Newsletter 276 — September 20, 2023
Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess
Background:
The Initiative was based on our 30-year inquiry into the challenges posed by intractable conflict and our belief, based on that work, that society's chronic inability to constructively handle it's most difficult conflicts constituted the single, most serious threat to democratic societies and humanity more generally. Conflict problems routinely prevent us from effectively addressing all of the other big problems we face. They also weaken societies in ways that leave us more susceptible to authoritarian impulses, outside aggression, and civil unrest.
Like the climate scientists of 40 years ago, we believed (and still do) that those with expertise in conflict, democracy, and peacebuilding need to do more to help mobilize a very large-scale effort to address the problem. In this newsletter, we review some of our earlier efforts to imagine what such a mobilization might look like. We will also highlight the ways in which others have reached similar conclusions and the things that they have been doing to work in similar directions. The next newsletter will review of steps that might be taken at this point to amplify our collective efforts. We also extend an open invitation for readers to support and, hopefully, find a way to become involved in this endeavor — an endeavor that is much, much bigger than BI or the Initiative.
In a lengthy statement (and also in a much shorter summary statement) we explained in 2019 why we thought this Initiative was needed, and what "next steps" were called for. We enlisted support from about 50 conflict resolution and peacebuilding scholars and practitioners, and tentatively planned a conference to kick off the effort in early 2020 (intending to follow the same approach we used to start Beyond Intractability 20 years earlier). Then COVID intervened, and we all locked down.
Like many seasoned academics, we spent our lock-down time writing. In addition to working on BI, we wrote a paper articulating the reasoning behind the Initiative which was published in the Conflict Resolution Quarterly. The basic argument we made there was that the conflict resolution field had a lot of expertise that could be brought to bear on the problem that we then called "hyper-polarization," which, we asserted, was threatening the very viability of democratic societies. We sought to persuade our colleagues to become much more involved in American political conflicts in an effort to diminish hyper-polarization and get all sides talking to each other in more constructive ways. While our primary focus was on the society that we best understand, the United States, we recognized from the onset that the challenges that we were addressing afflicted democratic societies worldwide (though obviously in different ways).
This paper was the first of what CRQ planned to be a series of "feature articles." They were intended to be controversial, with the hope that they would spur discussion about the future of the conflict resolution field. To facilitate this, CRQ made the article open access (which it still is), and co-sponsored with BI an online discussion about the article and related ideas. This discussion was initially hosted on BI, and then we moved it to Substack, formatted as a newsletter, where it still resides (and is over 200 posts strong).
We followed the CRQ article with a second article on Beyond Intractability entitled "The Key to Revitalizing Liberal Democracy: Think of It As a Conflict Handling System." Here we expanded on an idea just touched on in the CRQ article — that democracy was a complex dispute handling system, and in order to influence it in a meaningful way, one had to work at the systems level. We came up with the idea of "massively parallel peacebuilding" (MPP), which we later expanded to "massively parallel problem solving" (to take into account domestic efforts that would not generally be considered "peacebuilding") and "massively parallel democracy building (MPDB)" when we got more deeply involved in the U.S. democracy-strengthening effort.
The basic idea of MPP is that there is no one way to "fix," democracy. Rather it is going to take thousands or even millions of different efforts all working loosely in parallel, on different aspects of the problem, in different places, simultaneously and sequentially over a considerable period of time. But since both the problems being addressed, and the responses, are part of a complex system, no one could be in charge. Rather, it is all "organized" with a natural societal process equivalent to Adam Smith's "invisible hand." People see problems that need to be addressed; they come up with ideas for addressing them; and if they seem sensible, they seek clients or grant funding to try them out. The good ideas succeed and spread, the bad ones are dropped. Taken together, all these efforts can add up to much more than the sum of the individual parts and can bring about meaningful improvements, even to a very toxic, intractable hyper-polarized system. All of this is driven by society's principal learning engine — the fact that all problems create opportunities for people who can figure out how to solve them.
We also looked at democracy as more than just democratic governance (with its institutions and body of law). It is a mechanism for wisely, equitably, and peacefully handling the vast stream of disputes that characterize all modern societies. We believe that bringing the conflict resolution perspective to efforts to strengthen democracy (in this broader sense) highlights problems and opportunities that a purely political perspective might miss.
Related Efforts
About 18 months ago we got involved in two other related initiatives. One is the Intermovement Impact Project (IMIP) which its co-founders, Walt Roberts and Caleb Christen describe as a convening of a "movement of many movements" to strengthen U.S. democracy. We see IMIP as a real-world example of massively parallel democracy building and problem solving at work. By participating in their monthly virtual meetings, we have been learning about their participants' many efforts to strengthen U.S. democracy through what Walt and Caleb call a "Block, Bridge, and Build" strategy. They are seeking to block the people and organizations that are trying to tear democracy apart (those who we have elsewhere called "bad-faith actors,"), build bridges between people on different sides of the U.S. political divide, and build new structures which will enable people from all sides and all walks of life to work together to build a democracy that meets everyone's interests and needs.
The second initiative we were invited to join is the Toda Peace Institute's Global Challenges to Democracy Program. This program is made up of about twenty people, mostly scholars, but some practitioners from around the world, who seek to deepen "their collective understanding of the internal and external threats and challenges to democracy around the world and to identify ways in which democratic institutions can be strengthened and made more resilient." Through them, we have learned more about how the problems facing the United States are being repeated all around the globe. In response to a request from Olivia Stokes Dreier, a Senior Research Fellow at Toda and the lead organizer of the Global Challenges to Democracy Program, we just recently completed the next major paper in the Constructive Confrontation Initiative series, which is being initially published as a Policy Brief by the Toda Peace Institute. They have graciously allowed us to cross-post the paper on BI, and also to send it out in installments in our Substack newsletter, which we will be doing shortly.
This new paper is entitled "Massively Parallel Problem Solving and Democracy Building: An Ongoing Response to Threats to Democracy in the U.S." This paper pulls together many of the themes we have been working on since the beginning of the Constructive Conflict Initiative. It starts out reviewing the primary threats to democracy in the U.S., which we emphasize come from both the left and the right, and everywhere in between. We note that conflict dynamics are leading some people to desire a "strong, authoritarian leader," and we consider the implications of a complete democratic collapse.
But we go on to explain that American democracy is resilient, and there is actually a lot going on to prevent its collapse, and even improve it. These efforts constitute a "massively parallel" response that needs to achieve at least seven goals. These are:
- Cultivating Compromise
- Cultivating Respect for Society's Many Identity Groups
- Preserving Electoral Integrity and Continuity
- Exposing and Delegitimizing "Bad-Faith Actors"
- Promoting Reconciliation
- Promoting Effective Communication and Problem-Solving
- Limiting Massively Parallel Partisanship (a more divisive form of massively parallel collective action)
We then describe 53 different "massively parallel democracy-building roles" that need to be (and in most cases are being) filled as part of a very large-scale effort to accomplish these goals. But when we say these roles are "being filled," we mean that some people and organizations are doing these things. This effort, as large as it is, is nowhere near big enough. We still need many, many more people and organizations to undertake these roles in many different settings, different localities, and different levels. In short, "filled" does not mean "full." We also need more people to move away from hyper-polarized, massively parallel partisan roles where the dominant focus is on trying to decisively (and, if possible, permanently) defeat the other side.
