Massively Parallel Peacebuilding/Democracy Building Roles

In Newsletter 179 (December 3, 2023) and the two accompanying videos, (Introduction and Roles) we explained our concept of massively parallel peace and democracy building (MPP for short). We went on to explain that we use this phrase as a way of describing the natural process through which democratic societies respond to the challenges they face. In other words, massively parallel processes are the way in which complex social systems learn. MPP is a division-of-labor-based approach that involves thousands or even millions of people performing many different roles in different places and contexts, which, all done roughly at the same time, are helping to bring about positive social, political, and economic change. The December videos offered an initial outline of the many different roles that we see massively parallel peace and democracy builders as already playing. Since these videos were recorded, we have been refining, expanding, and reorganizing our catalog of MPP roles and systematically trying to identify individuals and organizations who have been taking on each role. We presented our new list in a series of four newsletters (Newsletter 223, Newsletter 226, Newsletter 236, and Newsletter 239.  Here we are combining all of those roles into one list, so it is easier to see in its entirety. 

We should be clear that we are still offering just a few examples for each role. There are a great many more people and organizations working in each of the areas that we highlight. We should also be clear that this massively parallel movement is not quite as parallel as the word implies. Within the movement, there are major differences about the kind of democracy and the kind of society that people think we should be working toward.  There will be a continuing need for efforts to work through these differences in ways that take us closer to the kind of society in which most everyone would like to live. We also need to remember, as we pointed out in Newsletter 77, that MPP is in direct competition with another massively parallel process — one that is driving hyper-polarization and undermining democracy.

By definition, MPP roles are being filled by good-faith actors — people who are honestly trying to help make democracy work for the benefit of everyone. As will quickly become apparent (especially in the conflict strategist section), there are serious differences of opinion over how, exactly, this should be accomplished and what the relative priorities should be.  These are differences that will ultimately have to be addressed on a case-by-case basis by people in the various conflict actor roles.  When this is done in wise and equitable ways (a big, but surmountable, challenge), these conflicts have the kind of positive impact on society that we imagined when we said that intractable conflict can become the "engine of social learning."

We have divided the MPP roles into two large categories: strategists and actors.  This distinction is based on the fundamental distinction between right-brained thinking and left-brained thinking, which amazingly, is differentiated, not only in humans, but even in very primitive insects.  The right brain looks at the "big picture," and determines what needs to be done — this is the strategy side of the brain.  The left brain tells the body what to do in response to what the right side "sees." So these are the actors.  We argue that the same principle applies to societies, with their complex specialization and division of labor systems. As we see it, some people specialize in right brain, "big picture," thinking, while others are the "detail people" — the actors who actually do the work. 

The complete list of strategists and actors (at least as of now, June 1, 2024) follows:

Conflict Strategists

Conflict Lookouts

Conflict Lookouts alert society to dangers (especially, conflict-related dangers) that they believe society needs to urgently address. In many cases, they also highlight steps that they believe society needs to take to limit those dangers. Examples include organizations that are engaged in what has been called "early warning," such as The Fund for Peace, which has long maintained the "Fragile States Index," and the Trust Network that has an early warning/early response project focused on U.S. political violence that Madhawa Palihapitiya described in BI's interview with him.

We now have five principal subcategories of conflict lookouts: checks and balancers, canaries, anti-discriminators, thoughtful alarmists, and "Paul Reveres." These lookouts tend to look at a single problem from a single perspective. They seldom focus on the complex trade-offs that are required to balance efforts to deal with their problem with efforts to deal with problems that other lookouts find equally or even more serious. 

  • Conflict Earlier Warners warn us of the risk of large-scale violence and social disintegration that accompanies escalating political hostility. In addition to the Fund for Peace and the Trust Network, mentioned above, other examples include the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) and VIEWS -- the Violence Impacts Early-Warning System and authors like Tom Nichols who warns us about a new era of political violence and David French who asks us to take threats of "national divorce" seriously. Still others like Rachel Kleinfeld, CSIS, and the Guardian help us sensibly analyze available data on political violence.
     
  • Discrimination Fighters call attention to what they believe to be unfair treatment of some groups by the larger society. Examples are Black Lives Matter, the NAACP, and the League of United Latin American Citizens. While members of these organizations are also actors, the organizations as a whole are focused on documenting the unfair treatment (for instance structural violence) that might otherwise remain hidden, with its extent and impact under-estimated or ignored. There are also discrimination fighters on the right that focus on what they see as "reverse discrimination," brought about by the overzealous efforts of the left to protect "under-represented" groups. This includes, for example, groups like the the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism which is strongly critical of DEI program and authors like David Bernstein who argues that the system the U.S. uses to allocate racial preferences is illogical and unfair.
     
  • Governmental Watchdogs focus on breakdowns in governmental safeguards designed to prevent corruption, power concentrations, and, potentially, an authoritarian takeover of democratic institutions.  These are the journalists and interest groups who watch for and issue alarms about the overreach of government actions, for instance, the Supreme Court going beyond its adjudicatory role and, in essence, making or changing laws, or the President doing something similar with executive orders that exceed his constitutional authority.  Examples of these organizations include: The Project on Government Oversight, the National Center for Constitutional Studies, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers who issued a report on abortion and legislative overreach, and the National Constitution Center's Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy project. Other examples include groups highlighting the need to defend free speech, trying to make people understand what authoritarianism is really like, and warning of dangerous increases in support for more authoritarian governance on both the left and the right.
     
  • Geopolitical Threat Monitors alert us to to the fact that geopolitical rivals are threatening and sometimes directly attacking Western democracies. In the wake of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, increasing tensions over Taiwan, and more general concern about the security implications of the United States' hyper-polarized dysfunctional politics, concerns about the ability of Western democracies to effectively defend themselves are becoming increasingly widespread. Examples include the way in which Carnegie Europe alerts us to attempts by geopolitical rivals to influence domestic political activities, Olaf Scholz urges us to take the immediate steps to avoid a new Cold War, Samantha Power warns us about the inadequacy of current strategies for countering autocracy, Paul Gigot voices concern about the resurgence of isolationism, Hal Brands reminds us that effectively defending democracy against often ruthless rivals may require us to compromise some of our most basic liberal beliefs, and  urges us not to overreact and forget the many ways in which the US is still astonishingly strong compared with its geopolitical rivals. 
     
  • Canaries warn society about substantive threats less directly related to conflict processes and democratic functioning like climate change, toxic pollution, infectious disease, and financial instability.  Examples here include the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and the WHO (World Health Organization), In addition to major organizations like these, there are lots of small scale projects and individual writers who are warning us about serious problems like the ways in which billionaires are distorting our politics, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, the decline of objective academic research, local opposition to green energy facilities, and the fertility crisis.

