The Democratic Ideal Is a Constructive and Fair Dispute Handling System

2. Intractable Conflict Threat and Opportunity

Democracy is, at its core, a system for handling the vast stream of disputes that characterize all societies, in ways that the public believes will produce wise and equitable decisions. When democracies are able to successfully reconcile competing interests in ways that enjoy broad support (or, at least acquiescence), then citizens are willing to “trust the system” and forsake the use of extreme (and, potentially, violent) political tactics. Successful democracies rely upon a vast and multi-faceted array of civic norms and institutions to perform six essential dispute handling functions:

1. Vision: Cultivation of a shared underlying vision for society that is capable of binding citizens (and non-citizen residents) together despite their many deep differences.
2. De-Escalation and De-Polarization: Limitation of destructive escalation and hyper-polarization dynamics that can make shared, democratic governance impossible.
3. Mutual Understanding: Promotion of mutual understanding through the effective use of a broad array of trust-worthy and trusted communication mechanisms.
4. Reliable Assessments: Reliable, fact-based and technical assessment of the nature and causes of societal problems and the advantages and disadvantages of alternative options for addressing those problems.
5. Collaborative Problem Solving: Utilization of collaborative problem-solving processes that are able to identify and take full advantage of mutually beneficial opportunities, to generate pragmatic solutions to intractable problems.
6. Equitable Processes: Equitable decision-making processes and institutions that resolve disputes in cases where voluntary, collaborative processes are unable to make consensus or compromise decisions.*

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*This text is copied from "Massively Parallel Problem Solving and Democracy Building: An Ongoing Response to Threats to Democracy in the U.S." by Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess. Toda Peace Institute Policy Brie No. 200. September 16, 2024. https://toda.org/assets/files/resources/policy-briefs/t-r-200_massively-parallel-problem-solving-burgess.pdf

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