Partisan, Power-Over Democracy vs. a Power-With Democracy for All
Newsletter #391 — October 12, 2025
Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess
Big Picture Newsletter Series - Post 3
In the previous post in this series, we argued that democracy is humanity's best defense against the dystopian consequences of brutal and unrestrained struggles for social dominance — what we called the Lord Acton corollary ("power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely") of a society governed by unrestrained "I'll Fight You for It" (IFYFI) rules. In that post, we observed that the United States (and a great many other Western democracies) are currently embroiled in all-out struggles between the left and the right for social dominance and control — fights that are rapidly taking them down a slippery slope toward some dystopian combination of paralytic political dysfunction, violent struggle, authoritarianism, and absolute corruption. We went on to argue that the best way to protect ourselves from such ends is by defusing all-out IFYFI politics, rather than attempting to decisively defeat the "other side" — an effort that is certain to intensify the hyper-polarized fights that lie at the root of our problems.
Important Questions
In this installment of the Big Picture Newsletter Series, we want to ask important (but perhaps uncomfortable) questions about the goals, strategies, and tactics of the many ongoing efforts to "save our democracy." Are those efforts likely to strengthen democracy by helping move us away from unrestrained, "I'll Fight You for It" politics? Or, are they just trying to help one side strengthen its power base by better handling internal conflicts within its political coalition so that it can win the IFYFI power contest next time around? While strong arguments can be made for both approaches, we need to recognize that they are fundamentally different and in direct competition with one another. The first approach seeks to implement the Great Reframing that we talked about in the opening newsletter in this series. The second rejects that reframing and, instead, seeks to help build a dominant political coalition capable of putting society back on what it sees as the "right track."
Democracy Failures and Successes
Before we discuss which approach we think is better, we want to start by recognizing the obvious fact that there are few, if any, instances in which democracies have been able to free us from grotesque concentrations of wealth and power that IFYFI struggles tend to produce. It is also clear that the history of democratic societies is littered with periods in which superficial democratic façades have mainly served to obscure and sugarcoat the workings of an underlying political system driven by ruthless fights for political dominance — fights that often hovered on the edge of large-scale violence. In short, democracy's critics have a point.
Still, if you look back on the big, and generally-recognized-as-positive, turning points in US history, it's clear that the Grand democratic Bargain that we described in the last post, has been able to bend the arc of history in ways that give ordinary citizens freedoms and opportunities that, by historical standards, are truly astounding. Big political conflicts like the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (and the Emancipation Proclamation), early 20th-century progressive responses to the "Gilded Age," women's suffrage, the labor rights movement, the civil rights acts, the environmental movement, and the same-sex marriage struggle have all produced significant changes to the underlying political order — the set of beliefs that are widely accepted by those on both the left and the right. This order is, of course, being continually contested as interest groups on both sides try to push public policies away from this informal consensus and toward more extreme positions. (We expect that other democracies will have similar stories to tell).
Force, Exchange, and Persuasion
The big thing that separates democracy from its dystopian, "I'll Fight You for It" alternatives is the fact that big changes like those mentioned above (and countless more minor political adjustments) did not just the result from the naked and ruthless application of force. As we described in our post on the power strategy mix, the widespread and long-term acceptance of these changes resulted from a balanced power strategy mix focused primarily on integrative power (persuasive moral arguments that these changes were in the best interests of society) and exchange power (compromises that broadened the base of support while minimizing the use of coercive power).
Democracies' current difficulties arise, we believe, from the fact that we have allowed the processes of escalation and polarization to transform healthy democratic competition based on a healthy power strategy mix into an all-out, us-vs-us-them quest for social dominance and control — the kind of control that relies exclusively on force and doesn't see a need to leave a livable place in society for those with whom one disagrees. We have replaced the negotiation of mutually beneficial exchanges and compromises with efforts to take as much as possible without being constrained by our obligations to our fellow citizens. In short, we do not now have the kind of democracy in which we treat our fellow citizens as we would like them to treat us.
