Cultivating Compromise

5. Massively Parallel Goals

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
For more information

June 20, 2026

One key goal of massively parallel peacebuilding and democracy building is creating a system that works for everyone—a power-with democracy or organization, rather than a power-over system. The willingness and ability to compromise is a key element of such systems.

Unfortunately, compromise is often treated as a disappointing fallback — something people do when they lack the courage or power to win. In deeply divided societies, that attitude can be disastrous. A democracy that works by domination, in which each side tries to impose its will whenever it has the votes or the leverage, leaves large numbers of people feeling defeated and unrepresented. A more constructive, “power-with” democracy requires something different. It asks citizens and leaders to look for decisions that a broad majority can live with, even when almost no one gets everything they originally wanted. In that sense, compromise is not a sign of weakness. It is one of the basic skills that makes self-government possible.

This is especially important in the context of Massively Parallel Peacebuilding. No single leader, organization, or reform can rebuild a badly polarized political culture by itself. But many people, acting in many settings, can help make compromise more legitimate and more rewarding. Journalists can stop treating every concession as a betrayal. Civic organizations can create settings in which people practice problem-solving across differences. Voters can support leaders who get workable things done, not just those who dramatize their side’s anger. As Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson argue in their work on the mindsets of political compromise, the habits that help people campaign are not always the habits that help them govern. Campaigns reward sharp contrasts. Governing requires the capacity to turn disagreement into decisions. (Kenneth Boulding used to call this "the law of political irony." )

The practical key is learning to identify a zone of possible agreement, often called a ZOPA. This is the range of outcomes that are better for all sides than the realistic alternatives available to them. In simple negotiations, this may be a matter of price. In public conflicts, it is usually more complicated. People may disagree fiercely about their preferred policy, but still share an interest in safety, fairness, stability, affordability, or public trust. The task is to move beyond rigid positions and ask what each side is really trying to protect or achieve. This is the central insight behind interest-based bargaining and the broader negotiation approach associated with Fisher Ury and Patton's Getting to Yes.

Compromise also requires an honest comparison with the available alternatives. If the alternative to agreement is delay, litigation, public anger, policy whiplash, or continued escalation, then a less-than-perfect agreement may still be far better than no agreement at all. This is why negotiators pay attention to each side’s BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement).

In political life, people often underestimate the costs of walking away. They imagine that, if they simply refuse to compromise, their side will eventually win outright. Sometimes that happens. But in many intractable conflicts, the more common result is stalemate, resentment, and a growing belief that democratic institutions cannot solve real problems.

None of this means that every compromise is good. Some agreements sacrifice basic rights, entrench serious injustice, or ask vulnerable people to bear an unfair share of the burden. Those should be resisted. Nor is compromise always the best conflict style; sometimes true collaboration can produce better answers than simply splitting the difference. Still, a society that loses the ability to compromise loses one of its most important tools for living together. Cultivating compromise means teaching people to search for partial agreements, workable tradeoffs, and mutually tolerable next steps. In a massively parallel strategy, that is not a minor side goal. It is one of the essential ways in which a divided society can begin to govern itself again.

—————————

This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.