Democracy large and small

A case study in bad process

For as long as I’ve been writing The 21st Century American, I’ve been trying to connect the dots between disparate concepts such as politics, empathy, the degradation of democracy, and complexity theory, to name but a few. I’m still struggling, but I think I’m making progress.

There is a connection between how we engage with our communities and how we think about our democracy (such as it is…). I believe that a large part of what makes American politics and democracy so fraught is a nationwide shortage of empathy. I just haven’t figured out how to scale it up to include 330 million people.

I do know how to scale it down, though. Today, I want to offer a case study in democracy writ small.

In a small town

I’m thinking of a city I know that struggles with some democratic issues of its own. This case is based on actual events fictionalized for privacy, but this scenario could easily describe any number of American town councils.

Anyplace USA is a small city of under 100,000 people in the Minneapolis metro area. It is governed by a five-member city council, with several citizen commissions advising it. Citizen involvement in decision-making takes the form of a public input time on every council meeting agenda. There are opportunities to participate in study sessions and ad hoc committees and speak at commission meetings. Most council members are friendly and accessible, often spending mornings having coffee with concerned citizens.

One day, a developer appeared with a proposal to build a boutique mall and rooftop bar on a vacant parcel in the city’s historic downtown. The city council saw the project as a way to attract tourists, add to the town’s appeal, and bring badly needed revenue into city coffers. Council members were excited by the possibilities.

What could possibly go wrong?

The developer wants the property to exceed current zoning regulations, so his proposed building is much higher and covers more of its lot than surrounding structures. The proposal couldn’t work unless changes were made, either to the design of the building or the current zoning limits.

As word about the project began to spread throughout the town, many citizens were aghast. Besides being out of scale with surrounding buildings, the proposed building was frankly ugly and clashed with the historic district surrounding it. People started attending and protesting at the planning commission and city council meetings. In response, the developer and city officials made adjustments around the margins of the plan, but people only became more vehement. Citizens noisily complained that the city was not listening to its residents. The townspeople are petitioning to put the matter on the next ballot. The council is vehemently opposed to this referendum.

Here’s our questions:

1. With all the public involvement built into the city’s process, why did people think they weren’t being heard?

2. What could be done differently?

Diagnostics

Let’s start with the community.

When people say the council isn’t listening, it’s often because being heard isn’t the same as feeling heard. The many opportunities to register an opinion do not leave people feeling good. Could the council hear and thoroughly understand someone’s position and still be opposed to it? Or do people only feel heard when they get what they want?

Not necessarily.

All decision rules have pros and cons. The decision rule with most governments is “majority decides.” The drawback of voting is that it turns voters into winners or losers. Sometimes the winners prevail by just a handful of votes. When that happens, it’s hard for the losers to live with the result.

Anytown is like all democracies in that you can’t please all of the people all of the time. In democracy people will sometimes lose. Optimally, the people are mature enough to accept an adverse outcome from a process that is transparent and fair. The process so far appears to be neither.

Let’s look at the council.

Council members are bewildered that people in the community don’t feel heard. They don’t understand the difference between being listened to and feeling heard. Since they don’t understand their opponents, they make up a narrative about them: that opponents to the project are simply resistant to change, that they are a bunch of old people who want the town of their youth frozen in amber. The council has no idea how to work with or please these people.

The problem in Anytown is that the various public input processes are mostly performative. The public comment period of council meetings consists of three minutes, during which anyone can say whatever they want to the council. It’s a one-way communication, not a conversation. Council members are largely impassive, not reacting in any way or even making eye contact with the speakers. One council member is famous for spending that time doing things with his phone. The commissions operate the same way. Neither offers a venue for people of differing opinions to think together and wrestle with the issue. Study session time is spent on presentations by city staff. Even if there’s time to break into discussion groups, the time is too short for collaborative thinking. People who attend are frustrated that they never find out if their input made any difference.

Why this building on that plot? People don’t understand why they can’t just make the building smaller or put the larger building on a more fitting parcel. When people aren’t part of the thinking and problem-solving, they are always several steps behind the decision-makers regarding their understanding.

As time progressed, citizens and council members alike became fixed in their opinions and broke into camps. From the council’s perspective, the opposing people look like flamethrowers who add heat but no light to the issue. They are frankly a pain in the ass. They have no idea the challenges council members face. The only time they show up is when they’re mad. From the townspeople’s perspective, the council looked suspicious, as if someone might be getting some kickback or personal benefit from the project. Otherwise, why would they pick this particular ditch to die in defending their position?

In other words, they are missing empathy. Optimally, if people have a role in the decision-making process, they have enough information about how others arrive at the opinions they hold. There is no shortcut or substitute for developing shared understanding. Getting an entire town to buy into community dialogue means that they value their relationships as much as they value the decision itself.

How to make it better

People’s ability to work with, rather than against, one another requires basic trust. Trust develops with experience. When communities come to stalemates like Anytown’s, it’s not the people causing the problems. It’s the process. The decision-making process has to be credible to people. To make democratic decision-making credible, everyone needs to know how the final decision will be made and what role they will play in that process.

