Recent BI and Substack Posts

How can populist revolts address the real failures of establishment elites without falling victim to authoritarian temptations?

Widespread, and overly simplistic, "us vs. them" ways of thinking about conflict underlies much of its destructiveness.

While there is no simple way to "resolve" intractable conflicts, a complexity-oriented approach can make them less destructive.

We need a new strategy tailored to intractable conflict's gigantic, tangled web of causes and consequences.

Nests, cycles, attractors, and paradigms -- new ways of thinking about conflict and its resolution.

More of the same isn't enough--we need new approaches to successfully address intractable conflicts.

Destructive dynamics associated with intractable conflict are as big a threat as climate change. Find out why!

The ten challenges of MPP are daunting, but there is a role here for everyone.

An overview of the many kinds of disputes over facts that arise in conflicts--and what to do about them. Although getting worse, this problem isn't new!

Cognitive dissonance can escalate or de-escalate conflict depending on how it is used. 

North Korea's siege mentality is particularly dangerous as the US is exhibiting a siege mentality too!

Exchange and respect are more powerful than force--they persuade without causing backlash.

The demand for total victory is a recipe for continuing and deepening strife--co-existence is essential for peace.

Most of us are so enmeshed in our own worldviews that we don't consider that we might be wrong. It helps to listen to outsiders and consider that possibility.

Empathic listening is amazingly powerful--sometimes that is all that is needed to defuse destructive conflicts.

Incivility begets more of the same, while civil discourse can help de-escalate conflict and improve relationships.

No one likes to be humiliated--allowing your opponent to save face will help defuse a conflict.

Attacking people makes them angry. Enlisting their help to solve a mutual problem is more likely to work as hoped.

Conflict is created by everyone--it becomes better or worse depending on what all of us do.

Heidi Burgess and Nealin Parker talk about how Search for Common Ground is adapting its pathbreaking international peacebuilding work to healing divides in the United States.