Large-Scale Third-Party Intervention
Third Party Intervention has been most successful in dealing with specific conflicts involving relatively small groups of people (even if they represent large ones). There have been several efforts to extend its methods to community and political disputes.
One such is “Local Civil Dialogue” in “safe spaces” such as libraries and churches to discuss problems within an agreed set of rules that (with group pressure) usually ensure civility. It aims to bring together people “hungry for community” and provides them with a like-minded audience representing a wide range of opinions. Usually, there is a substantial initial turnout that dwindles with successive meetings as it becomes clear that the group lacks the political or institutional apparatus to do more than talk.“Wisdom Councils” are the idea of organizational development consultant Jim Rough (2002), who defines them as one-time meetings of stakeholders who, through special facilitation produce a consensus statement made available to the larger population for further dialogue and action. “Wisdom Councils” usually consist of twelve people randomly chosen from voter rolls by a trained organizer for a weekend of “dynamic facilitation” to identify important issues and generate unanimous statements that proponents claim have great “moral authority.” Ideally, the process repeats with a different group of random selectees after the larger community has had time to discuss and digest the resulting statements.5 The resulting consensus usually consists of ambiguous platitudes that everyone can agree with but no administrator can use to make actual decisions. So far, they have had no demonstrable impact at any level of government.
Joseph McCormick’s “Reuniting America” (www.reunitingamerica.org) sought to reduce the bitter divisions that emerged from the 2000 election in the US and to build trust through “transpartisan dialogue.” In his view, nonpartisanship denies differences and bipartisanship merely compromises them, while transpartisanship validates and dignifies many points of view and seeks to find ways to integrate them into more broadly acceptable solutions to social problems. The primary tool is dialogue, in which everyone is assumed to have some but not all of the answer, that one listens to learn, and that the goal is seeking collaboration and synthesis.
In his view, this contrasts with debate, in which each side assumes it has the right answer, tries to prove itself right and the other wrong, and listens to others only to find flaws and make counterarguments.Reuniting America convened high-level leaders6 from some thirty nationwide organizations that span the political spectrum for multi-day dialogues—quite an achievement in itself. However, despite some activity at the local level, the process appears to have ended in September 2007 after a seventh conference over the previous three and a half years, and appears to have made no identifiable impact on the divisions in the country or even the civility of the debate.
These and similar efforts including international ones such as Track II Diplomacy and Search for the Common Ground (Chapter 16) are process oriented, usually draw community members with relatively little influence, and are greeted with enthusiasm by liberals and skepticism by conservatives. Most have a New Age, therapeutic flavor, depend on small-group discussion with ground rules to maintain civility, and tend to paper over differences with “apple pie and motherhood” language on which all can agree. Few ever translate words into action and most disappear quietly and quickly. This is distressing, as ideological conflicts that divide the nation are becoming as intractable as the ethnic disputes tearing apart older regions of the world.