Democracy Firsters

Democracy Firsters, like us, argue that we must address the short-comings of democracy, and the conflicts that are pulling democracies apart, before we can use those democracies, or indeed, any other approach, to successfully address our many other substantive problems including national security, climate change, oppression, inequality, racism, health care, etc. Examples, in addition to Beyond Intractability's Constructive Conflict Initiative, include the organization aptly called Democracy First and Issue One (whose subtitle is also "Fix Democracy First"). Both are trying (in the words of Issue One) to "unite Republicans, Democrats, and independents in the movement to fix our broken political system and build an inclusive democracy that works for everyone." Issue One together with the Harvard Program on Negotiation have formed the Rebuild Congress Initiative, which "creates the deliberative space and fosters the social cohesion necessary to strengthen our democratic institutions. This includes cultivating networks, fostering deep dialogue, and, where possible, building consensus among elected officials, influencers, and experts from across the political and ideological spectrum. Another such organization was the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress (which operated from 2019-2022 and looked at ways in which Congress could change its operating procedures to do its job better.  It is described by its co-chairs here and by Lorelei Kelly in her BI interview. 

Complexifiers

Complexifiers help us deal with the immense scale and complexity of modern society that makes it so difficult for even the smartest and the most dedicated "good-faith" actors to make the decisions needed to wisely and equitably lead modern democracies. We have broken this group down into seven subgroups. These include: 

Conflict Actors 

By themselves, strategists do not have the power to transform deeply divided societies. They don't even have the power to make healthy democracies function.  That depends on the actions of everyday citizens, as well as people with specialized skills working in at least 50 key roles in six major categories: communicators, issue analysts, peacemakers, power balancers, visionaries, and problem solvers.

Grassroots Citizens

Before going on to the conflict actors with specialized roles and expertise, we want to highlight the critical role that must be played by grassroots citizens who must conscientiously exercise their civic responsibilities, while also supporting the  larger democratic system and the people working in the many roles outlined below.  They do not have special training; they are not playing one of the other roles.  They are just engaging responsibly in their role of “citizen” and taking that role seriously, realizing that it not only entails rights, but also responsibilities. 

Visionaries and Healers

Visionaries help us imagine a unifying vision for a diverse society that maximizes self-determination while promoting joint action to protect the commons. One of our favorite visionaries is Ebrahim Rasool, a former South African ambassador to the United States, who gave an amazing talk1 at the Alliance for Peacebuilding's PeaceCon2020 in which he reflected on the way South Africa emerged from Apartheid and what that might suggest about how the United States might best approach race relations.  Rasool identified seven steps that South Africa went through to reach the level of reconciliation that it has (which he admits is far from perfect, but it is way better than the bloodbath the world was expecting).  First, he said, you have to understand that "the other is here to stay." They are not going to disappear.  So you are going to have to co-exist with "the other." Second, he advised, "start with the end." Define your ultimate vision for your society. It must be one that has a place for "the other."  For example, he explained, "The ANC vision was that South Africa belongs to everyone who lives there, Black and White. That not only was that a statement of vision, it was an extension of friendship.  It was an act of generosity."  That vision and the acceptance of "the other" in that vision, is what enabled South Africa to make all the further steps that it did toward reconciliation, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

We often wonder — what would happen if most of Americans agreed that "America belongs to all who live here" and start trying to figure out how to make that work? Rasool's approach highlighted the importance of developing both a prospective and a retrospective vision.  The prospective vision tries to imagine how very different communities (often with deeply troubled pasts) can learn to peacefully coexist with one another despite deep and continuing differences. The retrospective vision tries to imagine how these societies can constructively come to terms with the wrongs and injustices of that past — wrongs that are, in many important respects, unrightable. The coexister role outlined below focuses on cultivating a prospective vision while the healer focuses on retrospective reconciliation.

  • Coexisters articulate a forward-looking democratic vision based on constructive competition balanced with a pluralistic spirit of tolerance and mutual respect.  As we described above, the South Africans who followed Rasool's seven steps were coexisters. Examples of people doing this work include Mari Fitzduff who recognized the critical importance of this aspect of peacebuilding when she chose to call her new program at Brandeis University, the Coexistence Initiative2; the New Pluralists, the Liberal Patriot, and John Inazu. All of these people and programs are trying to imagine a society in which disparate groups can live together in peace.  The Aspen Institute and Civity are trying to cultivate an overarching American identity that can bind the country together despite its still unresolved inequities and rapidly changing demographics. The United Nations also updated its Agenda for Peace — the document that coined the word "peacebuilding." Francis Fukuyama highlights the advantages of liberal democracy's strategy for allowing people to live together in peace and freedom, explaining why it is better than the alternatives called for by democracy's critics. Suzette Brooks Masters is telling us why it is important to look at democracy's successes as well as its shortcomings. Still others are looking at the humanistic beliefs upon which coexistence is based and the ultimate test of any system of governance — its ability to produce human happiness.
     
  • Healers help people come to terms with the profound wrongs of the past in ways that lay the groundwork for a more attractive future. Examples include people who establish and run Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, psychologists and other peace workers who do trauma healing (for instance see Agnieszka Alboszta's article about the Trauma-Informed Peacebuilding being undertaken by Mediators Beyond Borders, International and the several articles in BI that look at the way narratives and story-telling can be used to heal past trauma: see this, this, and this. The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism and Coleman Hughes are offering what they believe is a less divisive strategy for dealing with the United States' racist past. Network Weaver offers another strategy for "facing race" while the Canadian Friends Service Committee is helping to mobilize indigenous voices for reconciliation and Nigel Biggar is advocating for balanced look at history —one that merits occasions for both pride and shame.

De-escalators

De-escalators help us diffuse our escalated and hyper-polarized politics by working to replace anger, hostility, us-vs-them demonization, and, sometimes, violence with a willingness to peacefully and constructively engage with the other side in ways that can lead to mutual understanding, joint fact-finding, and collaborative efforts to address common problems. We find it useful to divide de-escalators into three sub-categories: escalation educators, mediators and conciliators, and crisis responders.

