America's Civic Condition
The 19th century French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville championed the idea that a vibrant civil society is integral to the health of a democracy. “In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge,” he wrote. “On its progress depends that of all the others.” Without a deep culture of voluntary association, Tocqueville said, “a great nation might with impunity be oppressed by some tiny faction or a single man.”
Contemporary scholars, including Robert Putnam in his seminal 2000 book "Bowling Alone," have argued that voluntary associations play a critical role in fostering social cohesion and generating higher levels of civic participation, social trust, and reciprocity. Civic organizations and initiatives that bring people together across race, class, and party have potential to reduce intergroup conflict and prejudice and to enable people to forge cross-cutting social identities and build social solidarity – important ingredients for reducing the country’s toxic levels of political polarization.
And yet, Americans’ participation in civil society organizations such as unions, religious congregations, and fraternal organizations has plunged over the last several decades. The decline in these institutions has deprived many Americans of access to healthy forms of connection, purpose, and identity, and contributed to a growing crisis in social isolation that has made people vulnerable to political extremism.
Source: Gallup polls conducted in July and August 2022 with more than 2,000 Americans aged 18 and older.
Source: Congressional Research Service, “A Brief Examination of Union Membership Data”, June 16, 2023.
Civil Society and Civic Culture: How Philanthropy Can Help
"It is never too late to give up your prejudices." - Henry David Thoreau
Civic innovators and organizers are leading promising efforts to bring Americans together to find common purpose, rooted in both established traditions of community organizing and in new forms of civic bridge building incorporating the science of intergroup conflict resolution.
Bridge-building Initiatives
As the intensity and harms of US political polarization have become more apparent, there has been a surge in bridge-building initiatives designed to connect people across the divisions that are entrenched in our partisan politics.
For example, Urban-Rural Action organizes diverse cohorts of grassroots leaders from urban and rural communities to collaborate on shared community goals, from improving economic opportunity to preventing violence. Cogenerate bridges generational divides by supporting community service projects that bring younger and older Americans together. And Braver Angels has engaged more than 24,000 people in one-on-one conversations, town halls, and other events aimed at bringing people together across partisan divides. These are just three examples of an expanding field of bridging initiatives aspiring to strengthen the nation’s social cohesion.
The most effective bridge-building initiatives go beyond facilitating dialogue to engage people in shared projects and action, based on research and insights from intergroup contact theory that getting people not only speaking to each other but working together to pursue shared goals is the most effective way to achieve enduring reductions in outgroup prejudice.
Susan C Brown/Shutterstock
Community and Worker Organizing
While our political parties are increasingly sorted by ideology, race, geography, religious identity, and age, there is a surprising degree of overlap between the parties in terms of class and income level. Strikingly, nearly equivalent shares of Republicans (39%) and Democrats (34%) now identify as working class. This trend points to opportunities to unite working and middle-income Americans across partisan divides around their shared economic interests.
Source: The American National Election Studies Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior
Community and worker organizing that is relational and broad-based has the power to disrupt the forces of polarization by fostering solidarity across partisan divisions. Community organizing networks like People’s Action, Faith in Action, the Center for Popular Democracy, and the Industrial Areas Foundation bring poor, working class, and middle-class people into relationship with one another to build power and take action to advance their shared interests in quality affordable housing, public education, childcare, transit, health care, and more.
Multiracial worker organizing offers similar opportunities to build class-based, cross-partisan solidarity and can blunt the racial resentment that is a significant driver of partisan animosity: research shows that union membership increases racial tolerance among white workers. While philanthropy cannot fund unions, donors can support nonprofit worker power building organizations such as United for Respect and Restaurant Opportunities Center United – groups uniting workers across racial, geographic, and partisan divides to fight for improved job conditions.
Photo: United for Respect
In essence, community and worker organizing draw on the same science of intergroup contact theory as the bridging initiatives described above – science that shows that increasing contact between different groups reduces prejudice, and more so when people engage in shared projects and action. In addition, by helping people build power to address problems of economic insecurity, community and worker organizing also confront the conditions of economic precarity that provide fertile ground for the rise of political polarization and extremism.
Peacebuilding and Violence Prevention Strategies
Civil society can also be a force for preventing political violence and extremism – manifestations of political polarization in its most dangerous form. There are a range of civic initiatives employing methods of peacebuilding and conflict resolution that have been road-tested in conflict zones to reach the communities that are most vulnerable to extremism in the United States. Often, the programs work with messengers from within those vulnerable communities to build trust and credibility.
For example, The After Party is a program geared towards evangelical Christian faith communities that aims to promote a healthier, less polarizing form of conservative Christian political engagement. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s Against Violent Extremism network works with former members of violent extremist groups to proactively engage with and inoculate people who are vulnerable to violent extremism. With political violence and extremism on the rise in the US, civic peacebuilding and violence prevention strategies will be increasingly important for maintaining a baseline level of political stability.
"The work of rebuilding our fragmented society needs to start now. It extends from reconnecting people across the lines of division in local communities all the way to building a renewed sense of national identity: a bigger story of us. Our polarization is not simple, but nor is it insoluble." ~ Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape