Finding Coherence (Part 3)
A Guide to Political Judgment in Fractured Times (5-part series)
Part 3: When Contestation Isn’t Enough
This is Part 3 of a five-part series. Part 1 introduced the problem. Part 2 made the case for viewing democratic politics as ongoing contestation among legitimate perspectives.
The framework outlined in Part 2 captures something true and important about democratic life. Many political conflicts reflect permanent tensions between competing goods, where multiple perspectives check each other’s excesses. But not all political conflicts work this way. Treating productive contestation as a universal approach misses crucial distinctions.
When Democratic Legitimacy Gets Questioned
The contestation framework assumes all parties accept democratic ground rules. They compete through elections, accept outcomes when they lose, and maintain space for opposition. But what happens when these fundamentals themselves become contested?
Claims of systematic fraud in the 2020 election were investigated thoroughly. Courts, including judges appointed by the losing candidate, found no supporting evidence. Election officials of both parties confirmed integrity. Multiple recounts and audits confirmed outcomes.
Similarly, while Russian interference occurred in 2016, evidence didn’t support that it determined outcomes through direct vote manipulation.
Concern about election integrity is legitimate. Democratic legitimacy requires genuine electoral integrity. Progressives worried about voter suppression respond to real problems. Conservatives worried about ballot security have legitimate concerns.
But the factual question of whether specific concerns reflect reality matters enormously. Were there irregularities at scale sufficient to question outcomes?
Treating “this election was fraudulent” as a legitimate perspective when evidence shows it wasn’t gives equal status to fact and fiction. Moreover, refusing to accept election results without adequate evidence isn’t a position within democratic contestation. It threatens democracy itself. Democracy requires losers accept outcomes and compete again next time, even when stakes feel existential.
The practical difference: When facing contestation over competing values (liberty versus security, economic freedom versus economic security), you engage the substance. You understand concerns, articulate your own, negotiate where possible, vote when you can’t agree.
But when facing unsupported claims that elections were stolen, the response is different. You defend democratic institutions. You support election officials doing their jobs. You insist on evidence before questioning legitimacy. You accept outcomes even when they disappoint. You address genuine electoral integrity concerns through proper channels. Not “both sides,” but defense of the process that enables contestation to work.
When Material Reality Intrudes
Some political questions have factual components where evidence should play a major role. But determining what counts as “factual” and whose expertise to trust has itself become contested.
Pandemic response involved genuine value conflicts. Individual liberty versus collective health. Economic continuity versus disease prevention. The contestation framework applies to these tensions.
But it also involved empirical questions. How deadly is the virus? How well do interventions work? These aren’t matters where all voices deserve equal weight simply because we live in a democracy. Epidemiologists know more about disease transmission than political commentators or social media posts.
Yet expertise has clear limits. Public health experts initially dismissed mask effectiveness, then mandated masks broadly without adequate acknowledgment of the reversal. Economic experts missed the 2008 crisis. Intelligence experts were confident about WMDs in Iraq.
Different ideological traditions navigate this tension differently, and each catches something real:
Progressives emphasize: Trust scientific consensus. Don’t let motivated reasoning override expertise. Science denial has real costs.
Conservatives emphasize: Expert consensus has been wrong before. Local and traditional knowledge matter. Institutional capture is real.
Libertarians emphasize: Government experts serve institutional interests. Decentralization allows experimentation and learning from mistakes.
Populists emphasize: Elite experts are insulated from costs of their errors. Lived experience provides knowledge experts miss.
Some expert consensus genuinely reflects best available evidence. Some reflects institutional capture or ideological bias. Some skepticism reflects legitimate concern about past failures. Some reflects motivated reasoning or denial. You must make judgments about specific cases, knowing others will disagree.
The practical difference: For value tensions (how much should we sacrifice for how much safety?), you engage in contestation. You understand different weightings. You negotiate trade-offs. You allow different communities different approaches.
But for factual questions (does this intervention prevent serious illness?), you follow best available evidence while maintaining appropriate skepticism. You don’t engage factual denial as if it’s a competing value. You correct it while addressing legitimate concerns about side effects, institutional trust, and government mandates.
You weight expertise while recognizing its limits. You update beliefs when evidence warrants. You protect space for heterodox experts and informed dissent.
When Power Asymmetries Dominate
The contestation framework assumes parties can negotiate as rough equals. But power imbalances can make “negotiation” mask domination.
Different ideological traditions attend to different asymmetries, and each catches real problems:
Economic power (progressive/populist concern): When workers can’t afford lawyers while employers have legal departments, when corporations can wait out individuals who need income to survive, negotiation isn’t between equals.
Government power (libertarian/conservative concern): Government possesses coercive monopoly power. When large enough, you can’t opt out or negotiate as equals. “Consent” becomes theoretical when you can’t leave.
