Democratic institutions settle disputes but do not forge national cohesion

Evidence

It is the loss of confidence in national institutions to mediate ethnic and religious conflicts at the local level that pushes nativism on the national agenda. The events of 9/11—having happened after a contentious presidential race between Al Gore and George W. Bush and, at a time, when America was still grappling with its own role abroad as the world’s sole superpower and its identity as a multicultural society—occurred in just such an era, one of deteriorating faith in America’s democratic institutions of governance. … Adherence to democratic institutions, such as constitutions, elections, and courts, helps establish individual rights and settle disputes within society peacefully, but it does not necessarily follow that such adherence builds national unity or confidence. Put differently, democratic processes do not forge a cohesive national identity. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 270

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely counterintuitive claim that a participant in democracy can sit with: procedural adherence is not the same as collective identity, so faith in institutions can collapse even in functioning democracies — the exact crack that lets nativism in.
• XREF: Relates to the reader’s guiding question of which chapter relocates the problem from ‘them’ to ‘us’ — here the failure is located in the fearer’s own civic psyche. — connects to: Democracy channels contention into bargaining over claim-making boundaries — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1311