Newsletter 489 - Sept 14, 2026

Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess

Boulding's First Law Explained

For those who don't know of him, Kenneth Boulding was one of the founders of the peace and conflict field back in the 1950s and 60s. Though he was trained and worked as an economist, he cultivated expertise in many other areas, including early systems theory and peace research. Guy had the wonderful opportunity of serving as Kenneth's research assistant throughout his (Guy's) graduate career. 

During that time, Kenneth often spoke of his "First Law" which stated "if it exists, it must be possible." He formulated this law in the 1970s in response to the then-common economic assertion that it was impossible to have inflation and recession at the same time. Yet in the U.S. in the 1970s and early 1980s, we had just that — leading Kenneth to assert this seemingly obvious (but apparently not obvious to 1970s economists) law. 

This law and it's obvious corollary, "if it has been done, it must be possible," has far more utility than just economic theory. 

For example, many people believe that — and assert that — our hyper-polarization is inevitable. The U.S. population is just so diverse, and people's situations and values just so different, that there is no way they are going to be able to come to agreement about much of anything. From this observation, many conclude, that the only way to govern is to battle it out, and work as hard as necessary (frequently bending and, too often, breaking the rules) to make sure your side wins. And when one side does win, instead of trying to work with the other side, they try to undo all the "damage" the other side has done, and put into place as many of their own side's wishes and policies as possible, until they are again thrown out in favor of the other side. 

This is certainly what Trump is doing, and why (presumably) the Republican Congress and even some Republican judges are doing little to block him. It is also the approach that Biden used when he came into office after Trump's first term.  

But more and more people on the left, and increasingly on the right, are realizing that Trump's authoritarian style of leadership isn't what Americans want or need. And Boulding's First Law, along with organizations we have written about before, show a different America is possible. Consider: 

Better ways of governing exist. 

• The House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress - We've written about this committee before. See this, this, and this (among others). This subcommittee ran from 2019-2023. Co-Chair, Derek Kilmer designed the Committee to be bipartisan, having a 50-50 Democratic/Republican membership, and requiring at least 2/3 of the members to pass a recommendation. It also had many innovative procedures. Everyone sat around a table, alternating D, R, D, R. etc. Witnesses and other speakers were at the same table, and everyone was treated equally.

  "If you want things to work differently, sometimes you have to do things differently," Rep. Kilmer is fond of saying. Many of the Committee's 202 recommendations were adopted with unanimous votes, and many of those have been adopted by the full Congress. 
  
  This committee proves it is possible for Democrats and Republicans to govern effectively together, if the structure is conducive. But as Kilmer says, if we want things to go differently, we have to behave differently. So far, we aren't.
   

• The House Problem Solvers Caucus: Although the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress only lasted two sessions, a similar bipartisan structure, the House Problem-Solvers Caucus, still exists. It also has an institutional rule that it will not endorse legislation unless 75% of its members support it, including at least half of both its Republican and Democratic members. That creates an incentive to develop proposals that actually accommodate both sides, rather than simply assemble a partisan majority. It hasn't been as successful at getting legislation passed, but that may be because it is addressing more controversial topics.  However, it has notched some successes, and has proven, once again, that opponents can work effectively together if the structure is right.  But since the full Congress has to agree to its recommendations, and the full Congress retains its partisan structure and procedures, many of this Caucus's recommendations have failed to pass the full Congress.
   
• The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law: In addition to bi-partisan structures, even in our highly polarized times, Congress has, on occasion, managed to work together to pass significant bipartisan bills.  One example was the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed in 2021.  It was started by a group of ten senators, five from each party, who together produced what they described as a "realistic, compromise framework." The group then expanded to 20 evenly divided Senators, who then negotiated with President Biden, to create the bill that ultimately passed the senate at 69-30, and the House at 228-206. (The House vote was much less balanced with 215 Dems and 13 Reps.) Nevertheless, the way the bill was created showed that good faith bargaining between the parties is possible, and it can result in bills that can pass.
   
• The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022. This act also illustrates bipartisan cooperation on an especially contentious issue: it was meant to prevent a repeat of the debacle that happened on January 6, 2021, when President Trump tried to convince Vice President Pence that he could refuse to count certain states' electoral votes, thereby throwing the election to President Trump.  Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Joe Manchin led a group of senators through almost a year of bipartisan negotiations over reform of the 1887 Electoral Count Act to prevent such a gambit from being tried again. The proposal eventually had 39 Senate co-sponsors, including leaders and members of both parties; the Senate Rules Committee approved it 14–1, and it became law in December 2022.

Other examples exist at the state level. For instance,

• Minnesota's 2025 power-sharing and budget agreements: After an election produced an evenly divided state House, Democratic and Republican leaders in Minnesota eventually negotiated a formal power-sharing arrangement. Like the House Committee on the Modernization of Congress, Minnesota state Committees had equal party representation and Democratic and Republican co-chairs, meaning legislation needed bipartisan support to advance.
   
• Alaska's bipartisan legislative coalition: The Alaska House that took office in 2025 is organized around multiparty coalition containing Democrats, Republicans and independents. Its leadership also crosses party lines with an independent speaker, a Republican majority leader and rules chair, and Democratic and independent finance co-chairs. The coalition describes bipartisan collaboration as part of its governing mission. The Alaska Senate also has a bipartisan majority caucus. 
   
