Civil Politics remains a free resource and we continue to support some partners who we previously worked with but due to time and funding constraints, we are not currently actively supporting programs. We’re still happy to provide lightweight advice, but apologies in advance if we are unable to engage at the depth that we previously were able to. We do plan to resume normal operations in the future and are working on the larger mission in other capacities. The mission and the research remain dear to our hearts.

CivilPolitics’ mission is to educate the public on evidence-based methods for improving inter-group dialogue, with evidence defined broadly to include academic studies, empirical studies of community interventions, and also the practical wisdom learned by organizations that are bringing people together in the community.  As part of this last area of evidence, we are asking our partners in the community to answer a set of semi-standardized questions designed to help us learn the common themes that run through successful community work.  If you would like to have your organizations’ work profiled, please do contact us and/or fill out this form.  This is the second post in this series,  where Mark Gerzon, Director of The Bridge Alliance, shares lessons from his 25 years bringing people together.

What is the organization/group that you represent? What is it’s history in terms of getting involved with improving community relationships?

The Bridge Alliance is just founding, but I have been active in the field for a quarter of a century. We’ve incubated numerous projects like America Speaks and the US Consensus Council. One of the things the past 25 years has thought me is the limitations of any single project, approach, book, tool, practitioner, or website.  After 25 years, I felt a yearning to help the field mature and become integrated into a coherent movement or soul because I want to have an impact on the American people and my frustration is that the political system has not benefited from this work.  If anything, the political process has deteriorated while this field has been growing.  I want to close this gap so that the system can receive the benefits of the work being done, through the Bridge Alliance.

What specific programs/events/curriculum do you run? Briefly describe what it is you do.

There are many specific strategies that one can read about on our website, but one specific goal is that by the end of 2016, we want a significant percentage of the American people to be familiar with a third political narrative. The first narrative might be that conservatives are better and have the answers.  The second narrative might be that liberals are better and have the answers.  The third narrative is that we have to work together across the political divide to meet the challenges facing our country. Americans working together is this third narrative. 100% of people may not become aware of this as not even 100% follow politics in any form, but if a significant number are at least aware that there is a third narrative, they will no longer be living in a black and white world, but rather living in a technicolor political world.

An example of a specific project we have done that can facilitate this awareness is the set of Youtube presentations we have made available under the Center for Transpartisan Leadership.   The idea was to provide short youtube presentations as an online faculty so that American citizens can meet all the people in this field. The presentations include personal testimonials about what led individuals to be interested in this field as well as practical lessons on how people have created change in their communities.  We have about 20 of these videos going up by the summer, with 12 online now, and the eventual goal is to have 40 or 50 up.

What has worked well in your programs/events? If someone else wanted to replicate your programs, what specific advice would you give them as far as things to do to replicate your successes?

My best answer to that question is detailed in my book, Leading Through Conflict, which reflects the panoramic view I have had within this field, through methods like appreciative inquiry, generative dialogue, non-violent communication, and more.  The table of contents list 8 tools that I have found helpful across techniques (Integral Vision, Systems Thinking, Presence, Inquiry, Conscious Conversation, Dialogue, Bridging, and Innovation).  That being said, I’d like to expand on one recommendation that readers of this post may find helpful that relates to our current efforts.  It had been written about as Systems Thinking or Systemic Change previously.

Specifically, the success of any program is likely to depend a great deal on what happens to get the right people into the room before the meeting even starts.  Too often, people will gather like minded parts of a system into a room and pretend it is the entire system.  They may rationalize this by saying that the other side wouldn’t come, because they are so unreasonable, but that is a very self-serving way of framing things.  Awhile back, I led a retreat where we gathered Al Gore and his team with the people responsible for advertisements against his movie, an Inconvenient Truth.  In order to get everyone in the room, we had to focus on both climate change and energy security.  Similarly, in order to get both liberals and conservatives in the same room, the Bridge Alliance is focusing on both money in campaigns and free speech.  [ Editors note: this is very similar to academic work on finding shared goals and the Asteroid’s Club model ]

Where can others learn more about what you do?

http://mediatorsfoundation.org/our-mission/

Civil Politics exists to help educate the public on evidence based methods to improve inter-group relations, especially those intractable conflicts that have a moral dimension to them, such as the partisanship that paralyzes US politics.  Part of this effort involves compiling all of the existing evidence that may exist in this domain, so that we can more authoritatively bring this evidence to others who are doing the work on the ground.

Evidence can include many things.  It certainly includes empirical research, both in its published and unpublished form.  It includes examples from the news that echo this research, where people talk about what does or does not lead them toward more or less cooperation vs. animosity across groups.  It includes both the empirical study of the effects of programs that focus on improving inter-group dialogue, as well as the lessons that those who run those programs have learned through years of practice.    The basis of psychometrics and crowdsourcing is the aggregation of results across methods, each of which has it’s own sources of error, with the hope that convergent evidence is reached across methods.  It is the same reason that we want to ask multiple people, ideally with diverse tastes, before passing judgment on a new restaurant or movie, and we hope to bring the same thoughtfulness to the evidence that we present on improving intergroup relations.  The links in this paragraph are examples of how we support the collection and dissemination of each of these types of evidence.

We are currently working on projects that aim to be more systematic about evidence in each of these categories and we could use your help.  Specifically, if you know of academic research that provides evidence for the role of specific variables in increasing or decreasing inter-group civility, please do use this form to provide us with details.  Before adding any specific papers, you can use this link to check what has already been added to the database.  Questions and comments welcome (email me at ravi at civilpolitics dt org) and feel free to provide as much information as you have, even just filling in the first part about specific papers, as we can have others fill in the rest of the information.

Please do feel free to forward this blog post to anyone who does research bearing on this question or who knows of such research.  We are also happy to acknowledge your contribution publicly and/or to provide rewards to students who contribute to this project (e.g. travel support to academic conferences) to both incentivize participation and hopefully encourage their interest in this domain.  Thank you for your interest and consideration.

In summary:

• Click here to check the current set of papers already in our database.
• Click here to add new papers/studies.

– Ravi Iyer