The Boiling Frog Metaphor
For those who wonder how we could possibly have allowed this to happen, a big part of the answer lies in what many have called the "boiling frog" effect. The name derives from the widely believed story (which actually isn't true) that, if you put a frog in a pot of comfortably warm water and then turn the heat up rapidly, the frog will recognize the danger and jump out. If, however, you turn the heat up slowly, the story goes, the frog is likely to become accustomed to each small temperature change in ways that prevent it from realizing that, when taken together, the small changes represent a mortal threat — and that it should jump out of the pot.
If we had dismantled democratic norms and institutions rapidly, people would probably have recognized the danger and rebelled. Unfortunately, democratic norms and the obligations that we feel to our fellow citizens have eroded slowly over the last several decades, allowing us time to become accustomed to each degradation and accept it as business-as-usual, hardball politics. The problem is that we now appear to be nearing some sort of catastrophic breaking point with the real risks that the system will irretrievably collapse. To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway's famous line, democracies tend to fail slowly, then all at once.
The Elephant-in-the-Room / Donkey-in-the-Room Question
With that as background, let's go back to the important questions about actors' goals, strategies, and tactics being pursued by the many groups trying to save democracy. At the onset, we ought to recognize that such efforts are taking place at a time when the us-vs-them frame is dominating virtually all sectors of society — the information we consume, the people we interact with, and the institutional constraints that we operate under. Everyone is under enormous pressure to pick a side and maintain and demonstrate an allegiance to that side in our daily activities. We steadfastly avoid saying anything that might undermine our side's cause by saying something rbrn slightly positive about the other side. Invariably, this affects everyone's thinking at a deep and often unconscious level — including those who are honestly trying to do the right thing in the pro-democracy space.
This raises the often unspoken, "elephant-in-the-room / donkey-in-the-room" question. To what extent are pro-democracy actors really just Republicans (elephants) or Democrats (donkeys) who have brought their us-vs-them thinking to the pro-democracy space? Instead of promoting a more functional and fairer system for all, are they just trying to alter democracy's rules in ways that increase their side's chances of winning and putting their society back on their preferred image of "the right track?" Or, are they trying to help us all escape our hyper-polarized, us-vs-them politics and build a democratic society in which those on both the left and right would like to live?
Power-Over / Power-With Democracy Advocates
In the United States, many people believe that our democracy is in trouble, and two different kinds of groups are acting to fix that. One type of pro-democracy advocates is focused primarily on advancing their partisan image of what a good and just society should be. Some of these groups are left-leaning politically and define threats to democracy as coming from the right. Others are right-leaning, and define the threats to democracy as coming from the left. Both are pursuing what we call a "power-over" vision for democracy in which each side tries to impose its views and policies on the other side, which seeks something very different. But power-over advocates invariably generate a countervailing "power-over" movement from those they seek to overpower. It is this that has escalated into the hyper-polarization spiral that is tearing so many societies apart.
The second group is focused on building a democracy that serves the interests of everyone — not just those with a particular partisan perspective. They want to build a society that allows those with differing images of what society should be to peacefully coexist with one another. We call people in this group advocates of "power-with" democracy or "democracy-for-all."
In practice, of course, the efforts of specific individuals and groups are likely to fall on a continuum ranging from power-over democracy advocates on the left, to power-with democracy advocates in the center, to power-over advocates on the right. Within individual groups, and even within individuals themselves (who are often conflicted about where they stand), there is a continuing tension. In some circumstances, people will embrace more extreme, power-over frames while, in other circumstances, they tend to be more power-with oriented. While the line may be fuzzy, it is still true that the two approaches are fundamentally incompatible and in constant conflict with one another.
Power-Over on the Left
To understand why the two political parties are so fearful that the other is trying to overpower and disempower them, it helps to understand why those on the political right (and many in the center) rebelled so strongly against the Biden administration's efforts to impose its worldview on the larger society. We will then look at why those on the left (and, again, many in the center) are rebelling against Trump administration efforts to impose its vision of what a great America ought to look like.
Those on the left and, especially, progressives, see themselves as simply trying to help bend the arc of history toward truth and justice by forcing the United States to reckon with its exploitative and racist past. To do this, they have been working to dismantle the vast apparatus that they believe the largely white, male power structure has put in place to assure the continuation of its many unearned and unjust privileges. For them, this oppressive power structure consists predominantly of Republican constituencies defined largely by race, gender, and religion.
