David Mathews on Deliberative Democratic Politics

David Mathews, longtime president and CEO of the Kettering Foundation, was interviewed recently by AL.com. In a brief passage, he gives perhaps the best and most concentrated description of deliberative democratic politics I have seen.

For those who have heard Dr. Mathews describe various aspects of democracy — its origins, how it can be seen as an ecology, the importance of seeing the tensions between things held deeply valuable — this may sound familiar. But in just a few paragraphs, much is conveyed.

Below is a brief passage (left) with commentary from me (right):

What we call democracy is really an accumulation of survival lessons over centuries.	Democracy as emergent, organic (vs. built).
We learned that we had to come together to be safe and be successful.	Origin of collective security as a key thing held valuable.
We learned that we had to be free to do what we felt like we needed to do.	Origin of freedom to act as a key thing held valuable.
We learned that we couldn’t really work together unless we divided what we had produced equitably amongst all the people. Because if we didn’t, they’d leave the tribe and next time we went out to bring down a big chunk of protein with four hooves, they weren’t the meal, we were the meal, because we were too small and frail.	Origin of being treated fairly as a key thing held valuable.
And most of all, we learned that we had to have some measure of control over what was happening to us to get all the other things that we want.	Control over future as overarching thing held valuable.
When people make a political decision, what they do is they sit down and they look at the things they might do, and they weigh them against the things that are deeply important: Is doing this going to make me safe or unsafe?	Weighing trade-offs (deliberation) as core to collective democratic life.

The Gymnasia

Imagine you walk into a gymnasium. Different people doing different things all over. There are all sorts of stations: weightlifting areas, cardio machines, fitness rooms. There is a yoga room and a room for a spin class. There is a basketball court.

Too, there are all sorts of people all throughout the gym. They’re each doing their own workouts, trying to get fit. Maybe it is January, and they feel like it is time to get serious about their resolutions! Weightlifting, elliptical, treadmill, stair machine, calisthenics, aerobics. Each with their own plan, or no plan.

Some people have come in small groups. They enjoy working out with friends. It motivates them, and it is fun.

Into this gym, now add a few trainers and coaches. Some people are being trained one on one. Others in more small groups, being led on how to do certain exercises. These coaches can help them build skills, stay motivated, progress, and stay on track.

There are larger fitness classes, in some of the side rooms. Yoga, led by a yoga teacher. Cardio, led by a fitness instructor. Spin class, led by my friend Kenny. These classes also help people build skills, build connections with others, and get fit.

Now . . .

Imagine that some of the coaches and fitness instructors are trying to pass along more than just workout routines. They want to teach their students and groups that they can get fit anywhere. That all they need is some fresh air and a place to run. That they can do it themselves, along with others if they so choose, without any special apparatus or guidebook or video. Imagine the yoga instructor enjoys helping people do the poses, but also wants them to walk away knowing that they could do the yoga at home. Or, that they could themselves teach their family how to do the poses. These coaches and instructors are trying to pass on a mindset toward health.

These kinds of coaches and fitness instructors are a bit analogous to some of the people in civic life you might meet in communities. Sure, they work on projects, but they also try to do so in a way that leaves behind greater capacity. They want to arrange things so that when the project is over, everyone involved can go on to start their own projects, and work on their own issues.

Back to the gym. Someone started that gym. They decided that they wanted to lease the land, build the building, install the equipment, and put effort into making sure it is there for people. Imagine that the owner wanted it to be the kind of place where the coaches and instructors we talked about before felt at home. Imagine they wanted it to be the kind of place where coaches could pass on lifelong fitness attitudes, and it could be a place where people could come together to work out – and to do more than that. The gym could become a place where people got a new mindset toward what they are already doing.

Sure, people come to work out . . . but they are doing more than that. The coaches are trying to do more than that. The gym owner is trying to make it a place where it is welcoming for all kinds: people just working out, and people who have been bitten by the lifelong fitness and health mindset.

The gym owner is somewhat like the institutes, or centers, that exist in some communities. Organizations that work with others who are in turn doing their own projects. These institutes serve as a way to knit together disparate efforts, making space for them, and creating a place where people can learn from one another.

Imagine a learning community or network made up of these kinds of gym owners and some of the more expansive-thinking coaches. They share what they are learning about how they approach their craft, how they set up their spaces. Their craft isn’t exercise routines – it is awakening people to fitness.

