Tolerance as a Political Value

This blog looks at tolerance as a virtue in political discourse. It considers why it is often overlooked and why it does not seem to gain traction in contemporary discussion of the troublingly fragile state of democratic societies or in the EU.

Background
 
We live in a time when political views are widely seen as having become more polarised, when political parties do not seem to aggregate opinion as they did in the past, when the media adds to divisions, and politicians see advantage in appealing to the extremes rather than to the middle. 
 
The divisiveness of contemporary politics is damaging because it erodes the norms of behaviour on which democracies depend. According to these underlying norms, people must be willing to respect the views of other citizens, be open to discuss their differences with those with whom they disagree; they must be prepared to see their own parties lose power and wait for their turn when out of power, and when in opposition they still need to respect the rules of constitutional politics. Divisiveness feeds on itself. Moderates in the centre ground disengage and disassociate from politics.
 
Against this background it would seem almost self-evident that tolerance would be counted as an essential virtue in democracies. Yet political theorists rarely pay attention to it. Politicians rarely mention it. 
 
WHY TOLERANCE SHOULD APPEAL
 
Tolerance can be defined as ‘agreeing to disagree’ or as ‘live and let live’. It can be distinguished from agreeing to compromise. Under a compromise each party to the agreement gets something they want in return for accepting something they don’t want or don’t agree with. There is a calculation about the net gain from compromise. Accepting that the other party gets what one doesn’t agree with under the compromise is calculated to be better than no compromise at all where nobody gets anything. 
 
Any relationship between tolerance and a willingness to compromise is indirect. The tolerance of differences might set up the conditions under which compromises and common ground can eventually be sought. In this case tolerance can be seen to be about the merits of playing for time. But there are more fundamental reasons why tolerance should be valued.
 
Agreeing to disagree is relevant in three main circumstances: when policy differences seem irresolvable; when ethical positions taken are directly opposed or incommensurate with each other; and, when interpretations of the circumstances surrounding a choice and relevant values are so divergent that it seems better to step back, and possibly wait for something new to enter the scene.
 
The irresolvable

​Questions of collective policy in democratic politics are rarely one-time, one-off judgements. They typically involve decisions around education, health care, housing and welfare that are of longstanding concern from the past and will remain a continuing concern long into the future. Changes when they take place are likely to consist of gradual policy adjustments rather than radical steps. 
 
In such areas people can have similarly long standing, deeply entrenched and fundamentally diverging attitudes – some will be opposed to ever-increasing welfare dependencies or increasing levels of public debt, others will point to the need for expanding social safety nets in times of economic insecurity. 
 
The tolerance of such fundamentally different attitudes allows the basic differences of attitude and approach to remain in place unresolved. The acceptance that there is disagreement on the fundamentals of policy does not necessarily close the door to policy change. Traditionally it is the role of political parties to advance and mediate the debate. 
 
In the EU the ultimate shape of ‘ever closer union’ is one longstanding area where citizens may have fundamentally different views, where debate is seen as best avoided and change takes place as a result of successful policy implementation. 
 
The incommensurate
 
Peoples’ attitudes to questions around collective choice inevitably involve normative judgements. Sometimes ethical concerns will be uppermost. In these cases, there will always be some areas where ethical concerns run in direct opposition to each other and cannot be reconciled. (the incommensurate). In contemporary politics we meet moral attitudes that involve irreconcilable clashes of claims to the moral high ground in areas such as women’s rights, the rights of the child and gender identification. 
 
In such cases the differences are about more than differences over the interpretation of important moral precepts where both sides accept that there is no right answer. In this case each side states and maintains that there is a right answer and a wrong answer and that they themselves have the right one, the only right one and that the other view is wrong.
 
Such differences can be deeply felt and deeply held. Tolerance of the differences is a way of offering respect to the sincerity of those who make very different value judgements and allowing for such differences to stay in place.
 
Interpretation
 
Tolerance is also relevant when it is accepted that there is no right answer to a question of collective choice and that the range of views about what to do rules out any easy compromises. For example, it is widely accepted that the development of computer power (AI) will continue pose new risks, whose shape we cannot yet fully foresee, to democratic societies where privacy, agency and liability norms are all open to different interpretations. 
 
