Newsletter 107 — April 18, 2023
Background
As even occasional readers of this newsletter know, we are very concerned about the hyper-polarization of society and other threats to democracy that are plaguing the U.S. and other countries around the world. A colleague of ours, a former French diplomat, Jean-Jacques Sebrenat, shares these concerns, which he wrote about in an earlier BI blog post. In late March, we (Guy and Heidi) and Jean-Jacques facilitated a discussion about these issues with about 25 people from the Zurich-based Institute for Global Negotiation and participants in the BI polarization discussion.
While the discussants agreed that there are many drivers of hyper-polarization and conflict that are threatening democracy around the world, this conversation also illustrated that there is much going on already, and much more that can be done, to reverse these trends. While this list is hardly comprehensive, and we'd no doubt get a different list if we convened twenty five different people, this is an impressive set of ideas to generate in about an hour of conversation.
Clearly, there are many things we can do to reverse these destructive trends—we just need to start working at it, instead of falling prey to the defeatist notion that "it's all hopeless, there's nothing to be done," or conversely, that "the situation is so dire that we must fight even harder to destroy the other side since they are so evil and dangerous." "Most people," one participant observed, "don't want these conflicts to continue. They just don't know how to stop them." This report presents a very beginning list of ways to do that.
A detailed report of the discussion is available here, but we also wanted to write a shorter version to share in our newsletter.
To get the conversation started, we asked four questions:
- Why are so many societies abandoning power-with approaches to governance and decision making in favor of power-over approaches? And, most importantly, what can be done to reverse that trend?
- How can we get more people to abandon the prevailing "us-vs-them" mindset when even the suggestion of compromise is so widely seen as traitorous?
- How can we scale up our traditionally small-scale, table-oriented processes to deal with the size and complexity of conflicts that envelope entire societies?
- How can we better counter "bad faith actors" who are trying to advance their narrow interests by generating and inflaming tensions and hatred?
All the breakout groups chose to discuss questions 2 and 4. Questions 1 and 3 will need to be addressed in later discussions.
Causes of the Problem
Two of the three breakout groups wanted to discuss causes of current problems before they discussed solutions. The causes that were seen as most important were:
- The number of stressors facing individuals and countries all at once (for example, the pandemic, the economy, weather/climate, inequality, immigration). One person observed that people are feeling "unmoored" and are seeking the safety of identity groups to gain a sense of security and belonging.
- The speed of change is making people feel as if "they have lost control of their lives."
- Both of these stressors encourage simple "us-versus-them" narratives that blame "the other" for one's own problems and, hence, drive polarization.
- While some participants pointed out that polarization is "nothing new" — we've had it forever, two people observed — others thought it was worse now. One person observed "There have always been Republicans and Democrats, buy they used to have healthy debates. It was not polarized to the point where today, so many of my Democratic friends are saying, ‘I don't even talk to Republicans anymore.” It's that kind of polarization, it’s society wide. So beforehand, they might be angry over an issue, but not so widely that they won't talk to them at all."
- All participants agreed that social media and "technology is an accelerant." One participant observed that while we have always had polarization, "it only involved a small number of people. And everybody else wasn't engaged. They were just going about their lives. And now with social media, everybody is politically active. Everybody is in their own silo, getting their own narrative, having totally different worldviews from others.”
- One breakout group focused more on nondemocratic countries, where, it was observed, totalitarian regimes use belief systems and religion to stifle democratic institutions and practices. One participant spoke about the links between religion and politics in countries like Afghanistan or Iran. In their view, it is difficult to envisage a negotiation which could lead to any improvement in basic rights. For lack of a more efficient approach, fostering awareness and resistance is the only way to keep one’s ideals alive under autocratic rule. Democracy can only occur in countries with a minimum of political diversity, individual freedoms and economic viability.
Ways to Address Polarization and Other Threats to Democracy
One breakout group did focus entirely on remedies to our current problems, and the other two did so on toward the end. Ideas for addressing polarization included:
- Third party convening can be used in many different ways. Mediators or facilitators can bring people together who wouldn't ordinarily meet. They can meet to sort out factual disagreements; they can meet to develop creative ideas for solving particular local, regional, or even larger scale problems; they can meet to just get to know each other better, to find out why other people think the way they do.
- One person observed that whenever one has a chance to meet, talk with, and/or work with people who are different from you, who may disagree with you, you should jump at the opportunity. You'll learn a lot, and may well better produce something better than you could have working alone or with your own group.
- She went on to say that practicing curiosity is always important. "When we hear something we strongly disagree with, instead of “jumping in immediately and saying, well, that's clearly wrong,” it helps to stop and think, “well, I think you're barking mad, but there's a reason you think what you think. Can you tell me more about it?”