Institutional consensus (populist concern, left and right): When major institutions align on contested questions, dissenting voices struggle for platforms or legitimacy. This isn’t formal censorship, but it shapes what’s sayable and who gets heard.
Majority versus minority (liberal/libertarian concern): Democratic process can enable tyranny when majorities outvote minorities on matters affecting basic rights. Numbers alone don’t make something just.
Traditional arrangements (progressive concern): When neutral-seeming arrangements developed in ways favoring insiders, newcomers face structural barriers. The playing field isn’t level even when rules seem fair.
People disagree about which asymmetries matter most, whether specific ones warrant intervention, and what interventions help versus hurt. Progressives see economic power needing government to balance it. Libertarians see government power needing markets to limit it. These disagreements reflect the constitutive tensions from Part 2.
The practical difference: For contestation among rough equals (businesses competing, states with different policies), you let the process work.
But when power is severely imbalanced (workers who can’t afford to quit versus employers who control access to livelihood, individuals versus institutions with surveillance capabilities), engagement alone isn’t enough. You work to balance power first through organizing, regulation, or other means depending on your ideology. Only then does productive negotiation become possible.
The framework helps you recognize when power imbalance prevents productive contestation, while acknowledging that which imbalances warrant intervention remains contested.
When Moral Lines Get Crossed
When someone expresses troubling views, diagnosis matters. The same surface expression can reflect very different dynamics requiring different responses.
Consider three layers:
Surface expression: What’s actually said
Underneath: Real experiences driving it
Root causes: Actual dynamics generating conditions
Someone says “Immigrants are taking our jobs.”
The surface is xenophobic. It scapegoats a vulnerable group. But underneath might be real economic hardship. Job loss, community decline, loss of dignity. Root causes might be deindustrialization, capital mobility, policy choices favoring capital over labor.
If this reflects genuine economic pain grabbing the wrong explanation: Acknowledge the hardship. Reject the xenophobic framing. Address root causes. You don’t engage the xenophobia as a legitimate perspective in value contestation. You name it as wrong while validating the pain.
If this reflects deep ideological commitment to ethnic nationalism: Oppose it directly. Work to defeat it politically.
If this is cynical manipulation by those who caused the deindustrialization: Expose the manipulation. Redirect attention to root causes.
This pattern repeats across the political spectrum:
“Police are inherently oppressive” might respond to real experiences of excessive force and racial disparities (acknowledge reality, debate reform). Or reflect ideological commitment to abolition (engage or oppose). Or express rage from direct harm (validate pain, create space for grief, then discuss solutions).
“Taxation is theft” might respond to government overreach (acknowledge concerns, debate scope). Or reflect libertarian principle about property rights (engage in value contestation). Or come from someone facing regulations that threaten their livelihood (validate specific grievances, debate approach).
“Traditional marriage is under attack” might respond to genuine disorientation from rapid change (acknowledge disorientation, defend equality). Or reflect principled religious conviction (engage on religious liberty and equal protection). Or defend discrimination (oppose it).
Different diagnoses require genuinely different responses.
For contestation: You engage the values. You understand concerns. You articulate competing goods. You negotiate where possible.
But when you judge that actual moral violations are occurring: Someone is being directly harmed in ways that cross lines your tradition recognizes. The response isn’t finding middle ground. It’s working to stop the harm while distinguishing misdirected pain from ideological commitment from cynical manipulation.
You maintain willingness to be wrong about your diagnosis. But you don’t pretend all expressions deserve equal engagement regardless of what’s underneath.
The Deeper Challenge
Here’s what makes this genuinely hard. People disagree not just about political issues, but about which conflicts involve sincere engagement with competing values versus defense of power or denial of facts.
Your opponent’s “legitimate concern” might look like manipulation to you. Your “evidence-based position” might look like ideological bias to them. What looks like misdirected pain to you might look like genuine moral conviction to others.
The contestation framework universalizes one mode of engagement without providing tools to distinguish when it applies. Some conflicts reflect permanent tensions between competing goods. But others involve:
Factual questions where evidence should play a major role
Power asymmetries requiring rebalancing
Democratic legitimacy questions where accepting outcomes matters
Moral violations where the response is stopping harm
People disagree about which category specific conflicts fall into. Is this a value tension requiring contestation or a factual question with a wrong answer? Is this a power asymmetry requiring intervention or a voluntary arrangement? Is this misdirected pain or genuine moral violation?
Different ideological traditions categorize the same conflict differently.
You can’t avoid these judgments. Refusing to categorize (treating everything as either pure contestation or pure power struggle) produces poor outcomes. But making judgments while maintaining humility and recognizing others may legitimately categorize differently, enables better navigation than pretending certainty.
That’s what we’ll develop in Part 4. Tools for categorizing conflicts and responding appropriately to each type, while acknowledging that both the categories and their application involve judgment that reasonable people may contest.