"Democracy Firsters"

7. Massively Parallel Roles & Tasks

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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July 15, 2026

“Democracy Firsters” argue that strengthening democratic institutions and improving the way societies handle political conflict must be treated as urgent priorities. Democracies face many substantive problems, including national-security threats, climate change, economic inequality, racial injustice, and inadequate health care. Yet societies cannot address these problems effectively when their political systems are paralyzed by hyper-polarization, corrupted by special interests, or threatened by authoritarianism. Democracy Firsters therefore focus on restoring the public’s ability to solve problems together. They do not necessarily claim that democratic reform is the only important task. They argue that it is an enabling task: without a reasonably legitimate and functional system of self-government, progress on almost every other issue becomes much harder.

Beyond Intractability’s Constructive Conflict Initiative takes this approach by calling for a much larger effort to address destructive conflict and democratic decline. The initiative emphasizes that political disagreement is inevitable and often beneficial. The danger arises when disagreement is pursued through deception, intimidation, dehumanization, or efforts to exclude opponents permanently from political life. Other Democracy First organizations concentrate more directly on elections and political institutions. One that is actually named democracyFIRST works to defend free and fair elections and mobilize an ideologically diverse coalition against authoritarianism. Issue One describes itself as a crosspartisan political-reform organization that brings Republicans, Democrats, and independents together to strengthen American democracy. Its work has addressed election administration, political money, congressional capacity, and threats arising from the information environment.

Some Democracy Firsters concentrate on making government institutions more capable of deliberation and problem solving. The Rebuild Congress Initiative, a collaboration between Issue One and the Harvard Negotiation Project, applies lessons from negotiation, mediation, and organizational change to the functioning of Congress. It seeks to create the relationships and deliberative space needed for legislators and other political leaders to work across ideological divisions. This does not require them to abandon their principles or erase genuine policy disagreements. It means building enough trust, communication, and institutional capacity for Congress to perform its constitutional role rather than relying on perpetual partisan warfare, executive action, or judicial intervention to make difficult national decisions.

The bipartisan House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which operated from 2019 through 2022, offered a practical example of this approach. With equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, the committee developed more than 200 bipartisan recommendations intended to make Congress more effective, accessible, and collaborative. Its work addressed such matters as staff capacity, technology, committee procedures, and opportunities for bipartisan relationship building. Former co-chair Derek Kilmer discussed the committee’s methods and lessons in a Beyond Intractability interview. The committee’s co-chairs, Kilmer and William Timmons, also received the Program on Negotiation’s 2023 Frank E. A. Sander Award for their bipartisan work. These efforts illustrate the central Democracy First insight: democratic institutions will not repair themselves automatically. People must deliberately redesign incentives, rebuild working relationships, and defend fair political processes so that democracy can once again address the substantive problems that citizens urgently need it to solve.

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