Just think what all these gym owners and coaches could unleash, simply by arranging and fostering the right kinds of conditions, and removing obstacles to this kind of development. Imagine what they could learn from one another about how to do that.

Imagine what a new gym owner, someone with the germ of an idea, could learn from such a network.

Conditions vs Topics vs Issues in Deliberative Politics

Politics runs on issues, which are questions about what should be done. Deliberative politics runs on issues that are widely seen as shared and critical. Yet, in public discourse, conditions, topics, and issues are often conflated.

• • Conditions are societal: norms or pathologies in how individuals or groups behave. Example: a state of division, or divisiveness, is a condition in society or a community.
  • Topics are conceptual descriptors: collections of issues which serve to separate one general field from another. Example: education is a topic area.
  • Issues are the specific domain of politics: shared problems on which collective action is possible and about which a decision must be made. Example: Addressing opioid addiction is an issue.

In preparing materials to prompt public deliberation, it can be a challenge to distinguish between these things. But there is no decision to be made, nor collective action to be taken, on conditions or topics. We cannot deliberate over “education.” What aspect of education? Disparities in achievement? Shortfalls across the board? The subject matters to be taught?

Finding Issues

Over time, in our work at the Kettering Foundation we developed heuristics that have proven helpful in distinguishing such issues.

• • Is there broad agreement that a decision must be made?
  • Is there disagreement over the cause of the issue?
  • Will any solution require a range of actors, including citizens working together?
  • Do potential solutions threaten the things people hold dear?
  • Are there institutions and other organizations that could be a part of that acting, but which do not have sole responsibility?

These are not the only such questions, nor are they definitional.  But they help point the way towards materials that can be helpful.

Often, concern over a condition or a topic prompts us to explore whether there is an issue that might productively be deliberated over. Two recent examples:

In 2018, Kettering began to research “divisiveness.” We began to wonder whether this was a problem of democracy — that divisiveness was getting in the way of our democratic functioning. However, divisiveness itself cannot be deliberated over nor politically acted on: it is a societal condition. There is no democratic policy that could be made “against” division. Research suggested, though, that there is a question for communities to deliberate over: Given the divisiveness we face, in which people increasingly behave in uncompromising ways, what should we do in order to have a functioning political system? This resulted in the issue guide, A House Divided: What Would We Have to Give Up to Have the Political System We Want? (2019).

In 2015, the “economy” was prominent in public discourse and was a consistent worry in communities. But this is a topic area, there is no question to be answered. Public research led us to see that at issue was the increasing difficulty in getting by coupled with the growing disparities between those who are thriving and those who are not. What should we do to make sure all Americans can achieve economic security? This resulted in the issue guide, Making Ends Meet: How Should We Spread Prosperity and Improve Opportunity? (2016).

Note in each case, the title of the issue guide is in the form of a question at issue.

Getting Past Polarities: “How Should We Reopen?”

This recent Thomas Edsall piece got me thinking, and reflecting on what we have seen emerging over the question that might roughly be phrased as: How should we reopen society?

This is a question that turns on things that are held deeply valuable. It is not suited to a binary approach. Most news articles do portray it as binary, but they use differing poles. Edsall’s examination suggests one polarity (“safetyism” (addressed below) vs. economic security). And a recent New York Times editorial suggests another polarity (economic security vs. civil liberties).

By looking carefully at the various lines of thinking expressed in these binaries, I think we can see three emerging emphases. I know others may have other ways of laying things out, but this is what I am seeing.

• • We should do everything we can to protect vulnerable people and therefore stay home and confined until we know that everyone can be safe. (The thing held most deeply valuable here is care for others and that people be treated fairly: it is not fair that the vulnerable are at such risk) (Note that this is a way of describing the “safetyism” Edsall refers to in terms of things held valuable.)
  • We should move as rapidly as possible to rebuild the economy. (Here, what is held most deeply valuable is collective security: the economic pain is spreading too broadly and our society is at risk)
  • We should allow people to make their own decisions. (Held valuable: ability to chart my own course.)

Each of the above are in direct tension with the other two and also has a strong set of downsides. Think of a triangle with equally divergent corners, rather than a spectrum with a middle to be found.

The question How should we reopen society? will evolve into a different questions as the reopening progresses. And on a particular community level it may have more resonance: How should we reopen our congregation? is compatible with the same set of options, but may be easier to talk about since it is immediate and concrete.