That means there is sufficient transparency, enough meaningful dialogue, and no big discrepancies between what decision-makers say and what they do. People find it easier to accept adverse decisions when they view the process as fundamentally fair. They also give decision-makers the benefit of the doubt more often when they understand the thinking behind the conclusions reached.

Imagine meetings of Anytown’s interested citizens, council members, and city staff. They would convene in small groups with facilitation and sufficient time to reach a shared understanding of the issues and are encouraged to share the basis of their thinking. What life experiences and personal needs brought each person to the opinion they hold? The purpose is to help each other understand — not get everyone to agree.

The way to make deliberative dialogue useful in government and cost efficient is to invest heavily in the preparation and facilitation up front, then develop good group norms for handling candor and controversy. Professional facilitation is essential.

The first couple runs at this may be rocky. Deliberative dialogue may feel unfamiliar to people. It won’t be immediately apparent how the conversation will make a difference. Over time, if well-designed and faithfully practiced, many benefits will emerge:

• People on all sides will learn how to express themselves in ways others can understand.

• They will learn to tolerate differences and controversies. Instead of summoning pitchforks, controversies become objects of curiosity and inquiry. They begin to see how people with diametrically opposing positions can live together and make it work.

• Trust develops if the process is credible and sustained. Eventually, people will develop an implicit assumption that their leaders are acting in good faith. Even when a final decision goes against one side’s opinion, people will respect the outcome because they were part of the process.

• The community becomes more agile and resilient, which helps a lot when they face a crisis or the stakes are high.

Applying these principles to a troubled nation

Looking at America today, the depth and complexity of the problem is obvious:

• Our decision-making body, aka all three branches of government, has lost credibility with a sizable portion of the population.

• Many final decisions are not being respected, e.g., attempts to overturn elections.

• Information is staticky. News sources aren’t trusted, some sources are visibly partisan, other sources traffic in disinformation.

• Politicians aren’t candid about their intentions, e.g., the so-named “Respect For Marriage Act of 2022” obscured the act’s intention, which was to nullify — not respect — some peoples’ marriages.

• We are polarized, hardened into our fixed positions. We don’t know each other, understand each other, or trust each other.

Our entire democracy lacks deliberation of any sort. Town hall meetings involve one-way communications — not dialogue — between a congress member and their constituents. Billions of advertising dollars are spent each election to mischaracterize political opponents.

We know how elections make decisions: we get a ballot, cast our votes, and the majority wins. One problem is there is confusion about what our votes mean and what the implications of our choices are. Another problem is that elections are about binary choices: up or down, black or white. Without a shared understanding of the issue or the candidate, we inevitably fall into one of two camps: winners or losers. In close or contested elections, the losers aren’t always gracious.

One more shout-out for large-scale empathy

There are an infinite number of ways to work with deliberative dialogue. Before that, though, we need to set the stage for American values to change and settle on:

• Making laws and electing candidates that expressly plan to make America hospitable to all of us. Or at least as many of us as possible (and have something in mind to help those who come out on the short end of that stick).

• Prioritizing peace over profit.

• Caring about and having empathy for people we disagree with.

That is in addition to making elections free and fair, making government transparent, and unrigging the economy.

If we do all of this perfectly, we will still have outliers: crooked politicians, people who are materially disadvantaged by the outcomes of an election, and people who can’t or won’t participate in good faith. Paradoxically, focusing on outliers can trash your credibility with the majority. For instance, before the 2024 election, the Democratic National Committee was more concerned with whether non-binary people were adequately represented in their leadership than they were with whether their candidate and platform made sense to the country.

Here’s a paradox: the way to win those battles is to stop fighting them. When the Constitution grants all of us full equality and leaders adhere to it faithfully, the representation problem solves itself. Before that can happen, we must set the stage for process improvements, structural changes, and citizen confidence to emerge and grow strong.

All of this won’t likely come to fruition in my lifetime, but there’s no time like the present to start. I want our upcoming generations to be equipped and positioned to address climate change, global poverty, dealing with hostile nations, forced migration, and other issues of existential significance and wildly diverging opinions.

When the kids take over the seats of power — which they are beginning to do — I want the citizenry to trust them and work with rather than against them. I want Americans to trust that their elected leaders are working for them rather than themselves. And when the day comes when there is a crisis — ambiguous, changing, and high stakes — we might give ourselves and each other a modicum of grace.

Your homework

If you’d like to join me in my quest to figure out how building empathy on a national scale could lead to better politics, needed reforms, and a more just nation, here are some resources:

• Center for Building a Culture of Empathy

• Braver Angels

• Deliberative Democracy Consortium

• Freedom Together Foundation

• “Trust Your Mind” by Jenera Nerenberg is a book that explores groupthink and self-silencing (the tendency to say nothing rather than risk saying something wrong).

• “The Serviceberry” by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a book about orienting our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community — and how these characteristics appear elsewhere in the natural world.

• “Join or Die” is a documentary currently streaming on Netflix that examines the theories behind the book “Bowling Alone.” Both the book and the movie explore the concept of “social capital” and how community connections have broken down.

More on this subject next week. And I’ll let you know what happens in Anytown!

Song of the Day

“Small Town Saturday Night” — Hal Ketchum

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Keep on keepin’ on,

Cindy