of a citizen participation process

“…Citizen participation processes share key aims and challenges while also showing situated empirical features depending on the design of the participatory activity (Farkas, 2013; Tracy and Hughes; 2014). When analyzing tensions within participatory interviews, an important context consists of research on how diverging frames and discursive tensions play out in public encounters with interviewing formats or one-to-one encounters between institutional representatives and lay citizens.…”

‘Hitlahamut’: A term for unreasonable populist public talk in Israel

“…Hitlahamut is also interestingly related to ‘reasonable hostility’ (Tracy, 2011). Tracy (2011) demonstrated how ordinary citizens, participating in public hearings regarding civic issues, including education hearings and same-sex marriage hearings (Tracy and Hughes, 2014) create a hostile message yet construct it in a way that is still perceived as reasonable. Therefore, Tracy argues, citizens create a public discourse that shows their interest in the topics without creating antagonism or extremism in expressing their opinions.…”