A call for a dramatically expanded, long-term effort to improve society's ability to constructively address the full scale and complexity of the challenges posed by destructive conflict.

Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess
Co-Directors, Beyond Intractability Project, Conflict Information Consortium
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September, 2024

CCI Home |  Initiative Framing Papers |  Newsletter/Discussion 

Initiative Goals: 

• Promote awareness of the many ways in which our future is threatened by the destructive ways in which we commonly handle conflict, 
• Clarify the challenges (see list) that will have to be overcome as part of any effort to limit the destructive conflict threat,
• Promote collaborative problem-solving based on mutual understanding, respect, and the collaborative search for wise and equitable solutions to common problems,
• Promote constructive advocacy strategies that use a more sophisticated understanding of conflict dynamics to help the parties better protect their legitimate interests,
• Scale-up constructive conflict strategies to work at the full scale of modern society with its mass media, social network-dominated communication environment.
• Resist "divide and conquer" politics in which Machiavellian actors try to advance their selfish objectives by driving society apart and attacking the institutions of collaborative governance.
• Accelerate conflict research and development focused on addressing the legitimate concerns of the field's skeptics and promoting efforts to tackle the tough problems at the frontier of the conflict field,
• Persuade large numbers of people to promote more constructive approaches to conflict and give them the training they need to be effective, and
• Build the funding base needed to support such work.

Summary

Beyond Intractability started the Constructive Conflict Initiative in 2019.  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 believe 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 the paragraphs that follow, 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. We conclude with a review of steps that might be taken at this point to amplify 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.

Background

In May of 2019, BI started the Constructive Conflict Initiative, which was a "call for a dramatic expansion of efforts to improve society's ability to constructively address the full scale and complexity of the challenges posed by destructive conflicts." In a lengthy statement (and also in a much shorter summary statement) we explained 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 response 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 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:

1. Cultivating Compromise
2. Cultivating Respect for Society's Many Identity Groups
3. Preserving Electoral Integrity and Continuity
4. Exposing and Delegitimizing "Bad-Faith Actors"
5. Promoting Reconciliation
6. Promoting Effective Communication and Problem-Solving
7. 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:

1. Increase funding for constructive-conflict and democracy-building work,
2. Build awareness about threats to democracy from hyper-polarization and destructive conflict dynamics,
3. Build a "state-of the-art" inventory of what we already know and what we need to learn to approach intractable conflicts more constructively,
4. Provide more constructive conflict education and training,
5. Recruit participants, 
6. Develop effective project coordination and governance mechanisms, and
7. 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 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. 

What Is Still Needed

We no longer see the need (or the possibility) of BI being the convenor of this democracy-strengthening effort. This effort has grown exponentially on its own since we first proposed the Initiative 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 or, more often, simply because they become entrapped in the us-vs-them escalation spiral that has engulfed so many democracies.

Funding

One of the most obvious and biggest needs 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 begins 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.² 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.

He 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, mutually beneficial approaches to conflict, 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 provide easier access to our collective knowledege3 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. 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. 

So we think the "inventory task" is being pretty well covered, and isn't as much in need of further work as most of these other tasks.  The bigger challenge is to promote wider awareness and utilization of this knowledge.

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.⁴ 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 constructively 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 tenets 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 being equated to "death of 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 our Toda Policy Brief 53 different roles that give people an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the massively parallel democracy building effort. While some people are doing each of these things, if we really are going to be able to turn democratic societies  around, we need millions more people engaging in these roles. So the recruitment effort will continue to be a major need.

Project coordination and governance 

We had this item in our original list, as we thought that the Initiative project could play some useful role in getting this larger effort going.  While we weren't able to do much, there were, fortunately, a number of other efforts (including those highlighted above) that have helped push things forward.  Still, we are a long way from having mobilized an effort that is large enough to adequately staff the many different roles that we have highlighted.  Especially needed are projects that help people see the bigger picture and the many ways in which people working on different aspects of the problem support one another. Also needed are efforts to reduce wasteful duplication of effort and encourage people to take on tasks that are not getting the attention they need. 

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.⁵ 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 to the electorate, through the commercial market, or as a non-profit, seeking funding from some philanthropic organization. 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 Inter-movement 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 in control of events as they continue fighting it out, driving polarization and escalation, and making it evermore impossible to successfully address the many problems facing contemporary democracies (immigration, climate, health, education, energy, or the economy, for example). 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 designed to push democracies in that direction.  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. More people and organizations are listed in a recent newsletter series on this topic (Newsletters 223, 226, 236, and 239) and in the "Colleague Activities Section" of our weekly "Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links" newsletters. (See, for example, Newsletter 274, 272, and 269. Still more such listings are found in our Colleague Activities Blog, although these are just sorted by date, not by topic.   We will be listing many more. sorted by roles, 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 anywhere. Working with them to solve problems can. We need to do much more to promote and support this effort.

Constructive Conflict Initiative¹

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We are indebted to Louis Kriesberg who in 1998 taught us the phrase "Constructive Conflicts" which we see as the most succinct statement of what should be the goal of the conflict resolution and peacebuilding fields--promoting the constructive aspects of conflict while, at the same time, working to limit its many destructive aspects.  Lou published the sixth edition of his excellent book on the subject, Constructive Conflicts, with co-author,  Bruce Dayton in 2022.

²We 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."

³As 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.

⁴If someone can better inform us, we'd appreciate it!

⁵ Complicated systems have top-down governance; complex systems do not.  For a further explanation of why this is so, see Complex Adaptive Systems.