What Can We Do to Reduce Political Polarization?

In our last ten posts, we have highlighted many of the interrelated causes of political polarization today. Can anything be done to mitigate, or resolve, this destructive condition over the long term—beyond our own individual efforts to avoid polarized behaviour? We propose three kinds of actions.

The first and foremost is long term education. Even if it does not satisfy the wish for immediate answers, greater awareness among both elites and citizens, over time, of historical patterns of civilizational rise and decline, basic emotional needs (especially for meaning and purpose), the nature of the mind’s engagement of the world (particularly the different outlooks of our left and right brains), rural-urban divides, and the effect on children of safetyism and screen use will help make polarization less likely in the future.

Indeed, education about the triggers and causes of polarization for students in late grade school and high school may be a most fruitful investment in our societal futures. When students are taught to explore or debate issues in class, teachers should regularly have them consider, or champion, the sides of those questions with which they disagree, or are least familiar. Also, learning to argue not just one, but different sides of the same question in each sitting would both implicitly and experientially press upon them the notion that there is often more than one valid and correct perspective to a question—and thus a need for synthesis. Such exercises would also to help mitigate the deep dualistic conditioning that occurs in school, and in our culture nowadays. Contrary perspectives on an issue, we should press upon students, are not unrelated parts meant to triumph over and negate (or cancel) the other, but are deeply intertwined and form a whole.

Second, greater and more immediate awareness-building among elites and policymakers should take place about the effects of migration policies, and an overreliance on the digital economy and its impact on emotional health and the generation of anxiety—all of which generate polarization. Such greater knowledge need not mean a departure from policy positions, but instead increase the chances that matters are seen in the round, and thus the consequences of any one position, inadvertent or not, are more likely considered.

Third, more practical actions can be envisaged, especially in the social media and political spheres where so much polarization is expressed publicly. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, has provided many ideas on dealing with the excesses of social media, including advocating that social media platforms, like Twitter, stop favouring polarizing posts in their algorithms to make them go viral. Haidt argues that by incentivizing hostile posts, Twitter, normalizes and rewards aggressors with status and prestige, whereas under normal circumstances in the material world such behaviour is frowned upon and deemed anti-social. Ending this tech company practice, he asserts, would have a major dampening impact on the bickering that takes place online.

Reforms can be implemented in the political world as well. Coalitions of moderates, changes in the internal party selection process and in election rules favouring more moderate views can become de rigueur once again. As John Marks, founder of the international conflict resolution NGO Search for Common Ground writes about the recent American mid-term election results and possible trends going forward, “centrists could be key players in helping to overcome the polarization and anger that have become so prevalent in American politics.”

Marks cites former centrist New Jersey Senator Clifford Case, who says, ”I am a Republican, and I believe in the Republican Party. But I have my own convictions as to what the Republican Party should stand for, and I intend to fight for them as hard as I can. And I will not be driven away from my Republicanism simply because some Democrats happen to agree with me on certain issues—and some Republicans don’t.” 

Once upon a time, moderate or liberal Republicans, and more rightist Democrats— centrists both—were not unusual. It is the habits of our time that have made such politicians—and the more constructive common sense dialogues they advocated—into outcasts when they need to be centre stage once again.