Newsletter 278 — September 24, 2023
Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess
What Is Still Needed
We no longer see the need (or the possibility) of BI being the convenor of this democracy-strengthening effort — it has grown exponentially on its own since we envisioned the CCI in 2019. We don't see a need for a kick-off conference, as we had planned, although there are many interesting and useful conferences being held to host people who are working in this "space" for mutual learning and coordination. For example, in February, 2024, the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers came together for an "annual summit," convening leaders from across the electoral reform movement to "deepen alignment, foster collaboration, and work through disagreements." in July Braver Angels hosted a National Convention at which nearly 750 people, equally divided between liberals and conservatives, plus many independents, came together in Wisconsin to
create hope in a time of despair. Our delegates, ranging from ages 14 to 91, worked together for three days — debating and finding solutions to some of our toughest problems, voting on which issue we’ll tackle in the year ahead (immigration won!), and even writing original music for our growing movement.
There are many more in-person and virtual meetings of people working in the general "democracy ecosystem" every week. Despite all that is being done (and it is a lot!) there are still many challenges that this effort now faces, not the least of which is the number and strength of the people and organizations that are working in the completely opposite direction — seeking to tear us apart for their own personal or their sides' gain.
Funding
One of the biggest things needed is funding. It is still hard to get this work funded, although funders are beginning to move into this field. Daniel Stid, founding program officer of the Hewlett Foundation "U.S. Democracy Program" just released a monograph, Taking Democracy for Granted, which beings with the line "philanthropy dedicated to strengthening democracy in America is at its high-water mark and flowing with unprecedented urgency." More than 170 institutional and individual funders, he said, signed an "All by April" pledge, promising to provide funding by April 2024 to nonprofits seeking to ensure "voters are informed, participation is diverse, and that the American people can be confident in the integrity of our election system,” hoping the work will make a difference in the November 2024 presidential election.
Despite this growing philanthropy, however, Daniel asserts "we are not heading out of the woods, but going deeper into them." And he sees philanthropy frequently contributing to, rather than ameliorating, the problem, as they are funding advocacy work that drives polarization higher, rather than funding initiatives that help bring people together.1 In an April, 2023 blog post "Philanthropy and the Testing of Democracy in America (which we excerpted in a June 2023 newsletter, "Social Justice Advocacy, Bridge-Building and Philanthropy: How Do These Intersect?") Daniel argues that
Philanthropists consistently overestimate their ability to improve democracy in America in the short term, within the political confines of an electoral cycle, Congress, or administration. Conversely, funders underestimate their ability to do so over longer time horizons in the fertile expanse of our civic culture. And they overlook the extent to which politicized philanthropy serves–inadvertently but nonetheless inexorably–to accelerate the hyper-partisan tribalism that is the source of so many of our problems.
Hel went on to argue that focusing on short term politics and policy at the expense of the long term has an "unacknowledged opportunity cost" — the lack of investment in ideas, leaders, organizations, and civic infrastructure that "is needed to sustain a pluralistic democracy. Philanthropy is uniquely positioned to underwrite these investments. If it does not, who will?"
He expands upon this theme in his recent "Taking Democracy for Granted."
Across multiple issue areas, philanthropists on both ends of the ideological spectrum are contributing to a tragedy of the commons in our public life. They freely and rationally pursue their own interests and agendas while collectively undermining the health of the polity whose institutions and policies they seek to influence. In doing so, they deplete the capacity of our political system to produce the broad and enduring majorities needed to settle major policy questions in a republic of continental scale. The uncompromising, ideologically-driven advocates and activists underwritten by philanthropy keep the political parties tethered to the poles of our politics. Meanwhile, most voters’ preferences remain clustered between the center-left and the center-right, falling into the yawning gaps between the policy agendas of our polarized parties. [Here he cites Anthony Fowler, “America’s Silent Majority Is Alive and Well — And More Moderate Than Either Party,” and Fowler, et al. “Moderates" as documentation.]
To help remedy this problem, Daniel has been calling for philanthropic pluralism.
One way philanthropy could help us resolve polarization — or at least better cope with it — would be to enable fuller expression of our built-in, multi-faceted diversity. Supporting a robust pluralism in civil society would help counter and constructively diffuse the Manichean, zero-sum worldviews unleashed by polarization. This is a venerable perspective, albeit one fallen from favor in this tribal era. This paper explores why we can and how we should revitalize it. Its central contention is that not only can we restore pluralism as the organizing principle for philanthropy and civil society, we must do so to salvage liberal democracy in America.
If more funders would heed this call, funding for the kinds of initiatives needed to strengthen democracy would become easier to get. From what we hear from our colleagues who have been seeking such funding (we, ourselves, have not), funding for pluralist or nonpartisan (or transpartisan, as some prefer to call it) is still hard to come by. Most "democracy funders" seem to be funding either left-learning partisan efforts to defeat Trump and the MAGA republicans who they frame as the "primary threat to democracy," or they are funding efforts trying to defeat Harris and the "woke progressives," who the right sees as the "primary threat to democracy." We, like Daniel, hope for a major philanthropic reframing which comes to realize that it is hyper-polarization that is the greatest threat to democracy, and fund efforts that are seeking to reduce this polarization.
