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I'm joined today by Professor Peter Coleman he is professor of psychology
and education at Columbia University
also director of the International Center for cooperation and conflict
resolution and author of the five percent
finding solutions to seemingly impossible conflicts
let's start professor maybe with that title who are the five percent that you
described 5 percent comes from
a some research that looks at
really international conflicts over about a 200-year period
and what researchers have found is that if you look at
all other conflicts have taken place really between
states and nations in that time a very small percentage of them about five
percent of them
get stock into kinda ongoing
very polarized destructive dynamic
that sometimes last 40 50 60 years or more
um and they are unresponsive to typical
attempts to resolve and diplomacy mediations and negotiations
well I'm dais there's some evidence that those
such a strategy actually make them worse so its those five percent of conflicts
that we study the
in the International domain but we also see evidence if these types of dynamics
to take place in the
in domestic relations and political dynamics here
in the pro-life pro-choice conflict in some communities
a big cetera so okay so that they give us a sense
so II guess you kinda started to answer what was going to be my follow-up which
is speaking domestically you talking about
pro-choice pro-life what other issues would kinda fall within these
seemingly intractable a conflict domestically
well I mean they can happen in families
a oftentimes the you know there is a dispute between siblings between parents
and children that
that become protracted and really people feel
constrained by in really see no way out there are instances in New York City
were
I live where you'll have a a couple that will need to divorce
a but stay in the same apartment because they can't afford another growing so
they get stuck into this column
negative dynamic and they're trapped because they can't physically leave
I'm so those are the basic conditions that may happen again and families a
happy communities they happen in
you know universities they happen in our university where you'll see
an ongoing dispute Columbia University where I
teach has had an ongoing dispute
a while organized around the israeli-palestinian
tensions but on campus where I
Israeli students or Jewish students feel discriminated against by certain
professors and and so those types of dynamics can play out
a domestically as well as international thinking of about so-called kind of
partisanship in the context of american politics since the Civil War
you have there been changes in the amount of so-called bipartisanship for
the two sides that the Democrats and Republicans working together over time
or has it been roughly the same you know there has been considerable changes
from their a again there's data on this
over a several generations
a couple of centuries going back to before the
US Civil War and the data looks at
I'm really whether Republicans Democrats will cross the island and
and support a a bipartisan bill or support a bill proposed by the other
side
and what we found is that politics today in the United States
um in terms of voting behaviors are Republicans and Democrats
or more polarized than they have been since the US Civil War
so we've become increasingly more polarized in our
inability to have politicians should come together
on consensus on solutions to issues um
and that the the current trajectory the current trend
a towards more polarization started around 1980
that's when we really started to see more and more polarization the
but yesterday its its it on the voting patterns are more polarizing
then really ever before in history certainly back as far as the
the Civil War one could make any number of analyses about why
that might be and i wanna throw a couple other ideas that you and see if you
think either or neither or both have some validity
some good people email me and they say the reason why we don't get anywhere
is it politically between Democrats and Republicans
is because there are only Democrats and Republicans there is this two parties
duopoly status quo
and that the injection have some viable third-party
would shake up this its either one or the other kind of alternatives in force
pull up politicians to to work together to create more alliances
there's another side altogether which emails me and says it's not
so much about a third party but it's a bell it's kind of like a game theory
discussion where there is almost no advantage to elected officials
to be bipartisan because they've got their next election to think I've
they raise money in in great part because the
because if these partisan issues that you talked about are either the zip got
to evaluate the either or both those ideas
yeah I think they're both valid issues there's an incentive structure that
keeps politicians focus more on short term gains and being
reelected the or moving into ideological beliefs and sing compromises the enemy
um there are there are
fact many good arguments for why we are as stark as we are what we believe is
that
it's really some combination of all those things that creates
um basically a set of constraints um
on politicians that really trap them and forced them to her to behave in a
certain way that's consistent with
so the you know the structure of the system so
what does that mean that means that some even though politics
a in this country could be
the polarization politics could be traced back to things like
gerrymandering
to money in politics the impacted lobbying
um to religious beliefs or two more
fanaticism you know to serve the extremes a
both parties driving the party's all those things are
are valid arguments but what we believe is that somehow these things have
should come together and support each other in complex ways
a so that even when one of these strategies what are these issues
wannabes drivers have the polarization drops away or is addressed your somehow
is so you know effectively remedied
it doesn't seem to have an impact on the on the patterns the pattern still stay
stock
and that's because their multiple determined there are many reasons why
they are stuck in this way
well and a lot of the typical solutions
the people try to introduce don't seem to have much impact I know that
I'm at the state in the Union a
not this year but a couple years back the
congressman decided to set not across the aisle from each other
other for the still the the Union Budget next to each other right
there was a lot of ridicule regarding that strategy
but what that reflections the fact that there is this change
in the culture of washington where it used to be that
politicians would move their families did you see in their families would go
to school together in their kids were hanging out together and they would
have other kinds of contact other than the serb disputes that they would face
daily
and that allowed them to create a different kind of dynamic between them
that was more reasonable and more conciliatory
and that's changed and so this attempt the to sit next to each other during
this year the union was some attempt to
begin to reconstruct how these
political actors interchange I'm but let me just say one other thing I can
because its easy to see the divisions in DC
because we can't help boats we can see the political rhetoric coming particular
from the extremes on both sides
but this is refer ok who a
our country up where we are in our personal lives most diverse
in in the media that we watch in the opinions that we hold in the parties
that we go to in the
the really more exclusionary nature of our social dynamics
this is really a bottom-up process and population in this country really need
to take as much responsibility I believe
as our leadership very quickly one other thing I want to just kind of throw in
his when you talk about the the bottom-up
approach do people have a desire to find simple
explanations for political issues in one example I'm drawn to is
the language around tax relief it's something that has been very effective
for the American right
in the sense that hey if lower taxes our relief
that's very simple more taxes are bad less taxes are good
when the reality is a very nuanced shades of grey argument that is neither
more reno's net neither a ton nor is it no taxes but people seem driven to
simple explanations
you know that's absolutely true I think under difficult circumstances difficult
economic times under threatening time such as post-9/11
a people are anxious and they do want to have a sense absurd simple solutions
provided by their leaders provided by governments and the latch on to those in
so you know political operatives understand there's the understand that
if you frame something that resonates with people's
fears concerns basic needs
that they'll let John to it and all supported even if its
only have correct but there are other organizations
in this country that trip to try to counteract that the media to some degree
some media to some degree will try to provide
more a balanced perspective on these issues but there are also dialogue forum
such as the national issues
world which I would recommend your viewers go to they have a website
and they try to present the new ones up a lot of these were complicated issues
the this %um
gray area um and say that it you know we're not we're not trapped by the
polarized dynamic that there are
there are solutions there are strategies that that are more informed by the
complexity of these problems
we've been speaking with Professor Peter Coleman professor psychology and
education at Columbia University check out the five percent
finding solutions to seemingly impossible conflicts
really a pleasure having you want thank you David thank you very much