  • Escalation Educators expose the dangers posed by conflict escalation and closely linked hyper-polarization, and help people in all walks of life learn the skills needed to avoid escalation and polarization in the first place, and if it is too late for that, reverse it and start to heal its wounds. Many organizations are warning about the dangers of escalation and hyper-polarization including (in addition to BI and this newsletter) the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brookings Institution, and the International Catalan Institute for Peace ICIP. Fortunately, many more are teaching the skills to prevent and reverse escalation and polarization. These include most conflict educators and most most bridge-builders, among others. Examples include: Citizen Connect which offers scores of videos on how to bring people together across political divides, More in Common which offers advice on how to build trust and limit animosities, and Rachel Kleinfeld who warns us about the possibility that overly alarmist and inflammatory rhetoric about the possibility of an imminent civil war may be counterproductive. 
     
  • Mediators and Conciliators help deeply-conflicted parties break down their polarization and escalation by helping them, often for the first time, really listen to and come to understand the concerns of the other side, and helping them reframe their conflict, so they no longer see it as the fault of the other side, but rather as a mutual problem that can be solved. Once parties begin to do that, they can begin to work together, if only in small steps, to identify areas of common ground, possible ways of solving mutual problems, and developing an increasing level of trust and mutual understanding.  Examples of mediators and conciliators who help parties do this include the conciliators of the Community Relations Service, and the mediators and facilitators of the Consensus-Building Institute, the Keystone Policy Center, and the Meridian Institute, all of which which have long worked with deeply divided parties over very intractable issues to come to agreements few would have thought possible. 
     
  • Crisis Responders act quickly to prevent or contain violent (or sometimes just especially hateful and destructive) confrontations.  Their focus may be on preventing eminent violence, bringing an end to ongoing violence, or preventing violence from reemerging (or all of the above.) They may focus on investigating and, where appropriate, correcting inflammatory rumors (such as those that commonly arise following police shootings).  As they do this, they also provide assurances that  incidents will be investigated and those responsible for wrongdoing will be held accountable.  Such efforts are much more effective if they are set up in advance, rather than in response to a specific crisis.  This is a role that the Community Relations Service (CRS) often plays. It also tries to recruit and train local people to play that role once the CRS leaves the scene. (The Civil Rights Oral History Project has transcripts of interviews with 20+ former CRS mediators, who explain in detail how they do this.) The Ohio State University's Divided Community Project does much of the same thing, and has free training materials for communities to download to help them plan in advance for effective crisis response.  (See BI's interview with DCP Director Bill Froehlich for more information on DCP and links to many of their free materials.) The Trust Network is also trying to recruit local conflict resolvers to be on the watch for brewing problems and to respond to them quickly before they escalate further.  Local organizations, such as the "Violence Interruptors" in Chicago (see the Frontline Documentary) can also do similar things with respect to smaller scale, criminal violence. Beyond this, organizations like the RAND Corporation and the wide array of governmental and NGO "PVE" (preventing violent extremism) projects are engaged in large-scale and longer-term efforts to understand and combat the kind of extremism that leads to violence.

Constructive Communicators

Constructive communicators help us develop more accurate images of the world in which we live and, especially, the actions and motivations of others. Given how big our societies are, we no longer can understand much about what is going on without relying on one of the various forms of mass communication to tell us what's happening in our communities, or states, nations, or the world. So those "communicators," in both traditional and social media, have enormous power to shape our images of what is true and what is false, what is good and what is evil, what we should think, say, and do, and what we shouldn't.  To the extent that those communicators give us false information, we are all the worse off.  And the pressures on communicators — on all sides — to do just that, to tell people what "their side" wants to hear, regardless of whether it is true or not, is tremendous. There are three broad strategies for combating this problem. One strategy concentrates on teaching people about the distorting effects of mass communication and offering them suggestions for using the media in ways that overcome these difficulties and yield more accurate and reliable information. A second approach focuses on creating opportunities for people to interact directly across political divides in constructive ways that break down inaccurate and hostile stereotypes. Finally, there are efforts to reform the various systems of mass communication in ways that help limit the above problems. These three strategies are, to varying degrees, being pursued by the eight groups of communicators listed below.

  • Bubble Busters help people see beyond the self-righteous, us-vs-them, good-vs-evil information bubbles in which so many of us now live. Examples include the journalists who show up on the top of Ad Fontes and/or AllSides media bias charts. For instance AllSides lists the BBC News, the Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, Reuters, Real Clear Politics, The Hill, and the Wall Street Journal as being "center," while Ad Fontes lists the BBC, the Hill, and the Christian Science Monitor as slightly left leaning, and the Wall Street Journal as slightly right leaning. (The only truly center organizations they show are NewsNation and Straight Arrow News.) Either way, any of these organizations are likely closer to the center, and hence publishing more reliable news than the many, many organizations farther to the left and right that most of us rely on.  All Sides, itself, does a good job, not just of publishing "centrist" news, but by sending out a newsletter, and highlighting on their homepage stories written by people and organizations on both the left and the right, so readers can see for themselves how each side is viewing different contentious events. Other examples of efforts to take us out of our information bubbles include this New York Times article that asks readers to consider the possibility that they (not their political opponents) might actually be the bad guys or this article that tries to help progressives understand the appeal of Donald Trump. Other examples include this article that tries to help people understand how information bubbles distort our view of the world.
     
  • Communication Skill Builders focus on teaching people the skills that they need to communicate more effectively with their fellow citizens and, especially, help facilitate communication between people with differing views. Examples include Essential Partners' five steps for having illuminating conversations, Braver Angels  "E-Courses," Living Room Conversations  guide to talking about polarization, Divided We Fall's secrets of political conversation, the Horizon Project's guides to making sense of world events and narrative competency, and the Alliance for Peacebuilding's exploration of the mind sets that surround peacebuilding,
     
  • Bridge Builders facilitate direct human connections that cross political divides and dispel inaccurate and inflammatory stereotypes. This includes the many conflict resolution organizations that do dialogues, including, for example, members of the Bridge Alliance, Essential Partners (which we profiled here), the Listen First Project, LivingRoom Conversations, Empathy Circle's empathy game, the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, Fighting to Understand, which runs "Dinner and a Fight" which we profiled here,  We are also encouraged by Gov. Cox's Disagree Better campaign and the proposed new Building Civic Bridges Act.
     
  • Mass Communicators are journalists, artists, and opinion leaders who scale up bridge building activities in ways that reach vastly larger numbers of people. In addition to the Solutions Journalism Network. Other examples include Search for Common Ground with their efforts to teach journalists how to report from conflict zones and empower young radio journalists in addition to their pioneering use of radio soap operas to teach conflict resolution skills and bring deeply divided peoples back together, first in Rwanda and Burundi, and later all around the world. (This is a wonderful article about these programs.)  Digital Community Stewards take a different approach by training those who host online groups in strategies for limiting destructive conflict and building social cohesion. There are also charismatic leaders like Gandhi, King, and Mandela who have been able to use low-tech communication technologies to build large followings for campaigns that simultaneously pursue peace and justice. (Unfortunately, today's most popular and charismatic leaders seem to be taking a much more divisive approach to social advocacy — with the notable exception of the governors who have founded and expanded the Disagree Better Campaign.) Despite these efforts, it is clear that there is still a critical need for more projects that combine a sophisticated understanding of constructive conflict strategies with ability to effectively use today's powerful mass communication technologies. 
     