Their remedy, which reached its high point under the Biden administration, went far beyond arguing for their point of view within the context of the Grand democratic Bargain and the power strategy mix (with its reliance on persuasion and compromise). The Biden administration used aggressive claims of executive power to mobilize a "whole of government effort" to eliminate these injustices by pursuing a wide array of policies that favored previously marginalized (and predominantly Democratic) constituencies at the expense of the Republican constituencies. This was supplemented by a similarly expansive effort to persuade and force private sector social, cultural, and economic institutions to act in ways that strongly favored Democratic constituencies, while condemning and marginalizing its Republican opponents.
Across the economy, hiring and promotion decisions favored the Democratic Party's protected classes in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Anyone who objected and challenged the left-leaning political orthodoxy could easily find themselves canceled, out of a job, and blackballed from future employment. While this was cast in terms of simple social justice, the fact that favorable treatment tended to be channeled so directly toward Democratic constituencies made it clear, to Republicans at least, as it was something much closer to naked, power-over, machine politics.
Push Back on the Right
Regardless of the philosophical and moral merits of the left's social justice argument, its approach was, from a conflict perspective, clearly an us-vs-them way of looking at the world — one that was certain to provoke intense push back from those who were, in various ways, now designated as part of the "oppressor" class (i.e. the populist right).
Initially, the right's push back to earlier incarnations of these ideas was confined to efforts to use democratic institutions and processes to reverse what they saw as unfair policies. As defeats mounted and these efforts failed, those on what came to be called the "populist right" concluded that their appeals were not being fairly considered. This, in turn, led many to start questioning the legitimacy and fairness of the entire system. Increasingly, they concluded that the Grand democratic Bargain had been violated, that democracy was failing, and that the only remedy involved the vigorous use of more extreme tactics — the kind of tactics that, in the earlier, Mitt Romney era, would have been seen as unacceptable. (Mitt Romney ran for President in the U.S. in 2012, but lost to Barack Obama.)
The Trump Era Power-Over Politics
Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election brought to power those united in their opposition to the full range of Biden-era progressive programs, opinions, and policies. The Trump Administration is now engaged in a comparably intense but even more forceful effort to undo and reverse pretty much everything favored by the Biden Democrats.
While one can hope that his goal is to simply return democracy to the middle ground characterized by the Grand democratic Bargain, that seems unlikely. Republicans seem to have decided that this bargain was a misleading illusion and that the world is really governed by "I'll Fight You for It" rules. Their intention seems to be to win that fight decisively and for all time.
As they try to do so, there is little reason to believe that they will take the steps needed to avoid the extreme corruption associated with the Lord Acton effect. The levels of corruption now openly tolerated, if not celebrated, by the Trump administration would have been terrible political scandals in earlier eras. Even more worrying is its use of the legal system to pursue and, perhaps, imprison its political enemies and its mobilization of the ICE agents and the military as his personal political enforcers.
While Democrats will try in 2026 and 2028 to pull the political pendulum back in ways that allow them to reassert societal control, their prospects for success are questionable at best. Before then, Donald Trump and his supporters may well be able to solidify power in ways that will corrupt those electoral processes and fully validate warnings that he is a dangerous authoritarian wannabe.
The Power-With Way Out
At this point, it's hard to see how those on the center right, worried about Trump's authoritarian excesses, could be persuaded that the solution is to go back to Biden-era policies. And it's hard to see how those on the center left who thought Biden went too far could be persuaded to embrace the new political order that Trump is building.
If there is going to be effective opposition to the power-over politics of the left and the right, it's going to have to come from the center and the rediscovery of the Grand democratic Bargain.
To do this, power-with democracy advocates will have to find ways of restoring and strengthening aspects of democracy (such as free speech, due process, transparency, and effective checks and balances between the three branches of government) that give all sides confidence that their rights and interests will be protected. They must more fully embrace collaborative, compromise-oriented approaches, protections for individual rights and freedoms, and respectful coexistence that allows healthy democracies to include an extraordinarily wide range of really diverse communities.