We should note, however, that we very much agree with the argument made by Rachel Kleinfeld and Shamil Idriss, who argued in a June 15, 2023 op-ed in the Chronicle of Philanthropy (which responded to an earlier Chronicle op-ed advocating for philanthropic pluralism), that democracy cannot "be saved," simply by "being nice," which they see as the goal of many of the anti-polarization efforts.
One group, concerned about increasing polarization and the pressure to conform to ideologically pure camps, justifies bridging divides for the sake of civility and mutual respect.
We would argue that most people and organizations doing bridging work are not actually doing it only for civility and mutual respect. Rather, they see civility and mutual respect as the first necessary stepping stone on the path toward constructive relationships, conflict resolution, and a healthier democracy. The mistake we see made more often is the belief that dialogue alone can bring about such societal-level changes. We agree with Shamil and Rachel; it will not. Nor will any other single approach, including activism. That's why we are calling for a massively parallel approach which includes dialogue, structural changes, activism, negotiation and compromise and many more. Shamil and Rachel continued in their article
This [bridging for bridging's sake] heightens the frustration of the second group: activists and donors who call for adversarial advocacy in the fight for social justice. For them, polarization is necessary to achieve greater inclusivity and equality, while depolarization smacks of “both sidesism” and risks sacrificing social justice on the altar of civility.
This is the argument Bernie Mayer and Jackie Font-Guzman made in their exchange with us early on in this discussion. It is also the question asked by Julia Roig in her contribution to the BI blog: Rethinking 'Polarization' as the Problem
Shamil and Rachel suggest a third approach:
The debate between civility and adversarial advocacy ignores the power of collaborative action to transform conflict, restore democracy, and promote peace. Such collaborative approaches yield a dual benefit: meaningful progress toward social justice and improved trust between otherwise opposing groups. Activists who facilitate collaborative action do not treat justice and peace as a tradeoff but integrate the principles of both in their activism.
We agree, as we said above, civility for civility's sake is not helpful. Dialogue alone cannot diminish polarization or fix democracy. But dialogue, citizenship education and training, collaborative action, and many, many more actions, taken together, can bring about meaningful change (for the better).
But none of this is going to happen without funding. So we hope more funders will recognize that U.S. democracy is threatened, but the threat is not simply "the other side." It is the destructive conflict dynamics that are continually driving us apart. We need funding for programs that seek to change these dynamics, not simply reinforce them by funding one side against the other.
Building Awareness
There is a tremendous amount of talk and writing about the threats to American democracy, but most of this is still being framed as being the fault of one side or the other. Not many people are framing the problem as one of destructive conflict dynamics, that are forcing people into evermore extreme positions that, most likely, even the advocates, secretly deep-down inside, don't believe. (Or, maybe they actually do believe them because of the insidious nature of cognitive biases that makes us want to believe what our peers say and what reinforces our pre-existing beliefs, rather than challenging them.)
But we also agree with Daniel's point that it is largely the elite that are inhabiting the extremes; as he said in the quote above, "most voters’ preferences remain clustered between the center-left and the center-right, falling into the yawning gaps between the policy agendas of our polarized parties. More in Common seconds this notion in their report The Perception Gap that shows that we really have much more in common with the other side than we think we do. So we still need a lot more work on what we call "the great reframing" — getting people to understand that the enemy is not the other side, but rather destructive conflict dynamics that are pitting us against each other.
Building an Inventory of What We Already Know
This has been a primary goal of Beyond Intractability since its inception, although for our first 20+ years we were not focused nearly as much on democracy as we are now. That has led to our current effort to re-organize the entire website by topic instead of by project, and create a "resource guide" that will share our collaborative knowledge2 about destructive conflict dynamics and hyper-polarization — and what can be done to reverse these. This is a huge task, however, and will not be done for another few months.
A parallel (though smaller, hence more manageable) effort is being undertaken by the Practitioner Mobilization for Democracy Campaign and the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation which has a "Resource Center" which provides resources on dialogue, deliberation and public engagement. The Horizons Project is also assembling a resource center on effective ways of organizing and advocating for social change. There are likely other such online resource centers available as well. We know, for example, that Essential Partners has an extensive set of resources on dialogue available. If anyone reading this knows of other useful resource centers, please let us know!
So we think the "inventory task" is being pretty well covered, and isn't in need of further work.
Providing more Constructive Conflict Education and Training
Quite a lot is being done in the education and training area, but much, much more is needed. Conflict resolution and peer mediation used to be fairly popular in U.S. elementary, middle, and high schools. This isn't an area of our expertise, but our sense is that this isn't as widespread as it used to be.3 It is sorely needed. It is also sorely needed at the higher education level, as became abundantly apparent in the spring 2024 semester, when campuses erupted over the war in Gaza. We have seen articles about several universities that have instituted conflict resolution training and/or dialogue programs on campuses to try to more effectively deal with that issue in the fall semester of 2024, but these need to be extended to cover all conflicts, as well as all schools.