- Another person talked about the power of convening people face-to-face to share stories, particularly since, she observed, "younger people don't read." So the best way to learn about other people, to establish relationships, is to get together face-to-face.
- Conferences can encourage observers to become engaged citizens. One person is trying to get people from around the world to come together to “see if we can find global common principles of how to find peace within yourself, peace within your family, peace within your community, peace within your nation and the last layer is peace between nations.” But before the face-to-face get together, they are setting up working groups with online meetings to explore those layers of conflict. The goal is to get more people engaged. “Right now, I sense that most people, like 99% of the people in the world, are standing beside a train and just watching it run. And it is a few governments who are running it. If they started running the train, he said, things would go differently. Most people don't want to have all these conflicts going on."
- Similarly, bottom-up approaches were recommended: "Peace should spread organically. So we have little groups and hopefully many more little groups around the world will start, not a revolution, but a peace movement from the bottom up, because from the top down right now, it doesn't look good.”
- Another participant talked about leadership development. They are “working with communities to engage people and try to build leadership capacity of community members at the grassroots level, and then [get citizens to] engage in dialogue with public officials so that people understand how government works, and how to work through differing views." They are creating an online leadership academy to help people learn how to engage civic issues in a constructive way. Like many, they are starting locally, in one state, but hope to expand. "I know a lot of our frustrations concern what happens at the national level. But I do believe that while work needs to be done at that level, I do think that if we can create more resilient communities at the community level, it will potentially bubble up."
- In response to social media as a driver of polarization, the focus was on algorithms that continually reinforce the same narrative, whatever that narrative may be. One group discussed the possibility of changing social media algorithms so people would see diverse ideas, not all of the same. But given that social media companies are privately owned, that was seen to be very difficult to do. Perhaps it could be forced with federal legislation, one person suggested, noting that Google is much more controlled in Europe than it is in the U.S.
- It was also observed that social media and tech, more broadly, can use used for good. It enables more people to get together more easily. One person described how the Internet was being used in Taiwan to hold large scale deliberative discussions. And this conversation wouldn't have happened without "tech. "The Internet enables people to become much more knowledgeable about other places that they wouldn't otherwise be aware of."
- And social media can be used well. One person described a course in Bosnia which taught "social media literacy" to high school students--teaching them how to assess sources and how to distinguish real facts from fake ones. Clearly, this is something that could be done worldwide.
- The group that was focusing on international problems observed that while it is sometimes viewed as a distant pursuit, democracy can be attractive, and can actually bring tangible benefits. The European Union was described as an example. Candidate countries must meet a number of standards (separation of powers, political diversity, trustworthy institutions, efficient processes, economic viability) before being admitted as members. They are attracted by the benefits of membership, such as structural funds, the ability to take part in common policies, and being seated in the EU’s institutions (Council, Commission, Parliament, Court of Justice).
- Another way of preserving and promoting democracy, that group observed, is "by adopting a global view. The current pattern of international relations does not seem capable of addressing some of the major challenges of our times, e.g. the preservation of our ecosystem, the containment of pandemics, large-scale monetary instability, or war as a default mechanism for conflict resolution." These things have to be addressed at a global level.
- "More than ever, information is of prime importance in a globalized world," that group observed. "Education, reliable data, truthful news reporting all play a big role in enhancing awareness, which in turn is an indispensable component of democracy."
- It is also important to recognize that "certainty doesn't exist. . . . We never have perfect options. We just have choices. So how do we go about making choices? We need to position ourselves so we have as many options as possible."
- "I used to be very hard on other people," one participant observed. "But I was hard on other people because I was very hard on myself. And once I stopped being so hard on myself, that allowed me to be kinder to other people. We need to do that at scale. I think that leads to a lot better outcomes.”
- Knowledge transfer is important to prevent "knowledge cycling." There are always new people entering conflicts, and others moving out. We need to transfer what we know — about particular conflicts and about conflict transformation/resolution strategies to the new people, to the younger generation. We don't need to keep on reinventing the wheel.
- A couple of other people stressed the importance of getting disputants to consider what they want the future to look like "That's where people's energy go. I've done consensus-building meetings over wilderness issues where people were shooting each other − killing cows, shooting tires, but when you said, 'what would you like to see this land to look like?' They all wanted the same thing. They all wanted it preserved." Once they discovered that, they were able to work together successfully, and came up with a number of very creative options for solving mutual problems. Another discussant observed the same thing with respect to Black Lives Matter and policing. When people got down to discussing what they really wanted, progress was made. When they just marched, without discussing what they wanted, nothing changed.