  • Free Speech Advocates defend the free flow of information between people with different perspectives and different sources of information. Examples of such organizations are FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Other examples include the Institute for Free Speech and Free Speech for People.  In the past, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was a vigorous defender of free speech, defending, for example, the right of white supremacists to march in Skokie, Illinois in 1978, and even in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2018. More recently, however, they have, as Lara Bazelon documents, become part of a larger movement supporting limits on such rights for people whose views are seen as politically unacceptable. There is now a major conflict between this movement and more traditional free speech advocates who are actively opposing restrictions being advanced from left as well as right-leaning perspectives. These advocates include, for example, those talking about how to build a culture of free speech and how to deal with the unwillingness of some people to tolerate political opponents.  
     
  • Convenors / Facilitators recognize that the real value of free speech comes from the exchange of views between those who see the world differently. Free, but homogeneous, speech spoken only within tightly constrained information bubbles is much less helpful (and often makes things worse rather than better). Fortunately, there are individuals and organizations who specialize in bringing together people with differing views and facilitating the kind of constructive exchanges that produce shared learning. Examples of the many activities in this area include the Difficult Dialogues National Resource Center's program for fostering such exchanges in higher education; BridgeUSA's efforts to do similar things at the high school as well as the college-level; the National Week of Conversation's open invitation to join in a wide array of guided, face-to-face conversations; International Storytelling Center's program for encouraging us to tell and exchange stories, and Living Room Conversation's set of do-it-yourself guides for convening productive exchanges.
     
  • Disinformation Fighters reduce the influence of deliberately deceptive and malicious disinformation and propaganda campaigns designed to inflame tensions while, at the same time, promoting the exchange of reliable information.  Both the U.S. government, and the E.U. (and probably many other governments as well) are trying to tackle online disinformation. In the US, however, these efforts have come under attack from Republican lawmakers and commentators like those at the Public newsletter who believe that these programs are coercing social media platforms into removing information critical of the Biden administration — and information that that the administration considers to be "offensive" or misleading. Others have reminded us that misinformation is being spread by the left, as well as the right. Still others try to educate users about how to spot disinformation. One example is Jay Kang's story about the very successful disinformation education programs that have been implemented in Finland and Estonia.  Organizations like Comparitech monitor censorship (and the disinformation that it is ideally trying to suppress) on a global scale while organizations like IPIE provide us with a systematic review of misinformation countermeasures.
     
  • Media Reformers focus on improving the many different types of communication media to in ways that will better promote civic life (at both local and national level) while resisting pressures to feature demonizing and divisive content.  For example, the Solutions Journalism Network has been working to demonstrate that less divisive, more solutions-oriented journalism is, in fact, financially viable. A More in Common study has demonstrated that Americans really do want more balanced news coverage.  ETH Center for Security Studies has been trying to figure out how large-scale, online dialogue can achieve the kind of transformative results that face-to-face dialogues can produce. Yair Rosenberg as showed us how we can use social media without being used by the social media companies.  Kate Klonick has documented the potential of media oversight boards. And, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism produced a major study outlining steps that the media could take to earn the public's trust.
     
  • Conflict Educators and Trainers help speed the flow of information on more constructive ways of handling conflict that show people that there are better ways of preventing and solving conflict than fighting (sometimes violently) about it.  Examples include all of the elementary, secondary, and college-level conflict resolution teaching programs (such as peer mediation at the elementary and secondary schools which are documented by the Conflict Resolution Education Connection. Beyond this, there are certificate and degree programs in peace and conflict resolution at many colleges and universities around the world. There are also programs like Educating for American Democracy and the National Civic League that try to strengthen such efforts. Finally, there are the  many NGOs (far too numerous to list) that offer conflict resolution training to businesses, government agencies, and other organizations (such as churches and schools) to help them better deal with their internal and/or client conflicts.

Issue Analysts

Virtually all of the big problems  facing democratic societies are extremely complex and require extensive technical expertise to understand well enough to find effective (or even remotely workable) solutions.  Issue analysts help decision makers, politicians, and the public better understand and sensibly deal with this complexity. We group them into four broad subcategories:

  • Technical Experts investigate, on behalf of the general public and democratic decision-makers, the extraordinarily complex challenges facing modern society. These are the people who help us identify things that are going (or could go) wrong -- things like climate change, inflationary pressures, or infectious diseases that can be very hard for the general public to see. They help develop sophisticated and often very high-tech solutions to these problems. Their analyses help non-experts  judge the relative risks of different choices, and evaluate the likely results of different policy options.  Examples include the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC), the U.S. CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization (WHO). The programmers who are trying to draw public attention to the risks of AI and possible mitigation strategies are another example. Individual scientists also play a major role in helping us understand how to sensibly interpret climate and other predictive models. Especially valuable (though often criticized) are the skeptics who ask hard questions of the experts, forcing them to explain their thinking and respond to alternative lines of reasoning in ways that force them to improve the quality of their analyses and explanations. 
     
  • Technical Reporters (as well as interpreters and educators) play a key intermediary role in helping translate the technical jargon found in most scientific analyses into language that the public can understand. They also often emphasize the practical implications of studies and the reasons why they should (or should not) be seen as trustworthy.  In so doing, they help us understand "what the science says" as well as the many uncertainties surrounding the limits of that knowledge. They also help bridge other gaps that exist between between experts and the general public. For example, they help us understand how AI systems like ChatGPT work and what they can and cannot be expected to do. They can also teach us what we really need to know about statistics and how not to be misled by them. They caution us about the dangers of being overly certain about our beliefs regarding technical (and other) issues. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they explain the advantages of being hard on the technical aspects of a problem, but soft on the people involved in the debate over how best to deal with controversial issues.  
     
  • Evaluators help incorporate public values into the analytical process because science cannot do that. Scientists can tell us, within some range of uncertainty, the nature of the problems we face and they can estimate the likely consequences of options for addressing those problems. They cannot, however, say what policy is best for a community or a nation. That is a value judgment that should be made by the public (and its elected representatives), not by technical experts. For that, we need a process that involves the general public and, especially, the stakeholders who are likely to be most affected by any decision. So evaluators help decision makers take the science and put it together with an understanding of public values and priorities to try to determine which policy choices will, in specific circumstances, be best for specific groups and for the public overall.
     