(It is also possible to look at a more expressly economic name for the problem, as safety worries recede: How should we rebuild the economy?)

Covid-19: More Than Two Sides to the Reopening Question

On the really thorny questions that we face in public life, there are usually more than just two sides, yet the way we talk about them assumes an us-vs-them division that gets in the way of clear talk.

Writing in late April, 2020, the question for many states and cities is: How should we reopen, under what conditions, and when?

Like most of the really difficult public problems, there is not a definitive right answer to this question. There is not a department of government that can make the final and objectively correct determination. It is a political and moral question that calls us to set priorities.

Much of the commentary on this question sees two camps, whom some might call the Closers and the Openers. This article (albeit written from a Libertarian perspective) does a good job of portraying the best-foot-forward argument that each would mount:

Americans are divided about the best way to proceed from here, three months since the first case was diagnosed in the U.S. The division is more vivid and harsh on social networks than in the polls, where a vast majority of Americans still think strong lockdowns are the best idea moving forward. Such Americans think the economy needs to stay shut down by law until a vaccine or some effective treatment is developed that ensures no more, or a very tiny number of, people will be seriously harmed or killed by COVID-19.

On the other hand, some Americans think, on balance, the country’s overall quality of life demands we start letting people and businesses make their own decisions about whether it is safe to go out in public or conduct business openly, especially given access to simple prophylactic measures such as gloves and masks.

To the above perspectives I would add one that prioritizes fairness toward vulnerable and marginalized people. Maybe call this perspective the “Equalizers.” This view holds that the pandemic has intolerably intensified already existing inequities, and that mitigation must focus there first.

By acknowledging this third perspective, the conversation becomes more nuanced. The question is not a binary Open vs. Close one. Each perspective is in tension with two others. For instance, if we stay Closed, we not only must address the argument that a ruined economy may do more harm than the pandemic, but also the argument that Closure is harder on people who are already severely oppressed. Similarly, if we Open, we must ask how rushing back to work affects the vulnerable, low income who may well be on the front lines first, as well as what the broader effects of contagion could be.

A Personal Mission of Agency

Each year-end I look back and reflect. I look at all areas of my life: family, professional, personal, spiritual, physical, financial.

Across all of the major areas of my life, this has been a pivotal year of conceptual progress for me. I developed great clarity on my personal mission. And three ideas that began to gel for me in 2017 continued to gather strength.

Thinking about 2018, it is fair to say that this mission and corresponding three ideas have revolutionized how I approach almost all of my interactions.

My mission: To spread personal and collective agency. This is true in my professional life (where I explore ways that people can develop their own sense of democratic power) but also across my personal life — where I see my role as creating the conditions in which others can see the power and ability they already have.

Three principles have increasingly governed how I think about this mission:

1. I increasingly see propagation as the key means by which personal agency spreads. This recognition must be passed on from person to person to person. Through direct contact. I am convinced that as an individual my highest and best use is in fostering this spread. More and more, I am trying to organize all of my work with attention to how it might later propagate – not just from me to someone else, but from them to yet another. This is a kind of intentional “viral” strategy.

2. I have come increasingly to place learning at the center of all of my interactions. This is the central consequence of the above point. All progress, whether personal or collective, starts with a mindset change. That means that my task is not just to convey “knowledge” but a way of thinking. Agency must be learned, it cannot be taught. I try to interact in ways that encourages others to discover for themselves.

3. More and more I try to act through attraction. If propagation is the means by which personal agency spreads, and if learning is fundamental to that, then the nature of my interactions changes. When interacting with people, my task is to invite and interest them.

The future may always bring more change and upheaval, for me and for others, so I hesitate to say this is all set in stone. But looking back it is remarkable to me how powerful these ideas have been in my inner life over the past twelve months. I am looking forward to seeing how they further take root in 2019.

Finding Tension

One of the things that gets in the way of making sound collective judgments is that, too often, we avoid facing the tensions inherent in the problems we share. When we sit down to talk about what to do about some community problem, we avoid tensions and indeed we actively seek to remove them when they crop up. There is a whole field devoted to “conflict resolution.”

Unproductive conflicts between people and groups should indeed be reduced, diminished, and healed. But when we need to make collective judgments about what we should do about some community problem we share — how to produce public safety, how best to educate our young ones, how to create more wellness, how to address economic change — we need to lean into the tensions inherent in these goals.

