The Constructive Conflict Promise: an Engine of Social Learning and Progress

2. Intractable Conflict Threat and Opportunity

In Brief

When conflicts are pursued using legitimate, constructive methods at either the interpersonal or the societal level, they usually result in decisions that are accepted by all, even if they aren't "liked" by the losers. This is how society "learns." It is how we go from less just, less efficient, less effective policies to more just, more efficient, more effective policies. However, such changes are usually slow, and some people are turning against liberal democratic processes, because they see authoritarian rule as a faster way to get what they want. That is an illusion, however. Fortunately, in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere). a growing number of people and organizations are advocating a variety of structural and procedural changes that could improve democracy, rather than tearing it down.

When we were teaching, we often described the "basic conflict unit" as being a situation in which one person or one "side" wanted another person or another "side" to change. They wanted someone to give them something they weren't giving them. Or they wanted a policy or law or procedure that they didn't like to be changed to one they preferred. If the other person or side agreed without complaint, there was no conflict. But f they resisted, or rejected the request, that started a conflict.

In the simplest terms, such a conflict can be handled in one of two ways. In well functioning democracies or smaller social units, such as families, one can follow an established, legitimate procedure for making a decision. A person can sue the other person and get a court to decide the outcome. If the courts are widely seen as impartial, that should be an accepted, legitimate, decision. A similar, but quicker approach might be mediation or arbitration. In a family, children can appeal to a parent, who will hopefully make a fair and accepted decision. Squabbling parents can go to a therapist or a family mediator.

Going back to the societal level, one could pursue a political solution, trying to get a law or policy changed by campaigning for, and then voting for, representatives and administrative leaders (such as governors and presidents) who support one's preferred option. As long as the political processes is seen as fair, and losers maintain the hope that they might prevail the next time around, that too, would constitute a legitimate way to make a decision.

This is, as Guy often puts it, how society "learns." It is how we go from less just, less efficient, less effective policies to more just, more efficient, more effective policies. Examples would be the U.S.'s evolution from only allowing white male property owners to vote (in the 1700s) to allowing non-land owning males to vote (early 1800s), non-white males to vote (1870) allowing women to vote (1920), eliminating voting barriers (such as poll taxes) with the 24th Constitutional amendment in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Finally in 1971, young people (ages 18-21) were granted the right to vote.

All of these changes came about as a result of constructive conflict engagement that won over enough representatives (and presumably their constituencies) to bring about these reforms. (These expanded voting rights have more recently come under attack, of course, and we will write about that in another essay.) But these changes are examples of constructive conflict leading to social learning and improvement. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was another example of constructively handed conflict (as exemplified by Martin Luther King's nonviolent civil rights advocacy), which greatly improved the status of African Americans in this country.

Despite such improvements, change usually comes slowly, and liberal democracies have come under attack in recent years in many parts of the world, as many people feel that the promises made by these systems—prosperity, freedom, respect for diverse identities and beliefs—have not been fulfilled. As a result, many people are turning against liberal democracy and toward any of a variety of demagogues who promise better and quicker outcomes, but who are actually tricksters who are manipulating the populists' grievances to gain more power for themselves.

A much better approach is to use democratic processes to resolve such grievances and conflicts, ideally through collaboration (among disputants themselves or representative groups of citizens as in citizen assemblies or advisory commissions) or by compromise and collaboration among legislative representatives working with the administrative branch, rather than against it. In the U.S. (and probably elsewhere) a growing number of people and organizations are advocating a variety of structural and procedural changes that could improve democracy rather than tearing it down, as some are trying to do. Examples include Democracy First, Issue One, the Rebuild Congress Initiative, and the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, Rank the Vote , the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers. the Disagree Better Initiative, and Lyceum Labs. These are just a few examples of the many "massively parallel democracy building actors" that we lay out later in this guide.