If American democracy is to be saved and improved, so that hyper-polarized political dysfunction is a thing of the past, and we are able to work together to solve our many other pressing problems, we all need to contribute to this massively parallel effort. We are not asking people to quit their jobs and volunteer to be mediators. And we are not asking advocates to give up their advocacy and simply "make nice" with the other side. But we are asking them to honestly consider how they (and "their side") are contributing to the problem of hyper-polarization and how they can behave differently — being less judgmental and more curious and open about ideas "from the other side," for instance. Or by getting involved in local initiatives about issues of personal concern and looking for mutually beneficial ways of addressing those issues. Or by supporting and voting for legislators, governors, and presidents who advocate compromise and working across the aisle, instead of those who are pushing a highly partisan agenda. And, for advocates, engaging in what we call "constructive confrontation," rather than the prevailing, destructive approach which is actually (when one adjusts for transaction costs and the very real risks of defeat) less effective at defending one's interests.
And, as we advocated in the CRQ paper, we are hoping to enlist many more professional conflict resolvers in this effort. In that respect, we are delighted that Duncan Autrey of Omni-Win has joined with the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) to create the Practitioner Mobilization for Democracy Campaign. They describe this campaign as a place "where practitioners of dialogue facilitation, community mediation, collaborative communication, and conflict transformation unite to support the future of democracy. ... This campaign is your gateway to more effective engagement in the pro-democracy movement. It's about turning your skills into action, providing clear pathways for participation, and fostering a community of practice where we all learn and grow together."
Constructive Conflict Initiative "Next Steps" — And What Is Happening
When we started the Constructive Conflict Initiative, we assumed that we would develop this effort in much the same way that we developed BI — holding a conference to pursue a number "next steps" which included efforts to help:
- Increase funding for constructive-conflict and democracy-building work,
- Build awareness about threats to democracy from hyper-polarization and destructive conflict dynamics,
- Build a "state-of the-art" inventory of what we already know and what we need to learn to approach intractable conflicts more constructively,
- Provide more constructive conflict education and training,
- Recruit participants,
- Develop effective project coordination and governance mechanisms, and
- Convince people that solutions are possible and it is worth joining the effort!
We are very pleased to see that a number of these next steps have been taking place without a conference. We have been taking preliminary steps to do some of this work ourselves: trying to build awareness of the threats to democracy, the ways in which most of us are unwittingly contributing to increasing those threats, and things that we, as individuals and as a society as a whole, can do to better address those threats. We are working to re-organize all of Beyond Intractability and to create a "Resource Guide for Democracy and Constructive Conflict" that we see as an initial version of the "state-of the-art" inventory we said was needed. We have also been doing what we can to encourage more people to get involved in this effort.
To our delight, many other people have (usually independently) seen the need for such work and have started significant efforts of their own. These include those mentioned above (IMIP, the Practitioner Mobilization for Democracy, Toda's Global Challenges to Democracy Program, as well as many, many others including, for example:
- The Bridge Alliance, which is an alliance of many other organizations working in the U.S. to bridge divides, further civic education and engagement, improve elections and governance, and assure the promulgation of trustworthy information."
- Braver Angels, which "is leading the nation’s largest cross-partisan, volunteer-led movement to bridge the partisan divide for the good of our democratic republic."
- The Listen First Coalition, which has brought over 5000 organizations "together across divides to build understanding, trust, relationships, and solutions — to turn down the heat and find a way forward together."
- The National Civic League which is creating a map of "America's Health Democracy Ecosystem." As of this writing, the map is not yet available, but one of its developers told us about two months ago that they had over 10,000 organizations that had submitted information for inclusion. Again, we would argue, this is "massively parallel democracy building" happening on the ground.
So there is a lot going on. Unfortunately, there is a lot of massively parallel divisive work going on too, so we are by no means "out of the woods."
In next Tuesday's newsletter, we will discuss what is still needed to move this effort forward.
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About the MBI Newsletters
BI sends out newsletter 2-3 times a week. Two of these are substantive articles. Once a week or so we compile a list of the most interesting reading we have found related to our topics of interest: intractable conflict, hyper-polarization, and democracy, and we share them in a "Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links” newsletter. These links include articles sent by readers, information about our colleagues’ activities, and news and opinion pieces that we have found to be of particular interest. Each Newsletter will be posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
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