    The International Association for Public Participation is one organization trying to do this by involving everyday citizens in the policy-making process. Government agencies are also often supportive of such efforts, as is evidenced by the EPA's document on public participation.   Citizen assemblies are an even more ambitious effort to improve the interface between experts and the public.
     
  • Science Reformers focus on holding scientists and technical organizations to high professional standards and protecting them from political pressures that undermine the quality of their work. There are increasingly frequent stories, it seems, of situations in which scientists have "faked" or misinterpreted data for their own or a particular group's benefit, as well as stories about a replication crisis in several disciplines. There are also stories of subtler forms of bias associated with political decisions about what questions to and not to investigate and what to publish and what to reject. These are all problems that must be strenuously policed.  They undermine the credibility of the entire scientific community, and have led an unfortunately large number of people to reject most, or even all, scientific findings. This has done a great deal of damage to the profession of science and the ability of the public to take advantage of scientific expertise. It also seriously impedes society's ability to address its most pressing problems, as all of them, in one way or another, depend on science to sort through the complex issues involved.
     
    Science reformers are people and organizations who are trying to reverse this damage by policing the scientific industry to make sure that studies are, indeed, properly formulated, conducted, and reported. These include those who are advocating reforms to the academic publishing process, recommitting universities to a politically neutral search for the truth, and challenging requirements that scientists make political "positionality statements." Beyond these relatively modest reforms, there are also bold initiatives like the University of Austin's attempt to build a restructured university that is guided by the values of intellectual freedom and pluralism.  Unlike many other universities that have rigorous speech codes and limits to what is "acceptable" research and teaching, the University of Austin "strives to build and sustain a community based on the lively clash of ideas and opinions." 

Collaborative Problem Solvers 

Collaborative problem solvers are the people who build on the efforts of those in all of the other MPP roles by identifying broadly supported and likely effective measures for dealing with common problems. They then work with stakeholders to pursue realistic and equitable options for effectively addressing those problems. We have found it useful to divide these problem solvers into seven major sub-categories:

  • Negotiators work in a wide range of settings to help their organizations find mutually beneficial ways of working through common problems. These individuals work with other stakeholders to identify the issues that need to be addressed and the interests that affected groups want to protect.  Negotiators then generate and evaluate possible courses of action and ultimately, ideally, reach an agreement  to pursue the most mutually beneficial option. These are the often unsung heroes who enable us to work together in widely varying contexts.  Many of them are the middle managers that David Brooks writes about as "the glue that holds society together."
     
    But all of us are negotiators in our own settings — particularly in the family and the workplace. So it is important that we all learn how to negotiate effectively.  Carrie Menkel-Meadow wrote a very basic book to help people do that. The classic, Getting to Yes is another such book. This article from Starts with Us explains how to negotiate without destroying relationships.  At the advanced level, the Harvard Negotiation Project and the Institute for Negotiation Innovation teach and help develop professional negotiators, who work in large-scale complex conflicts ranging from business negotiations to international negotiations. 
     
  • Mediators and related professions such as facilitators and conciliators are professional (and sometimes volunteer) intermediaries who help negotiators to work through disputes that they cannot solve on their own. They help the parties convene and facilitate meetings, communicate more effectively, earn mutual trust, work through emotional issues, identify mutually beneficial possibilities, conclude agreements, and then implement those agreements. Mediation can be informal, as when a parent helps her children resolve a dispute, but it can also be a very formal and structured process led by the kind of professionals affiliated with the Association for Conflict Resolution and Mediate.com.  The focus can be on individual, small scale disputes, organizational and business disputes, or on helping whole communities improve their ability to handle the large stream of disputes that is an inevitable part of contemporary social life, as members of National Association for Community Mediation are doing. Organizations such as Mediators Beyond Borders take this one step further by helping bring these services to countries that may not yet have adequate internal capabilities and the International Centre for Dispute Resolution that has a team of mediators who do cross-border mediations.
     
    Some mediators also work to resolve very large scale, complex, and intractable international conflicts such as Ukraine or Israel/Palestine.  However, we are putting them below in the category of "Consensus Builders," as the distinction we make between mediators and consensus builders is that consensus builders work on larger scale, complex conflicts with more parties and more issues.  Israel/Palestine would seem to qualify, so see below for a discussion of international mediators. 
     
    We also put mediation trainers in this Mediators category. These are the people and organizations who are trying to make sure that the coming generation of young people has access to these skills and that managers and other professionals are able to keep their skills sharp.
     
  • Consensus Builders go beyond the negotiation and mediation of relatively small scale disputes to help those involved in complex, multi-party disputes develop a broad consensus on ways of handling complex clusters of interlocking issues that affect large numbers of people and involve multiple interest groups. The line between consensus builders and mediators is somewhat fuzzy since consensus building and mediation processes are very similar. Also, as we indicated just above, people and organizations engaged in complex international mediation usually use the term "mediation," rather than consensus building.  But, since their work is very large scale and complex, they seem to fit better here. Examples include individuals: William Ury would be one example, Jimmy Carter, when he was younger but still after he was U.S. President, was another example.  Sometimes states act as mediators of international conflicts, as both the United States and Norway did in the early 2000s with respect to Israel, and Qatar is doing now in the latest Israeli/Palestinian conflict. NGOs, such as International Alert and the Carter Center also do international mediation as do a wide variety of religious organizations such as the Quakers,  the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the Community of Sant'Egidio.  
     
    Most of the work of people and organizations that use the term "consensus building," such as the Consensus-Building Institute (CBI), the Keystone Policy Center, the Meridian Institute, primarily work in domestic (meaning one nation) settings.  But not always — CBI, Keystone, and the Meridian institute also work on international issues. They usually act as Track II mediators, however, not Track 1.  A clearer image of the kind of work that these organizations do is found in CBI's collection of online resources and its summary of ongoing projects. Further examples include this description of ways in which businesses can use consensus building techniques to help them navigate the deep differences that divide their customers. 
     
  • Peacebuilders take consensus building processes one step further by helping design and implement programs that go beyond the negotiation of agreements to broader efforts to bridge societal divides and transform hyper-polarized societies into more peaceful and, ideally, reconciled societies. In essence, they are trying to implement the agreements that mediators and consensus builders help develop. But they also work before violence breaks out to try to prevent it from happening, and while violence is occurring, to try to stop it from becoming worse and to set the stage for peacemaking (i.e., the negotiation of ceasefires or permanent peace agreements. Common strategies peacebuilders use include conflict assessment and early warning programs, dialogue, visioning, and problem-solving workshops, in post-violence situations, the demobilization and re-integration of combatants, trauma healing and reconciliation efforts, and many other strategies to calm down tensions, stop them from becoming violent, and helping disputing parties live and thrive successfully side by side. The Alliance for Peacebuilding (and all of its member organizations) offer one window into the diverse array of organizations doing this work. For another quite comprehensive list, look at the 100 organizations involved in efforts to promote and execute the Global Fragility Act.
     
