$100 Million… 5 Years… How Would You Spend It to Strengthen American Democracy & Heal Partisan Divides?

The folks at NEXUS are launching the Healthy Democracy Coalition, “a new coalition of philanthropists who wish to join forces to fund projects and institutions that support political bridge building as well as healthier and more effective democracy.”

NEXUS is hiring a Program Associate and the application requires candidates to answer the following question in under 1,000 words: How would you spend $100 million USD over a period of 5 years to strengthen American democracy and heal partisan divides?

So, how would you spend it? My response follows.

Five years and $100 million USD is significant enough to seed a multi-decade movement of transpartisan think tanks, academic programs, and media outlets that have the aim of not just strengthening American democracy and healing partisan divides, but utterly transforming how we think of and do politics.

Analogies go only so far, but the strategy I envision is analogous to post-1960s movement conservatism. The main difference being that these funds would go toward building the intellectual and institutional infrastructure for a new, transpartisan political process (i.e., change the rules) and culture (i.e., change the norms), not the ascendency of any one political party, philosophy, or set of interests.

Nothing close to a well-funded and coordinated transpartisan movement exists today, even though the transpartisan impulse can be found across the political spectrum and in the hearts and minds of millions of American citizens. This impulse can be found in inter-organizational networks such as the Bridge Alliance, in journals like The Transpartisan Review, in salons such as the Transpartisan Listserv hosted by the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, and many more groups and projects (including numerous examples of “strange bedfellows” and other forms of transpartisanship emerging from within the partisan political apparatus).

With the Madison Initiative of the Hewlett Foundation I agree, the problem of democracy in America is a complex “system of systems” problem that will not yield to simple solutions. But, if forced to choose a single word that encapsulates the new paradigm of democratic politics that could emerge out of the shadow of the existing paradigm in crisis — and I do believe this evolutionary prospect is the meaning of the forces currently undermining American democracy and political life — the word I would choose is transpartisanship.

What does transpartisanship look like in practice? How is it different, and more effective, than bipartisanship and collaboration as conventionally understood and practiced? What are the new tools, methods, platforms, frameworks, and facilitative capacities needed to effectively practice transpartisan politics? What does it mean to be transpartisan? How do we best educate people to develop transpartisan competencies, mediate extreme partisan views, and skillfully incorporate partisan thinking — whether another person’s or their own — into transpartisan political processes? Where does one go to find case studies and success stories of transpartisan politics? Why is transpartisan politics an idea whose time has come (to provide a new context and set of regulative principles for the traditional, modern, and postmodern forces that today make healthy democracy a fool’s errand)? What narrative strategies can make transpartisanship more accessible and irresistible? How do we create the conditions for disparate transpartisan networks and communities of practice to emerge as a unified system of influence?

The Healthy Democracy Coalition (HDC) would do well, I believe, to wrestle with questions like these and furnish provisional answers to them through its convening power and portfolio of grantees — regardless of the strategy the coalition employs or the specific public policy and other issues it takes on.

I happen to believe the conceptual lens and strategic practice of movement building is what is called for in this historic moment of systemic crises within and beyond the realm of politics. These multiple, intersecting crises present us with not just challenges but openings, not just possible breakdown but potential breakthrough. Crisis precipitates evolution and transformation — if we are up to the challenge and take advantage of the opportunity. In the political arena, transpartisan thought and practice is that opportunity.

Put simply, for those who have the foresight to see, transpartisanship is on the horizon. Were the HDC (and other actors) to commit to a long-term coordinated effort to develop and apply the ideas, principles, and practices of transpartisan politics, solidarity (e.g., country before party) and genuine, generative collaboration (e.g., synthesize, don’t compromise) could become the new normal of American democracy.