In my last episode of Collective Power, my co-host Diane Little and I interviewed Michael Lawson, and extremely active Democratic Party member in North Carolina at the district, county, and State-level. We asked him a bunch of questions about caucuses and what they were intended to do and what they succeed and fail at doing.
Michael posited something that was intriguing to me: “The Democratic Party is always in crises — by definition. Because we’re inclusive we tend to include over and over, the crises of the communities we attempt to represent.” In other words, the Democratic Party, because it embraces inclusion, unintentionally includes the crises of the interest groups that belong to it.
As we talked, a different crisis seemed to surface as well, one by which the caucuses were not only incorporating conflict they didn’t seem to ever overcome, but were also multiplying internal conflicts and distorting the role of Caucuses all together.
My colleague Diane Little, said: “Democratic caucuses used to feed information to the party to strengthen the whole party, but now, the caucuses have become special interest groups that pull the party in several different directions.”
The Democratic Party caucuses gained more influence in the 1820s. In those years Andrew Jackson looked for a grassroots approach that allowed ordinary citizens to voice their opinions and influence party decisions. In those early years the relationship between caucuses and party where more like this.
In the 1980s, the caucuses multiplied as various interest groups and identity politics played a greater role in US society. At first, the caucuses continued to inform the party’s agenda and priorities. Over time however, the caucuses continued to multiply to the point that the party has to choose a priority rather than listen to all the suggestions the caucuses were making.
While priority-setting is important, it is quite limiting. Priority-setting may have increased as more lawyers ran for office, too. Lawyers certainly know the law and know how to debate, but most lawyers debate to win, not to mediate or build consensus.
Winning increases the morale of the winners, but has a detrimental impact on everyone else. No one wants to be involved in politics to discover that their issue was not seen as a priority. Actually, for a party that aims to be inclusive, the message of not “prioritizing” the issue of any group is dynamite that sets a number of cracks in motion. As an expert facilitator who specializes in consensus-building in conditions of complexity I can easily say that what is missing is this: we need to build collective will.
Building collective will is not about priority-setting or creating compromises — what we generally think about when we think about facilitation of opposing viewpoints. These are ways to decrease the dissent.
Building collective will is about expanding the conflict, giving more space for it, while building deeper and stronger relationships, so the conversation can deepen. Otto Scharmer in Theory U, speaks of the process of debating with a open mind, open heart, and open will until groups reach what he calls the bottom of the U, a turning point that shifts the group from debating each other (the downward section of the U) to building each other up (the upward section of the U). This second part of the process is the magical moment of building collective will, collective action, and collective intention.
This is what our caucuses need. This is what the Democratic Party needs.
In The Political Culture of the Democratic and Republican Parties, written in 1986, Jo Freeman wrote about how caucuses played different roles in the Democratic and Republican parties. While in the Democratic Parties, he said, the caucuses had some autonomy of leadership, and had an opportunity to tell the central party about its priorities, in the Republican party caucuses received the messages of the centralized national leaders. In other words, the Democratic Caucuses informed the party leadership, while in Republican party leadership informed the caucuses.
While much has changed among the parties since 1986, it is still true that the Republican party functions in more of a top-down way. That is suited for the Republican Party, because, for the most part, it follows its values of centralized leadership, hierarchy, and authority.
For the Democratic Party instead, since we believe in the Democratic Process, building collective will is essential skill. Without it, our differences will never unite us, just split us apart.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Arisa Chattasa on Unsplash