For example, if I want to live in a community where people are safe, there is a tension between group security and individual freedom. The more security I have, the less freedom I may experience. And there is a similar tension between personal freedom and being treated fairly. A great deal of freedom may result in my being treated unfairly.

These community problems are so difficult because such tensions are embedded and unavoidable. We cannot choose between them, they are not binary. There will be no “solution” but instead a collective judgment, for now, of how we will live with these tensions. The answer we come to today may not hold tomorrow.

Further, the tensions are not tensions between groups of people — they are within each of us. All at once, I want to be secure, to have freedom, to be treated fairly. This is how we are wired as human beings who live in groups.

Sometimes when I talk to people about community problem solving, and I raise the idea of tensions between these things that all hold valuable, I get the sense that what is being heard is “tensions should be reduced.” One hears it quite clearly these days: many see the healing of divisions as the clearest path to improvement.

Certainly tensions between people that develop into conflict need to be mitigated. But the tensions within issues need yet more attention. We may, for instance, heal relations between members of marginalized communities and institutional police forces. But we will still have the collective challenge of living in a safer society and how we ought to do that — and in making that decision we will have to face up to the tensions within that question.

It is in clearly looking at, and accepting, these tensions within issues that we can make sound judgments.

Shared Problems and Public Deliberation

I am asked to talk about what I think are some of the most important elements of public deliberation to different groups from time to time. Public deliberation is just one way of describing people working together to weigh options about what we should do about a difficult shared problem.

One aspect of this involves the question: What problem should we talk about? This shows up in different ways. For instance, groups that seek to work in civic engagement often have a problem on their minds that they believe the community must address. “How will we get people to come to such meetings?” they may wonder. Or in other cases a group thinking about fostering public dialogue has the sense that there is something that is bothering people throughout the community, but aren’t sure exactly what it is. “What do people think the problem is?” such groups may wonder.

These are all different ways of talking about naming. By that term, when applying it to public deliberation, I simply mean: What is the problem that we all agree we must talk about? If I want people to come to my meeting, I need to present a problem that everyone agrees is important to discuss.

But for groups trying to foster public deliberation, it doesn’t stop there. Not all such “shared problems” are actually suited to public deliberation. Why? Deliberating together is necessary for problems where collective (complementary) action is required in order to move forward. This isn’t the case for all problems — some problems, while widely seen as important, can be solved by one or two agencies or organizations, or the solution is clear and it is technical.

(Note that these aren’t the only important dimensions, but they are high on the list. Public deliberation is called for where the nature of the problem is in dispute, where solutions involve tensions between things held commonly valuable, and where any solution necessarily involves multiple actors. Some people refer to such problems as “wicked” problems.)

I recently began thinking about different ways to convey the nature of problems that are suited to public deliberation, and I had an insight that I could draw a picture of those two different dimensions. I scrawled this down on a scrap of paper, but more recently I’ve tried to make it clearer. Below is what I came up with. Click it to see it larger and more legibly.

Notice that I have notionally spread out different kinds of “shared problems” to show how it works. You might dispute my placement. It’s really just illustrative — my point is that there is an important difference between the issue of “crime” and “pedestrian safety” in the minds of most people. Indeed, each dimension on the graph represents the broadly held sense in the community about the problem. (So it isn’t precise and isn’t meant to be.)

Kinds of Problems

Problems toward the upper right on these scales are more likely to require public deliberation — so groups seeking to support such public work will likely be best served by focusing on such problems.

What this means practically is that a group may think that the community needs to talk about, say, healthy school lunches. But it is easy to imagine that among community members there won’t be broad agreement that we MUST deal with this issue, nor broad agreement that working together is necessary to tackle it. During concern gathering where the group asks community members what concerns them about the issue, they may hear people talk about food deserts, difficulties in finding healthy food that families experience who are struggling, and worries that poor health is creating problems more broadly in the community. In listening carefully to such concerns, the organizing group may come to the conclusion that people in the community are more willing to believe that “obesity” is a problem we ought to or must deal with, and that progress will take many different people.

In a learning exchange where I recently discussed this way of looking at problems, a number of people suggested different dimensions, or making it three-dimensional. Those are valid ideas and I think the concept is worth playing with.