Global NGOs

7. Massively Parallel Roles & Tasks

Global NGOs focus on developing, generally with respect to some specific group of issues, solutions that help protect society as a whole. While some NGOs are highly partisan and self-serving, we are focusing here on those that make a good-faith effort to carefully analyze a problem in ways that identify (and, in many cases, develop) promising solutions that equitably balance the competing interests of key stakeholder groups. They also work to publicize and promote their recommendations with the goal of persuading the larger society and its democratic decision-makers to adopt them. The work of these NGOs is often quite controversial, with different organizations taking very different approaches to the same cluster of problems. One of the goals of this project, and democracy more generally, is to encourage and support mechanisms for handling of these conflicts in ways which synthesize competing approaches into some sort of mutually beneficial compromise that combines the best of everyone's ideas. Among the many organizations that are making good faith efforts to find solutions to our most difficult problems are the following:  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, International IDEA, and The Carter Center. Also important are individuals and organizations who are doing interesting things at the national or global level on topics such as: increasing the capacity of the electric grid, reducing the amount of land required for the green energy, harnessing AI to increase the government's ability to serve the people, less divisively teaching US history and it's tragic episodes, and strategies for limiting the adverse effects of social media.

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