• Nebraska's Nonpartisan Unicameral Legislature: Nebraska has had an officially nonpartisan unicameral legislature since the 1930s: candidates' party affiliations do not appear on legislative ballots, and legislative leadership formally is not based on party affiliation. While this does not eliminate ideological or partisan divisions, it demonstrates that the conventional party-majority structure is not the only way American legislatures can operate.
   
• Maine uses joint House-Senate committees, which a National Conference of State Legislature (NCSL) study found legislators believed encouraged negotiation and bipartisan compromises and reduced the need for adversarial bargaining between the chambers.
   
• The same NCSL study found that while even state legislatures were becoming increasingly polarized, they did a better job of working around that polarization to get things done.  Factors that NCSL suggested helped mitigate the effects of polarization on policymaking included:

• State constitutions and rules such as single subject requirements for bills, limited sessions with effective deadlines, requirements for balanced budgets, and the fair and consistent application of rules.
• Governors and legislative leaders who are able to see the big picture, communicate and work together effectively, and make efforts to treat the minority party fairly and value their input.
• Empowered committees that deliberate effectively and make efforts to incorporate minority party ideas.
• Personal relations, cultures and traditions among legislators that promote inter-party communication and cooperation and engender trust and respect.
• Nonpartisan staff.
• A determination to get things done, often expressed as “We’re not D.C.”

These ideas, together with all the others listed above, clearly show that effective governance, even in the context of political polarization, is possible. And though "We're not D.C." is seen as a solution at the state level, even D.C., on occasion, has done things a better way.

Better ways of relating to people who disagree with us exist. 

We have written even more about these interpersonal strategies in the past. Most recently, we reported on our conversation with Mónica Guzmán who emphasized the importance of curiosity in strengthening relationships with those who disagree with us. We also talked about curiosity, as well as active listening, I-messages, and respectful presentation of one's own views in our post on Talking with and Listening To People on the Other Side. That post, as well as several others, (see this, this, and this) also talked about the value of dialogue — using that term in the conflict resolution sense of a highly structured, facilitated conversation that focuses on life stories and fundamental beliefs as a way of understanding where other people are coming from. 

Many organizations, especially those in what has come to be called "bridging" movement train people in how to do this and show that, indeed, there are much better ways to engage with people with whom we disagree.  These include, among many others, Braver Angels,  Living Room Conversations, Listen First, Essential Partners, and BridgeUSA. Although bridging, alone, won't solve our political problems, learning the lessons all these organizations teach certainly can help de-polarize and de-escalate our politics and our personal relationships, paving the way for other constructive efforts in different domains.

Better ways to get and provide news exist.

In our earlier post, we asserted that "better ways to get news exist." We'd broaden that now to say there are better ways to both get news and provide news, and they are interlinked. In terms of getting news, instead of just relying on a few of our usual trusted sources, which, most often, tell us what we already "know" and what we want to hear, we suggest people deliberately look at how reasonable people on different sides understand the same events. Tangle, AllSides, Ground News, and The Flip Side are all news sources specifically designed to expose readers to multiple political perspectives.

 An entirely different, but also constructive, approach to providing helpful news is that advocated by the Solutions Journalism Network which trains journalists to focus on evidence-based reporting on solutions to problems, not just on the problem itself or blaming others for the problem.  So far, they have trained over 100,000 journalists, educators and students in solutions journalism, and have a "Solutions Story Tracker," which contains (as of this writing) 17,700 news stories produced by 2,220 news outlets from 102 countries. 

Although traditional media are suffering from a serious lack of trust (for good reason, we'd argue), these news providers provide news that is particularly trust-worthy and valuable. And given that they are all successful and growing, we would, once again assert, "since it exists, it must be possible!"

Solutions Are Possible! 

Given all these examples, plus many more we don't have space to include, Boulding's First Law shows that our problems are not insoluble.  Collaborative governance can work at all societal levels IF our citizens demand it, and agree to take part in it. 

If we just sit back, root for our own team and against the other team and hope everything turns out okay, most likely it won't!  Our leaders have shown us, for quite some time, that they're unable to engage in the collaborative pursuit of mutually beneficial solutions to common problems. The things they have to do to get elected (and reelected) often prevent them from doing things that would genuinely help their constituents. And, those who refuse to do the unsavory things that are often required to get elected don't become our political leaders.  (There are, of course, some people such as those profiled up above, who have shown that it is possible to buck the system and do the right thing.) And again, as Derek Kilmer says, "if you want something to go differently, you have to do things differently." That's a call to all of us.

If you care about democracy, if you care about the health of America, the time has come to do things differently. We can’t just sit back, send money to “our team” and vote every so often. We also need to learn about the issues that matter to us, and time permitting, get involved in our local politics. And if we want our representatives at the state and national levels to start behaving differently, tell them that. Make it clear that if they don’t start working collaboratively to solve our many pressing problems, we will vote them out of office and put in people who will. Solutions are possible — but they take work. Lots of work. Our work. Let’s start doing things differently!

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About the MBI Newsletters

Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.

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