  • Constructive Advocates work to defend their group's interests in ways that simultaneously respect, recognize, and help protect the legitimate interests of other groups involved in the conflict, including those on the other side(s).  Unlike mediators and peacebuilders who approach conflicts from a more neutral, intermediary perspective, constructive advocates are not neutral; they are primarily focused on defending the interests of their own group. Still, what makes their work so valuable (and often so exceptional) is that they recognize that, by treating their opponents fairly, they can strengthen their own position by limiting the intensity of opposition that they are likely to face. They use what we call "constructive confrontation strategies" to argue for a particular cluster of interests, but they do so in an integrative, not divisive way.  This overlaps with Starts with Us' argument that less polarizing approaches increase political effectiveness. 
     
    These strategies include making an effort to understand what the conflict is really about and what is really going on, rather than just assuming it is the other sides' fault and insisting that they change. Constructive advocates examine their goals, interests, values, and needs, and try to figure out how those might be defended in ways that leave room for others to pursue differing goals, interests, values, and needs. They then try to work collaboratively, as much as possible, turning to the various types of force only when absolutely necessary, and when done through legitimate channels (such as legislative or electoral action or nonviolent protest and public information campaigns). In everything they do, they try to minimize escalation and maximize mutual understanding and respect. 
     
    Examples include FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism which has been championing a less divisive and more inclusive strategy for dealing with racism and other forms of discrimination. Another approach is Radical Moderation's new book, "Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals" which challenges the widespread disdain for compromise that one now finds on both the left and the right. Still, another approach relies upon conflict coaches to help people navigate conflict in less divisive ways. Finally, there is Amanda Ripley's effort to help us move beyond our tendency to define problems as simple "us-versus-them, we're right, they are wrong" situations and to see the complexity that is always there.
     
  • 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.
     
  • Philanthropists provide critically needed funding for a wide range of problem-solving efforts as well as the broader array of MPP-related  activities. Their highly competitive vetting process also plays an important role in assuring that the many MPP-related projects that are philanthropy funded are well conceived and executed. Monitoring and evaluation requirements further help assure that we continue to learn from these efforts. Some individuals are looking at ways in which philanthropy might be able to work within and, perhaps, help bridge political divides. Others include Hewlett's effort to fund pro-democracy efforts (like many of those highlighted here), David Stid's Inquiry into the relationship between social justice advocacy, bridge-building, and philanthropy, Christine Emba's questions about the moral basis of philanthropy and the role of long-term thinking, and the Peace and Security Funders Group.

Power Balancers

For disputes that cannot be resolved through mutually beneficial agreement, there is a need for people and institutions with the responsibility to make hard, but fair, decisions about who wins and who loses and by how much in each specific case.  While many of the individuals who do this work are simply trying to perpetuate and take advantage of the gross inequities that exist within virtually all societal power structures, there are many individuals who are actively trying to promote and implement equitable ways of balancing power and making tough decisions. Our focus is on eight groups roles that we see as playing a critical role in massively parallel peace and democracy building. 

  • Civic Skill Builders teach citizens about the advantages of democratic systems and how to use those systems to constructively handle the large number of difficult conflicts that inevitably occur in any modern society. Secondary schools used to act as civic skill builders (and can again), although far too many have eliminated their "civics" requirements because the curricula of such programs became highly contentious, and the simple, conflict-avoidant response was just to cut the courses.  But this has resulted in a generation or two that understands very little about what democracy is, how it works, why it is preferable to other (particularly autocratic) systems, and, most importantly, why it is so important that citizens to fulfill their civic responsibilities. In the absence of such civic education in the schools, a wide variety of NGOs are working to fill the void. 

    Some, like Civic Spirit work to encourage and help K-12 schools reinstate civics content in ways that "enhance civic belonging, knowledge, and responsibility in their student and faculty communities." Others, such as the Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG) aim at adult audiences.  This effort (which could easily be replicated by and for other constituencies) is to "inspire women of faith to be ambassadors of peace who transcend partisanship and courageously advocate for ethical government." They teach peacebuilding and conflict resolution skills, along with "civics" to better prepare their members to be active participants in their communities and effective campaigners for ethical government. Other examples include: the RAND Corporation's report on the current state of citizenship education, the American Enterprise Institute's Proposal for University-Level Civic Education, CivXNow's cross partisan coalition of 260 organizations focused on improving civic education, and even recently enacted legislation providing $23 million to improve civics education across the country.
     

  • Civic Reformers work to strengthen institutions in ways that promote wise and equitable problem-solving, while limiting incentives that lead to hyper-polarization and corruption. Excellent examples of such include both the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, and the Rebuild Congress Initiative, both mentioned earlier in the "democracy firster" section of Roles Part 1, which are trying to change the way Congress does business. As Representative William Timmons, Vice Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress explained in this video, "the objective of Congress is to engage in evidence-based policy making in a collaborative manner from a position of mutual respect.  We don't do that." But in its four year life span, the Select Committee issued over 200 recommendations about how Congress could be modified so as to better achieve that goal.  Not all have been passed, but over 100 have been fully or partially implemented.  Though the Select Committee was "sunsetted" in 2022, a new Subcommittee on Modernization, within the Committee on House Administration is continuing their work.  Other civic reformers include the Rank the Vote  effort to promote structural changes to our electoral system to make it less prone to favor extreme candidates and to more equitably represent moderate voters who are, in many ways, effectively disenfranchised under current rules.   Other efforts include the Constitution Center's effort to "restore the guardrails of democracy," calls to reform the Insurrection Act, Citizen Connect's efforts to find common ground on election reform, entitlement reform proposals, and the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers.
     
