How do we overcome political polarization for a stronger democracy and society?

"Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization." 
Mahatma Gandhi 
 
“We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”  
Benjamin Franklin 

Political polarization and growing partisan extremism in the US are undermining the ability of government to advance the common good, eroding commitment to and trust in democratic norms and institutions, and increasing the threat of political violence. Religious, ideological, generational, and racial differences have always existed in America, but Americans’ anxiety about those differences has intensified, and the fault lines are increasingly overlapping along party lines in ways that have made our politics deeply adversarial. At a time when we need national unity and a functional government to tackle a raft of enormous challenges – the climate crisis, widening inequality, the escalation of global security threats and conflicts, the uncertainties of AI, and more – we are deeply divided.

Matt Gush/Shutterstock

And yet, a more perfect union is within our grasp. The challenges we face remind us that our common interests and purpose are greater than what divides us. Our shared interests and values are the building blocks from which we can construct a more cohesive national identity – not one in which our differences disappear, but where they are counterbalanced by our many affinities. Building institutions that enable us to discern our shared interests and advance the common good is a demand of public leadership in a pluralistic, democratic society. This work is under way, outside of the public rancor of our politics, and it has the potential to be transformative.   

How We Got Here

Political polarization in the US has increased significantly since the 1970s. In the mid-20th century, Republicans and Democrats in Congress frequently voted together across party lines and political moderates abounded. Today, cross-party cooperation in Congress is rare and partisan gridlock and obstruction dominate. Democratic legislators in Congress have moved further to the left ideologically, and Republicans even further to the right.

The polarization of political elites is mirrored in the broader public, with Americans increasingly sorted between the two parties according to ideological, racial, geographic, and religious identities. The Republican Party is now the primary home for white, rural, older, and ideologically and religiously conservative Americans, while younger, urban, nonwhite, liberal, and secular voters align with the Democratic Party.¹ These divides are not monolithic or immutable – for example, segments of Black and Hispanic voters have shifted to the Republican Party in recent years – and the complexity of Americans’ beliefs and values cannot be fully captured by traditional demographic categories. However, the extent to which parties today are organized around racial, ideological, and religious identities marks a significant change in our partisan politics.  

Source: Gallup

The sorting of partisan politics along these overlapping sets of identities is the result of a decades-long political realignment in which ideologically and religiously conservative white voters, especially in the South, shifted their allegiance from the Democratic to the Republican Party. This realignment was a response to political movements of the 1960s and 70s, including the Civil Rights Movement, that challenged the country’s longstanding racial and gender hierarchies and cultural norms. The Republican Party strategically courted voters who were anxious about these societal changes, while racially and ideologically progressive voters made their home in the Democratic Party. The result today is two political parties that are much more ideologically polarized than they were 50 years ago². 

Other forces have played a role in driving our divisions. Political polarization is linked to economic inequality, and downward economic mobility and fear of status loss have propelled people toward political extremes of both the right and the left, in the United States and across Europe.The sense of precarity pushing people towards extremism is not purely economic – it is also social and political, and intertwined, for many white Americans, with fear of losing their historically dominant status relative to nonwhites. However, the reality for an expanding number of Americans that they will not be better off than previous generations has intensified the intergroup conflicts that fuel growing partisan polarization.  

What's At Stake

The cleaving of the parties along important racial and cultural identities has sharpened partisan hostilities. Negative feelings towards members of the opposing party have increased steadily since the late 1970s. Political polarization has penetrated our social worlds, with an increasing number of Americans unwilling to date or marry someone who does not share their political views. Research surveys have shown that a large segment of the public views the other party as a serious threat to the country and its people³ (though, importantly, Americans also tend to overestimate the extremism of members of the opposing party).

Extreme political polarization has a range of negative effects in democratic societies, from government dysfunction and loss of public confidence in governing institutions, to rising political violence, authoritarianism, and even civil war.

In their 2018 book How Democracies Die, Harvard scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt map out how extreme polarization can lead to democratic breakdown. When people view the other party as an existential threat, politicians may abandon longstanding democratic norms to secure and retain power for their party. A process of one-upmanship creates a dangerous escalation that amplifies the sense of threat that partisans feel toward the other party. Mercenary politicians exploit the atmosphere of partisan fear by demonizing their opponents, sowing distrust in the integrity of democratic institutions, and embracing authoritarianism.

We have seen some of these dynamics emerge in the United States, where polarization has generated a scorched earth approach to politics that has produced governmental dysfunction, including frequent government shutdowns and the blockading of judicial and political appointments. Gridlock in Congress and rising partisan hostility have contributed to diminished trust in government and an erosion in the public’s commitment to democratic governance.

Source: Pew Research Center

Our Focus

The Battery Powered community will explore the theme of Reunited States through the following guiding question: 

How do we overcome political polarization for a stonger democracy and society?

We will focus on two domains of strategic intervention for countering polarization:

Media and Information. Broadcast media and digital platforms are accelerating polarization and extremism through a business model in which divisive content attracts eyeballs and clicks and increases advertising revenue. We will support groups working to revitalize nonpartisan, local journalism and to build new digital public spaces that promote healthy discourse, as well as organizations seeking to curtail the polarizing influence of the dominant, profit-driven media and tech companies.

Civil Society. Americans’ participation in civil society institutions has declined precipitously over the last several decades. At their best, these institutions provide people with opportunities to build relationships and understanding across differences and a healthy sense of belonging and identity. We will support organizations that are rebuilding the fabric of civic life and bringing Americans together in common purpose across partisan, racial, and other divides.

Paths not taken. The drivers of polarization are manifold and complex, as are the potential strategic interventions. Of necessity, we had to leave behind some approaches to solving the problem. There are two notable pathways that we elected not to focus on, each of which has strong proponents among donors and democracy experts: electoral systems reforms such as ranked choice voting, mixed party primaries, and multi-member Congressional districts that have the potential to generate more moderate politics; and civics education aimed at strengthening Americans’ commitment to democratic pluralism through a firm grounding in the tenets of liberal democracy. We note that elections administration and electoral reforms were one focus in our 2018 and 2020 Healthy Democracy themes, and civics education was a focus area in 2018.