In situations where there are wide divergencies of opinion about how to interpret norms and the circumstances of their application there is a choice. Decisions can be taken without full understanding of the risks and by supplementing one normative goal with another. For example, it is not coincidental that the targets of the EUs much touted setting of standards for the whole world in the digital world are American companies. The ancillary objectives in this case are thus about tech leadership and the EU’s ‘sovereignty’. Alternatively, rather than rely on possibly less justifiable ancillary norms, differences of interpretation can be held to justify inaction until the circumstances clarify or allow different actors in different jurisdictions to contribute their choices. 
 
The tolerance of difference therefore seems important as a way of recognising in democratic societies that there are long standing and irreconcilable difference in approach to public policy, deeply held differences in ethical opinions, and many cases of genuine uncertainty over how to interpret norms, the circumstances of their application and how to support them. By not pressing such differences and by agreeing to disagree, tolerance helps to protect the middle ground of public debate where compromises may be found and incremental adjustments to policy made. 
 
Despite the importance of tolerance for the support it gives to the norms of behaviour in democratic societies it is rarely highlighted as a virtue. The question is why not. 
 
WHY TOLERANCE DOES NOT APPEAL
 
There are three main reasons why tolerance does not appeal as a virtue essential for modern democracies. First, it is an unheroic virtue. Secondly, it suggests a degree of ethical relativism that downplays or denies that important norms carry with them an obligation to act to implement. Thirdly it is consistent with allowing for jurisdictional choice in systems where power is distributed between different layers and levels of government. It thus challenges those with authority in the centre in places such as Washington DC and Brussels. 
 
The call of the hero
 
Tolerance is an unheroic value. For politicians wishing to lead from the front and enhance the status of their institution and their own reputation it is much more tempting to voice the heroic. Thus, in her 2023 State of the Union speech to the EP, von Leyen referred to ‘the call of history’, to when ‘Europe is bold’ and to the ‘blueprint for the whole world’. Trust, pride in the EU’s cultural diversity and the need for less polarisation were indeed mentioned, but not the role of tolerance in underpinning such objectives. The word does not appear in the speech. For Europe the call of the hero lies in the myths of ancient Greece and Rome but hero figures are found in all cultures.
 
The call to action: rights
 
The second main class of reason why tolerance is downplayed as a virtue is that an appeal to rights seem to provide a more important way for recognising core values in democratic societies. Rights appear to provide a way to transcend differences while tolerance involves the acceptance of difference. Tolerance can be seen as about not acting in the face of differences while rights are about taking action. Rights are seen as moral ‘oughts’ that logically require implementation by virtue of their status as ‘oughts’. 
 
The obligation to act traditionally ranges from a view that some rights have absolute value and peremptory status (a legal taskforce of the UN lists 7 such categories of rights) to a more general requirement to implement when a claim to a right can be identified in a situation of collective choice. When a right is identified in collective choice it is widely held to ‘trump’ other concerns. Tolerance questions the claim that rights can be seen as ‘trumps’.
 
Jurisdictional choice
 
The third main reason why tolerance is not always welcome as a value in democratic societies concerns the distribution of powers in a system of distributed powers such as the EU. From an economist’s perspective, distributed powers are sometimes expressed in terms of the advantages of ‘competitive federalism’ where the ‘best’ or most successful policy sets the standard for others. This view of the advantages of distributed powers has not generally gained traction among political economists in the EU. It seems to run counter both to the goal of ‘ever closer union’ and to the goal of a ‘social’ union that heavily and deliberately qualifies free market economics and ideology. 
 
Toleration puts the advantages of allowing different jurisdictions to interpret values in their own way on a different non-economic normative footing. It is about learning about important values themselves from the different interpretations that can be given to them in different jurisdictions and in situations of uncertainty about their application. 
 
This justification of the value of a system of distributed powers as enabling us to improve our understanding about important values nevertheless does not sit easily with the use of rights to justify the extension of EU powers on the way to ever closer union.
 
Conclusion
 
Tolerance is an under-recognised value in democratic societies, including the EU. Europe has succumbed to the call of the heroic in its undemocratic past. Its leaders should be more careful in how they lead.