  • Ethical Politicians are committed to serving all citizens with honest debate and a refusal to engage in hate mongering and other destructive tactics. Two prominent examples are Republican Spencer Cox, Governor of Utah (mentioned earlier with respect to the National Governor's Association's Disagree Better Initiative)" and his 2020 Democratic opponent, Chris Peterson.  During their campaign, Peterson and Cox made a political ad together, vowing to debate the issues without degrading each others' character. They also both promised to respect the outcome of the election. An article in The Hill observed that this ad at least temporarily changed voters' attitudes about the legitimacy of undemocratic practices and political violence, though sadly, those changes didn't last long. But an article in The Hill observed that "the ad served as an example of Utah’s characteristically civil political climate. The state’s politicians on both sides frequently lament the sharp and bitter tone of national political debates." Governor Cox's Disagree Better initiative is an attempt to get such attitudes and approaches adopted much more widely across the U.S.  Other efforts to hold political leaders to higher ethical standards include Lyceum Labs, which is dedicated to improving political leadership and reducing partisanship in the United States, the ethical principles being championed by the Mormon Women for Ethical Government, Rabbi Russel McAlmond's principles of "ethical individualism," and Tablet's effort to resist the declining tendency of people to recognize the responsibilities of citizenship.
     
  • Civic Participants are the grassroots citizens who go beyond political hobbyism (the act of just reading the news and cheering for one's favorite political party) and the relatively simple acts of voting or making political contributions. They take advantage of the many opportunities that are available, especially at the local level, to actively participate in democratic governance. They serve on advisory committees, support and participate in public interest groups, testify at public hearings, and actively work within their communities to find solutions to common problems. These are the large numbers of people who take advantage of the kinds of opportunities crafted by the International Association Public Participation, the Environmental Protection Agency's public participation program, and the Federation for Innovation in Democracy's citizen assemblies.
     
  • Network Builders bring those working to strengthen democracy into mutually supportive networks. One example is The Trust Network which was founded in October of 2020 to build a collaborative network of peacebuilders, social justice workers, and democracy workers — groups that are united in their desire to reduce political violence and create peaceful communities where all citizens feel safe and respected. A second example is the Bridge Alliance which was started in 2015 to bring together organizations and people working to create a "thriving, just, and healthy democratic republic." Their membership includes four categories of organizations: those working to bridge divides, those working on civic education and engagement, those working on elections and governance, and those working to strengthen and promote genuinely trustworthy sources of information. The National Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM) brings hundreds of community mediators and community mediation organizations together to pool knowledge and resources to help members resolve conflicts more effectively, Citizen Connect makes it easier for citizens to find and connect with civic organizations working to bridge divides and strengthen democracy. The Relationships Project is working to develop the infrastructure needed to support organizations built around strong relationships. And, finally, the Horizons Project helps peacebuilders and others trying to strengthen democracy in the U.S. to "weave together all our efforts for a just, inclusive and peaceful democracy. 
     
  • Arbitrators and Adjudicators work with legal representatives of contending parties in both private and public settings to resolve disputes about what, exactly, the rule-of-law means in specific situations. Given the complexity of modern societies and legal systems, there are inevitable questions about what exactly the law says with respect to particular disputes. MPP depends upon adjudicators and arbitrators to assure that the applicable legal framework is fairly applied and that everybody enjoys the equal protection of the laws. While public confidence in the judicial system continues to decline alarmingly, it is still more trusted than executive and legislative branches of government. The good news is that there are major efforts to understand and address the sources of public distrust. Efforts to strengthen judicial institutions include a joint effort involving Supreme  Court Justices and state Governors to discuss strategies for overcoming the political division that underlies much of the public's distrust, the American Bar Association's effort to strengthen the justice system, and the Center for American Progress' proposals for strengthening the judiciary. Supporting efforts to improve the judiciary are groups like the American Arbitration Association and JAMS Mediation, Arbitration, and ADR Services which works to make sure that high-quality arbitration (and mediation in the case of JAMS) services continue to be available.
     
  • Law Enforcement Officials at all levels are charged with preventing citizens from defying the law. Without the remedies that their efforts provide, our legal rights could easily be violated by anyone willing and able to resort to violence and intimidation. Law enforcement officials are, therefore, critical to the success of the broader MPP effort. Also critical is that they hold themselves strictly accountable to the same system of laws that they are charged with enforcing.  In fact, they need to go beyond the letter of the law in ways that make clear that they also stand behind the spirit of the law.  Cases in which law enforcement either violates, or appears to violate, the law constitute a big driver of public distrust and is a problem that needs to be vigorously addressed. Fortunately, there are a large number of efforts to do this. Police2Peace is a national nonprofit focused on bringing together representatives from the activist and police communities with the goal of healing relationships — work that is also done by the Community Relations Service.  There are also major efforts to better understand the sources of criminal behavior including mass shootings and neighborhoods with persistently high crime rates and inadequate law enforcement. Especially important are efforts to understand and find sensible ways of addressing the United States' extraordinarily high incarceration rates. Here, increased reliance on restorative approaches shows real promise as do efforts to limit punishment but increase the chances of getting caught (which are, in many jurisdictions, very very low).  There are even efforts to propose workable compromises on the contentious issue of gun control.
     
  • Empowerment Leaders are, perhaps, the most important of the power balancers. Their focus is on highlighting and correcting the society's most egregious power inequities and the unfairness that results from those inequities. Their focus is not on "getting even" (or instituting a system of reverse discrimination that allows the previously disempowered to enjoy the privileges of social dominance). Rather, they want to build a system that more equitably balances power in ways that all citizens will see as offering a path to a society that is fair for all. They build upon the long tradition of nonviolent civil resistance made famous by Gandhi, King, and Mandela. They embrace their commitment to nonviolence, their demands that ongoing instances of injustice be properly addressed (King's "the fierce urgency of now"), and their appeals for democracy to live up to the true meaning of its egalitarian ideals.
      
    Empowerment leaders seek to level the playing field in ways which, going forward, provide equality of opportunity while, the same time, providing assistance to victims of past discrimination and disadvantage. This is an approach that is much less widely used in today's hyper-polarized political environment, where those on the left and the right have so dehumanized one another that it is hard for anyone to imagine fighting for a future in which the other side would like to live. The result is an endless series of us-versus them confrontations in which neither side ever achieves any sort of stable victory. While there are instances in which King's  empowerment strategy is being advocated, taught, and used (see for instance, The King Center, Pace e Bene, the Addie Wyatt Center for Nonviolence Training, and On Earth Peace such efforts and programs tend to be overwhelmed by those taking a more aggressive approach.