Adults, too, need conflict resolution and "citizenship" training. Many young adults today never took "civics" or "government" in school. Those topics became so divisive, that many schools just stopped teaching them to try to avoid conflict. So many young adults don't really understand the basic tenents of democracy, why and how it is better than autocracy, and what their responsibilities are within a democracy. Efforts are being made by some organizations to fill that gap, but much more is needed.
Recruit Participants
Some organizations, particularly the Bridge Alliance, Living Room Conversations, Listen First, and Braver Angels are trying to get more people involved in their programs, and in defense of democracy more broadly. We applaud these efforts, but have heard that, at least in some cases, they are not being as successful as hoped. We think this is likely due to the continuing hyper-polarization that is being pushed by the elites, who paint "democracy" as an "all-or-nothing" fight to the death in which the victory of the other side means "death to America" or the American way of life (and both sides are claiming that). The only way we are going to be able to successfully recruit participants to this massively parallel effort is to reframe the threat to democracy from being the other side to being the destructive conflict dynamics that are driving the two sides ever farther apart.
To do that, we need to show people what is being done — and show them how they can get involved, without giving up their current life or job. That is one of the reasons that we have laid out in the Toda Policy Brief 53 different roles that need to be played. While some people are doing each of these things, if we really are going to be able to turn U.S. society around, we need millions more people engaging in these roles. So the recruitment effort will be ongoing for a long time!
Project coordination and governance
We had this item in our original list, as we envisioned a relatively small project (as Beyond Intractability was at its inception) to get this effort going. That, as we said before, is no longer needed. Massively parallel democracy building is off and running, even if it needs many more participants.
Since the MPDB is, like the democracy it is trying to influence, a complex system, it does not need, and indeed, cannot have, top-down governance and coordination.4 It needs to be coordinated, like a free market economy, with a balance of supply and demand. People identify problems. They come up with "solutions" or "interventions" or ways to approach the problem, and they try to "sell" their approach -- either through the commercial market, or as a non-profit, seeking funding from a philanthropist. Ideally, good solutions will work and get more funds; bad ones will fail and will fail to get more funds. But the more people understand the market--the more they know what others are doing, and how they might help each other, rather than compete with each other, the more effective they can be. (This is one way that MPDB is different from free markets, in which competition is key.) That is why the efforts of the Internmovement Impact Project, the Bridge Alliance, the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) and a few "umbrella organizations" that we haven't mentioned before, The Trust Network, the Bridging Movement Alignment Council, and the National Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM) and other such umbrella organizations are important to this effort. They give actors a chance to learn about needs, to learn about what others are doing to fill those needs, where help is needed, and who can help whom do what.
Convincing people that solutions are possible!
This was the last need we had identified early on. Then, and even more now, far too many people thought that the hyper-polarization breaking the U.S. and so many other democracies was unavoidable. They thought it was just the way politics happens. Some people (the activists on each side) thrive on it; many others are repelled by it. But rather than trying to change it, most of those who are repelled just withdraw, and try to ignore it, which leads the "true believers" on each side fighting it out, driving polarization and escalation, and making it evermore impossible to successfully address the many problems facing America or elsewhere, be it immigration, climate, health, education, energy, or the economy. We won't be able to successfully grapple with any of those problems until we can work together.
The good news, however, is that a great many people — who now number in the millions — have decided that politics and governance and civil society has to be done differently. They believe that compromise and collaboration and effective decision making and problem solving are possible and they have begun projects to do just that. In our new Toda Policy Brief we highlight a number of such people and organizations who are filling most of our 53 massively parallel peace and democracy building roles. We will be listing many more in each category as soon as we get our Resource Guide for Democracy and Constructive Conflict completed. So, we are working to convince people that solutions are possible, as are many other organizations.
But the best way to convince people this is so, is not to argue it. It is to do it! Show it! We firmly believe in Kenneth Boulding's "First Law:" "If it exists it must be possible." People are working across divides all over — at the local, state, and even, at times, at the national level — to solve joint problems. The more such efforts are visible and succeed, the more people will realize that hating the other side really isn't getting us anywhere. Working with them to solve problems can.
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1We discussed this tendency in several previous newsletters (see Newsletter 126 "Social Justice Advocacy, Bridge-Building and Philanthropy: How Do These Intersect?" which focused on earlier writings of Daniel's; Newsletter 127 "Rachel Kleinfeld and Shamil Idriss on Polarization, Philanthropic Plurality, Social Justice, and Democracy;" Newsletter151 "Daniel Stid: Four Ways To Reframe Democracy in America," and Newsletter 167 "Daniel Stid Talks about Ways to Strengthen Democracy by Replacing Polarization with Pluralism."
2 As of September, 2024, over 600 people have contributed articles and/or interviews to Beyond Intractability, and if you include the wisdom found in our "Colleague" and "News and Opinion" Posts the collaborative knowledge found within BI comes from several thousand people.
3If someone can better inform us, we'd appreciate it!
4 Complicated systems have top-down governance; complex systems do not. For a further explanation of why this is so, see Complex Adaptive Systems.
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