Chapter Fourteen: Navigating Anarchism as Collaboration and Current Political World
Part Two: Collaboration in the Current Political World
Readings:
Ruggie, J. G. (1972). “Collective goods and future international collaboration”. American Political Science Review, 66(3), 874-893.
De Morris, A. A., & Leistner, P. (2009). From neighborhood association system to participatory democracy: Broadening and deepening public involvement in Portland, Oregon. National Civic Review, 98(2), 47-55.
Key Dilemma of Part Two:
How can egalitarian collaborative processes gain acceptance, when so many contemporary conflict resolution practices are enmeshed in corporate, judicial, and bureaucratic institutions that are dedicated to maintaining their domination over large masses of people?
Review of List of Navigation Strategies for Seemingly Intractable Conflicts, Differences, and Dilemmas:
Example to help us work through these dilemmas:
Portland’s Neighborhood Associations have been an example of a somewhat-decentralized decision-making structure, with sometimes-effective collaboration with the city government. Unfortunately, the relationship between the two types of governance is fraying, as of 2019. https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2019/08/01/26894563/in-search-of-equal-representation-portland-looks-beyond-neighborhood-associations
Questions:
1. What is the essence of collaboration?
In my opinion, there are multiple characteristics of an effective collaboration:
Treating the other disputants as having the radical equality of existential realities. In other words, their reality is just as real as our own, though it may be radically different from our own.
To collaborate across the difference, we must not be perfectionists and expect perfect collaboration with everyone in the room in any one session, or even in one series of sessions. Some participant’s realities might be too difficult to engage within the current group.
However, we must continue to reach everyone in a “broadening and deepening” way, as time goes forward. Anyone left out of the collaboration potentially undermines the notion of participatory democracy.
2. How is collaboration central to alternate conflict processes?
Certainly, the kinds of “conflict resolution” processes that dominate our society are found in legal or administrative processes or political power. I suggest that none of these involve much collaboration between disputants. Legal, administrative, and political conflicts are resolved by authorities and powerful people, who rarely meaningfully engage disputants.
However, the fields of mediation, facilitation, restorative justice, and collaborative governance are making progress in all of these sectors. In all of these areas, collaborative governance, mediation, and restorative justice organizations are populated by lawyers and non-lawyers, who work to resolve and learn from conflicts through truly collaborative processes.
3. How can contemporary political party conflicts benefit from collaborative processes?
Political conflict can get intense at times, and it seems like politicians rarely cross the aisle to collaborate with the other side. Politicians both reflect and encourage the divisions in the USA. Grassroots collaborative processes can, in time, influence larger social and political processes. Over time, the culture will learn that collaboration is empowering and efficient. These two characteristics are needed everywhere, locally, nationally, and globally. Without collaboration, politics continues to be an endless swing between the interests of left and right, rich and poor. Collaborative processes create egalitarian power-sharing which, in turn, create efficient work and secure communities. Without collaboration, power easily becomes oppressive and generates rebellion and disaffection amongst workers and community members.
4. How can collaborative processes improve political interactions with the news media?
The news media also reflects political, social, and economic divisions, and the news media dramatizes and aggravates the divisions between disputants to provoke interest in their readers and watchers. It seems that the news media does not believe that collaboration between different disputants is newsworthy. It also seems that collaboration is perceived by the news media as coalition-building, with the aim of “winning” conflicts.
My suggestion is that the news media is invited into conversations about this problem. There are certainly some members of the media who are somewhat aware of successful collaborations that solve difficult problems and resolve conflicts that save taxpayer money, avoid lawsuits, and create coalitions of diverse identities and interests.