Defenders 

All the roles listed so far (included here and the three earlier roles posts) are focused on the many citizens that are making good-faith efforts to help democracies overcome the many challenges associated with self-governance in an era of enormous societal scale, complexity, and diversity. We call our last group of roles "Defenders" because they are focused on defending these good-faith efforts from attacks by the many groups who seek to profit by inflaming tensions and undermining democratic institutions. These "bad-faith actors" include "profiteers "who have found ways to monetize political conflict for personal benefit, advocacy groups that go beyond appeals for fair treatment and want to dominate and suppress their political rivals, "alienated nihilists" who hate the system and want to destroy it, and authoritarian geopolitical rivals who seek to weaken and attack Western democracies.  Those fighting against these bad-faith actors fall into six broad subcategories: 

  • Collective Defenders are alliances of nations (or other social groups) who feel that the best way to defend themselves from attack by unscrupulous foreign (or domestic) rivals is by agreeing to pool their resources to build a common defense. They further agree to come to one another's aid in the event of an actual attack. This is the classic role of a military alliance like NATO which regards an attack on any alliance member as an attack on all members of the alliance — an attack to which members are committed to respond. While most commonly used to deter international aggression, the same basic principle can apply to any group that feels that its members might be subject to unfair attack.  For example, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education provides a kind of collective defense for those whose academic freedom or freedom of speech are being violated.
     
  • Ethical Advocates fight back against the tendency of many advocacy groups to pursue victory to the point where they are not leaving the space in society for those with opposing views. They help us understand when our obligations to the larger society should take precedence over efforts to advance our individual and group interests   The "Disagree Better" campaign mentioned above is one example. Another example are the conciliators who work for the U.S. Department of Justice's Community Relations Service. The CRS was created as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to help communities deal with the civil rights controversies that were expected to emerge during (and after) the implementation of that Act.  While their primary activity was, and continues to be, conciliation (what we would call "mediation") between people of color and the power structure (and now also gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and disability conflicts), they do this work with the goal of  promoting social justice and fairness. This means that, while they were (and continue to be) powerful advocates for minorities, they also hold themselves to high ethical standards that enable them to work effectively with and be trusted by the white power structure. By treating all parties fairly, they are frequently able to resolve  the immediate dispute, in ways that lay the groundwork for structural changes that would prevent repeat incidents. We have written a lot more about their efforts in the first, and soon-to-be-coming second edition of the Civil Rights Oral History Project. 
     
  • Corruption Fighters  focus on strengthening conflict of interest protections and preventing public business from being exploited for private gain by unscrupulous individuals.  Examples include Sarah Chayes who wrote Thieves of the State which documents the magnitude of the corruption problem.   the U.S. Agency for International Development's Anti-Corruption Policy, the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)'s Anti-Corruption and Integrity Hub, and Transparency.org. Also working in this area is the Kleptocracy Initiative at the Hudson Institute and the Hudson Institute's Kleptocracy Substack newsletter. Others are trying to help us understand the ways in which a leader like President Trump could elevate corrupt, machine politics to the national level or the larger relationship between corruption and national security. There also are encouraging stories such as this one about how a global effort to crack down on corruption was successfully negotiated.
     
  • Fourth Estaters actively work to defend and strengthen the ability and inclination of media to provide the public with accurate and understandable information about the problems facing society, available options for addressing those problems, and, the things that their political leaders are actually doing (or not doing) to solve those problems. Their goal is to encourage the media to better support democracy by promoting content that is constructive, rather than inflammatory and inaccurate. Examples include Ad Fontes Media, AllSides Media, and the Solutions Journalism Network  (also listed earlier under communication thinkers). Beyond this, there is FIRE's effort to defend free speech, Greg Lukianoff's efforts to promote a culture of free speech, and the Heterodox Academy's  effort to promote viewpoint diversity. There are also those helping us think through the problem of self-censorship and the paradox of having to tolerate intolerance in the name of free speech.
     
  • Integrators focus on reaching out to those who feel alienated from and left behind by the larger society — people who have lost so much hope that they are falling victim to the various diseases of despair.  Especially worrying are those who have crossed the line into genuine nihilism where they are so resentful of the larger society that they want to do all they can attack and destroy it. (This, for example, is what drives many of the perpetrators of our ongoing epidemic of mass shootings). One integrator is blues musician Daryl Davis.  Davis, who is Black, has, over the course of 30 years, befriended members of the KKK, and has convinced 200 of them reject white supremacy and leave the Klan. Other examples are the many efforts to provide assistance to the homeless and the left behind. Some schools have programs to try to identify at-risk students and reach out to them to try to get them better integrated into the school community in healthy ways.  There remains a critical need to go beyond emergency assistance for left-behind and at-risk individuals and find ways to better integrate them into society and give them a stake in society's success.
     
  • Geopolitical Defenders have the biggest and the most difficult job —  defending democracy from geopolitical rivals who seek to undermine and destabilize Western democracies and who, if the opportunity arises, may engage in covert and sometimes overt acts of aggression. These defenders need to protect us at a time when rapidly advancing military technologies are radically altering the global balance of military power adding new vulnerabilities to the long-standing risks associated with conventional and nuclear conflict. Media technologies and AI also are posing a complex array of ever-expanding threats. 

    While geopolitical defenders certainly employ the collective defense strategies outlined above, their work is much, much broader than that. In addition to defending against conventional "kinetic" threats, they are charged with protecting democracies from hybrid or gray zone warfare tactics including efforts to use today's open, high-tech information systems to inflame tensions and undermine public support for democratic institutions.  Examples of people working in these roles include, obviously, the military services, defense contractors, strategic think tanks, as well as the many critics of the "military industrial complex." These critics help us understand why the United States goes to war, how endless wars start, why military interventions often fail, and mistakes the US has made in past wars. They help build support for appropriate defensive and deterrence measures by highlighting the dangers of isolationism, the capabilities of our adversaries, the consequences of letting tensions rise into a some new kind of 21st-century war involving some combination of conventional, cyber, or, worse, a nuclear war. More hopefully, they illuminate and encourage us to take advantage of opportunities for reducing risks, through negotiation of arms control agreements and utilizing social media wisely. In short, they defend us so that we can work in all of the other MPP areas to build a better society. 

Putting the Roles All Together

Our point in listing all these roles is to make more visible the astonishing number of things that people are already doing in the United States and around the world to help limit hyper-polarization and related threats to peace and democracy. What we find so encouraging about this inventory (which still highlights only a tiny fraction of ongoing projects) is the scope of the movement that it reveals and the fact that there are so many ways in which even more people can become involved. MPP is not some unrealistic a pie-in-the-sky plan for quickly and easily solving our many problems.  It is a description of the massive (and invariably messy) process through which societies improve and solve problems.  We hope that these four posts provide something of an antidote to the now widespread sense of hopelessness. The system is responding in ways that will, if enough of us join the effort, take us through this period of difficulty. What we cannot do is give up, and assume all is lost, or that we can't do anything to influence events. If we do that then, our worries become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Let's reject that option and get to work!