- Measuring "success" is tricky, however. It isn't just getting what has been called "peace writ large." It can be localized breakthroughs. And "it isn't always complete resolution where an agreement is reached and everyone walks away happy. Sometimes the successes are social change − we change the way a society operates, the way it deals with conflict or we change corporate culture and the way that businesses approach things. Societies or organizations can change from being "conflict negative cultures" which think of conflict as bad and a thing to be avoided, to being "conflict positive cultures" which realize that conflict is the source of learning, if it is handled constructively. The Alliance for Peacebuilding's Eirene Peacebuilding Database has a lot of data about what works and what doesn't work in the context of international peacebuilding.
- The National Issues Forum process was suggested as a good way for large groups to work through conflict.
- One person pointed out that not everything should be negotiated. Sometimes issues are too important to compromise on — they need to be addressed with a power strategy, such as the massive nonviolent action recently seen in Israel which has slowed down, if not stopped, Netanyahu's judicial reform.
- The use of "autonomous regions" and other jurisdictional separations is a useful conflict resolution mechanism, which allows each community as much leeway to live the way they want to live as possible.
Other Things to Think About
In addition to causes and responses ("solutions" seems too strong a word), other ideas came up that are worth highlighting.
- One person cautioned that "one way in which the conflict resolution field may have failed is in terms of sustainability of its interventions. When we bring people into the mediation room, we can usually get them to reach some common ground and perhaps come up with some integrative solutions. But then, how do we keep them implementing those solutions and committed to them when they go back to their respective constituencies? That seems to be very problematic. How do we build a culture that supports collaborative agreement? How do we build a container that will support a really different way of thinking and acting? How do we design and implement systems so they are part of the culture…so that you deal with your differences, you communicate about problems, and it’s just the way you do business. Hopefully you do this when the conflict is small and addressable. And if you can’t, then there’s support from outside mediation. But the ideal is that it [constructive ways of addressing conflict] will really be self-guiding and self-directing.”
- Another noted that "there is a tension between just trying to end the conflict, and trying to have a good ending…one which is progressive, according to that participant. "I would argue that in the United States we have conflicts that were very badly waged, which cumulatively produced our present problems. And there were also unwaged conflicts—latent conflicts—that contributed to our problems too. Because if they would have been waged more openly, things would be better. It was the smothering of conflict that has contributed to the disaster that our country is currently facing. I would argue that we need to pay much more attention to how you get good results, that lead to more equality, allowing people to have a better life."
- Another person noted that people in conflict are looking for answers to substantive problems, not better relationships. They tend to go to pastors, coaches, even cops. They don't go to mediators. "But we" [mediators] have a critical role to play and that is getting off of center stage, and helping other people to get there.
- Others disagreed with this assessment, however, pointing out that mediators and other conflict professionals do play a useful role "by creating opportunities for people to listen to one another and to reframe an issue. Often issues are framed as either-or issues, and they aren’t. Or they don’t have to be. If you can reframe the question from who is right and who is wrong to 'how can we solve our mutual problem,' all sorts of things change." Often the parties themselves can't do that because they are too wrapped up in their emotions and their own narrative. "Mediators and facilitators know what questions need to be asked to set up a constructive process – and process is the key."
What's Next?
This discussion was rich with ideas, but we only discussed two of the initial questions, and other ideas came up that warranted much more discussion. So we, at Beyond Intractability, hope to hold more discussions such as these, and will be working to flesh out quite a few of these ideas as we try to document and catalogue all the good things that people are already doing to address hyper-polarization and other threats to democracy.
As we have said elsewhere, there is no one answer to these problems. They are only going to be successfully addressed by thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people and organizations doing different things, roughly in parallel, in the pursuit of the same goals: better relationships, better decisions, solved (or improved) substantive problems — locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. This is what we call "massively parallel peacebuilding." And while it seems impossibly daunting, it isn't — it is already happening, as this discussion illustrated. Our goal, at Beyond Intractability, is to make all this progress visible and to assemble as much as we can about our collective knowledge about how to conduct conflict constructively. Once we do that, we hope, more and more people will join the massively parallel peacebuilding effort and make it even more powerful than it currently is.
Please help — by telling us what you, your organizations, or others you know about are already doing to combat these problems—even if it is a small scale effort being done at the local level. One participant quoted Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
So if you are not yet engaged in this effort, consider what you can do, in your own family, workplace, or community, to become a piece of the massively parallel peacebuilding effort! We can succeed if we all chip in and do our part. But if we just stand around watching (and bemoaning) the train going by, as one person described, it is only going to pick up speed. Let's slow that train down, and then turn it around, sending it off to a better destination than the one it started from.
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