Of course, for such a movement to truly succeed, it will need a realistic, near-term path to enough power to change today's destructive political dynamics. The good news is that the widespread, popular disgust with the current state of affairs creates such an opportunity. It seems likely that Democrats could expand their eroding political base by embracing the Grand democratic Bargain (rather than doubling down on ever-more divisive strategies). Conversely, Republicans could solidify their defeat of the Democratic Party's woke extremes by rediscovering the bargain that made America great in the first place. If both parties reject power-with politics, this would create an opening for a serious third-party Presidential challenge. Finally, short of Presidential politics, the growth of "problem-solver," legislative caucuses based on power-with principles could realistically accumulate enough votes to force the leadership to pursue more compromise-oriented legislation.
Overcoming Existing Power Concentrations
Unfortunately, things have deteriorated to the point where power-over democracy advocates on both the left and the right are able to argue (with some considerable justification) that the power-with vision is unworkable because the other side has been thoroughly captured by corrupt authoritarian wannabes who are fully committed to dominating society and thoroughly disempowering their adversaries. This has led large numbers of people on both sides of the divide to conclude that an essential first step in any effort to repair democracy is to decisively defeat the authoritarian forces on the other side. Only then, they believe, can the work of building a democracy true to their vision begin. The problem, of course, is that both the left and the right see the current political moment in these terms. And, that is what is driving the hyper-polarization spiral to unprecedented extremes.
In this context, it is clear that making power-with democracy work will require making peace across a political divide that is teetering on the brink of large-scale civil unrest and violence. Under such circumstances, it is worth remembering one of the most fundamental truisms of the peacebuilding field — you don't make peace with your friends, you make peace with your enemies.
In our case, we are lucky. We only need to make peace with our political adversaries — not those who have committed terrible, unrightable atrocities (something that those trying to make peace in war-torn societies frequently have to do). We just need to be able to coexist with those with differing views on the culture war issues, while also finding a fairer way of distributing the resources that we are lucky enough to have in abundance. This is far easier than reconciling after a terrible war or genocide as too many other countries have had to do.
A 21st-Century Democracy That Lives up to Its Ideals
Despite the obvious difficulties, the key has to be finding some way of defeating the corrupt, "Lord Acton" actors on both sides, while at the same time, assuring grassroots citizens on the left and the right that their vital interests will be protected. Given that the trust between the two parties has completely collapsed, this is going to be extremely hard to do. Still, if we want to save our democracy, and strengthen our civic culture, we have no alternative but to figure out how.
For this to be successful, the power-with movement needs to draw a bright line that distinguishes its efforts from the efforts of the power-over pro-democracy movement. It has to offer something that is clearly different from partisan efforts to use pro-democracy rhetoric to advance their power-over agenda.
This is obviously a controversial thing to say. Those working in the pro-democracy space have traditionally avoided criticizing one another in the belief that they are all were, in their own way, part of the same massively parallel effort to strengthen democracy. This can still work, but to do so, we must face the elephant-in-the-room / donkey-in-the-room problem head-on and start working together to building a 21st century democracy that actually lives up to the idea of democracy for all. How to do that will be the focus of the balance of this Big Picture Newsletter Series.
Please Contribute Your Ideas To This Discussion!
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About the MBI Newsletters
Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is 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.
NOTE! If you signed up for this Newsletter and don't see it in your inbox, it might be going to one of your other emails folder (such as promotions, social, or spam). Check there or search for beyondintractability@substack.com and if you still can't find it, first go to our Substack help page, and if that doesn't help, please contact us.
If you like what you read here, please ....
Please Contribute Your Ideas To This Discussion!
In order to prevent bots, spammers, and other malicious content, we are asking contributors to send their contributions to us directly. If your idea is short, with simple formatting, you can put it directly in the contact box. However, the contact form does not allow attachments. So if you are contributing a longer article, with formatting beyond simple paragraphs, just send us a note using the contact box, and we'll respond via an email to which you can reply with your attachment. This is a bit of a hassle, we know, but it has kept our site (and our inbox) clean. And if you are wondering, we do publish essays that disagree with or are critical of us. We want a robust exchange of views.
About the MBI Newsletters
Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is 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.
NOTE! If you signed up for this Newsletter and don't see it in your inbox, it might be going to one of your other emails folder (such as promotions, social, or spam). Check there or search for beyondintractability@substack.com and if you still can't find it, first go to our Substack help page, and if that doesn't help, please contact us.
If you like what you read here, please ....
