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> I'm surprised by the implication that the authors think European politics is US politics expressed using a different idiom. I think they meant another dimens

> I'm surprised by the implication that the authors think European politics is US politics expressed using a different idiom. I think they meant another dimension than you. I've looked into the underlying value systems in the US and Germany as part of my phd, and the underlying moral frameworks are essentially identical: there are two basic ideas of how a society should look like (the progressive and the conservative idea), and what each idea consists of is almost identical (modulo country-specific weights). * criminal justice: redemption vs. retribution * social safety: more of it, and collectively organized vs. less of it, and individually organized * abortion/women's rights: pro women vs. contra abortion * environmental protection: important vs. unimportant * education: focus on equal opportunities for all vs. focus on elite institutions and so on. The actual parties differ of course, and the overton window of "mainstream" political views certainly do. But the underlying moral dualism has the same two poles.

notahacker 6y ago
There are plenty of exceptions to that dualism in Europe though (coexistence of social conservatism with strong ideological commitments to extending social protections and state involvement in industry in many significant European political parties and arguably even more widespread in public sentiment in many European countries) which are relatively rare in US politics.
- bildung 6y ago
  Yes absolutely, and you have the same in the US (e.g. libertarianism vs. evangelicalism). But those can mostly be explained within each moral framework (e.g. social conservatism is keeping the us vs. them mentality: "no social benefits for immigrants" or similar). Keep in mind these are not totally coherent, precisely defined theories, but instead are formed subconsciously by growing up in a particular social environment.
mbg721 6y ago
But US politicians are perfectly willing to discard big chunks of those frameworks, and their voters are happy to look the other way. Which party's ticket was the author of the Crime Bill and a prosecuting attorney??
- bildung 6y ago
  Indeed (and quite similar in Germany). They are the moral basis from which this very fact gets criticized, though.
SiempreViernes 6y ago
I don't think this is quite right, if the Overton window is different then so are the the poles (for any reasonable definition of pole). What is shared is the "directions" in "moral space", while a pole is above all a specific point. And to clarify, the main point of the article is that in Japan politics is not organised around how people stand on these moral questions, not that these debates don't happen. The article does not, for example, make the claim that in Japanese criminal politics there isn't a debate between redemption and retribution but rather that positions of the individual politicians in this debate will not correlate very much with their party allegiance.
- bildung 6y ago
  > I don't think this is quite right, if the Overton window is different then so are the the poles (for any reasonable definition of pole) Why? In my understanding the overton window is a sliding frame on an axis, so it makes no statement about the axis, only about the position on the axis. > And to clarify, the main point of the article is that in Japan politics is not organised around how people stand on these moral questions, not that these debates don't happen. Yes, that is what I have understood from the text, too. I find it hard to believe that there is no ideological consistency there (how are people able to make moral decisions without them, i.e. integrate their behaviour with their sense of identity?), though just as in the west the ideology and the actual political practice can obviously differ widely.
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    > In my understanding the overton window is a sliding frame on an axis I guess it's a technical and semantic objection: A (one dimensional) window by necessity has two endpoints, and "pole" is a word that defines a point. Your use of pole is however more in the sense of direction rather than endpoint; an axis is a direction and as such can be defined by any two points along it and no set of points have such a privileged position that they warrant the label "pole". > I find it hard to believe that there is no ideological consistency Again, it's a statement about how parties are organised and not about how people in general believe the world works. Though I suppose this circumstance also implies there is a fairly dominant agreement on the essentials of the world-view.

notahacker 6y ago

There are plenty of exceptions to that dualism in Europe though (coexistence of social conservatism with strong ideological commitments to extending social protections and state involvement in industry in many significant European political parties and arguably even more widespread in public sentiment in many European countries) which are relatively rare in US politics.

bildung 6y ago
Yes absolutely, and you have the same in the US (e.g. libertarianism vs. evangelicalism). But those can mostly be explained within each moral framework (e.g. social conservatism is keeping the us vs. them mentality: "no social benefits for immigrants" or similar). Keep in mind these are not totally coherent, precisely defined theories, but instead are formed subconsciously by growing up in a particular social environment.

mbg721 6y ago

But US politicians are perfectly willing to discard big chunks of those frameworks, and their voters are happy to look the other way. Which party's ticket was the author of the Crime Bill and a prosecuting attorney??

bildung 6y ago
Indeed (and quite similar in Germany). They are the moral basis from which this very fact gets criticized, though.

SiempreViernes 6y ago

I don't think this is quite right, if the Overton window is different then so are the the poles (for any reasonable definition of pole). What is shared is the "directions" in "moral space", while a pole is above all a specific point. And to clarify, the main point of the article is that in Japan politics is not organised around how people stand on these moral questions, not that these debates don't happen. The article does not, for example, make the claim that in Japanese criminal politics there isn't a debate between redemption and retribution but rather that positions of the individual politicians in this debate will not correlate very much with their party allegiance.

bildung 6y ago
> I don't think this is quite right, if the Overton window is different then so are the the poles (for any reasonable definition of pole) Why? In my understanding the overton window is a sliding frame on an axis, so it makes no statement about the axis, only about the position on the axis. > And to clarify, the main point of the article is that in Japan politics is not organised around how people stand on these moral questions, not that these debates don't happen. Yes, that is what I have understood from the text, too. I find it hard to believe that there is no ideological consistency there (how are people able to make moral decisions without them, i.e. integrate their behaviour with their sense of identity?), though just as in the west the ideology and the actual political practice can obviously differ widely.
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  > In my understanding the overton window is a sliding frame on an axis I guess it's a technical and semantic objection: A (one dimensional) window by necessity has two endpoints, and "pole" is a word that defines a point. Your use of pole is however more in the sense of direction rather than endpoint; an axis is a direction and as such can be defined by any two points along it and no set of points have such a privileged position that they warrant the label "pole". > I find it hard to believe that there is no ideological consistency Again, it's a statement about how parties are organised and not about how people in general believe the world works. Though I suppose this circumstance also implies there is a fairly dominant agreement on the essentials of the world-view.