Cooperative Politics
What if we treated those we disagree with as partners instead of enemies?
Contemporary politics can be compared, charitably, to an athletic contest and, less charitably, to a military engagement. In the game analogy, the object is to score on your opponents, which is done by advancing the ball of public policy into an ideological endzone (i.e. passing laws that are favored by your side). This is accomplished, appropriately enough, by running over your opponents.
In the military analogy, policy and election victories are akin to capturing enemy ground. The ultimate goal is to drive your foes off the battlefield and seize lasting control of as much territory as possible.
But, whether the playing field or battlefield metaphor is more on the nose, both depict the essence of our politics: its adversarial dynamic. We’re opponents. We’re enemies.
By definition, teams and armies try to defeat each other. They don’t work together to find mutually acceptable ways for each side to attain its objectives. Their interest is in conquest, not in coming to terms.
Such is the nature of competitive endeavors. Resolution is only achieved when one side dominates the other.
Of course, the conclusion of a political contest creates a new social division: winners and losers. These include both elected officials and candidates on each side, as well as the people who support them.
The outcome is wonderful for the victors, whose concerns will be heavily prioritized. However, the best-case scenario for the defeated side may be to have their cares ignored. In modern U.S. politics, the more likely outcome is that the winners actively seek to provoke the losers.
Some may see nothing wrong with this. After all, to the victors go the spoils, and other cliches like that, right? At the end of the contest, one side celebrates, arms raised in triumph, while the other is dispirited, heads bowed in subjugation. Only one team goes home with the trophy, gets soaked in champagne and holds a parade. So, if the losers don’t like what the winners do, then the losers can try again in the next election or political battle.
Others may see criticism of our approach to politics as an attack on competition itself. Americans prize competition. Capitalism, meritocracy, sports—these are all revered institutions that are driven by competition. Democracy itself entails choice, which necessitates competing options.
Again, this works splendidly for political winners, a.k.a. those whose concerns get addressed. The losers, however, are disregarded or antagonized.
Also, “the losers” are mostly people with real cares who are coming from a good place in their political views. They just want their families and friends to be happy and healthy and to have good lives, and they support the side they think will make that possible, just like the winners.
In other words, like the winners, they are stakeholders. Their lives are affected by the federal, state and local policies that are passed, often materially.
But, the competitive model of governance only serves the interests of one set of stakeholders. It is distinctly hostile to the interests of the other side.
However, a cooperative model of governance wouldn’t treat politics as if it were a playing field or a battlefield. The policy arena doesn’t consist of territory to be captured in this view. It’s meant to be shared.
In the cooperative model, people with different views would be seen as having alternate vantage points that together form a panoramic perspective. The puzzle pieces they hold, when pieced together, create a comprehensive picture of our political issues. Meanwhile, elections would be seen as checkpoints in which voters evaluate the success of officeholders and their policies in making the country one that everyone wants to call home.
Cooperative politics would approach lawmaking as an exercise in joint problem-solving for all lawmakers, regardless of their ideology. Policymaking would be viewed as a process of ongoing refinement, with policymakers continually honing established policies to produce a constantly improving society. It would be akin to a lab experiment that requires all participants to find common solutions, ones that produce successful outcomes for all.
In plain terms, this means crafting laws that respond to the needs of everyone affected by the issues that the laws are meant to address. The standard, partisan approach to policymaking, in which each side champions certain groups of stakeholders and dismisses others, would become obsolete.
To illustrate, consider the issue of undocumented immigration, one of the most angrily disputed topics in American politics and one that will feature prominently in the coming election. Stakeholders include undocumented immigrants themselves; the families and friends that undocumenteds join in the places where they migrate; people who live in the towns, school districts and communities where undocumenteds migrate; social and emergency services in these locations; businesses that hire undocumented workers and taxpayers.
The partisan modus operandi is to decide which stakeholders matter and should thus have their concerns addressed. So, from the list above, Democrats and the left boost the cause of the undocumented, their support networks and the companies that employ them. However, Republicans and the right downplay the experiences of these groups, while playing up the impact on the undocuments’ new neighborhoods, schools and municipal services.
These concerns, in turn, are dismissed by Democrats and the left, who effectively say “deal with it” to the residents of the immigrants’ new communities who fear the effects that the growing number of new arrivals will have on jobs, education, taxes, public safety and public services. However, Republicans and the right amplify the worries of these residents, practically depicting them as besieged, while telling the immigrants and their support networks, “sorry, but you’re not our problem.”
The picking and choosing of stakeholders stems from an approach to politics where the objective is to win policy battles and elections instead of trying to fix problems and improve everyone’s lives. But, if the goal of our politics wasn’t winning but rather solving, then the cares of every stakeholder would be prioritized.
A cooperative, solutions-oriented system wouldn’t treat immigration or any other issue as a competition of whose lives matter the most. Because that’s what a partisan system degenerates into, a series of contests that decide whose lives are more important. And democracy functions as a veneer to validate both the policy choices that provide our answer to that question and the fact that our system even makes us ask it.
The unauthorized immigration debate can be reduced to the question of whose lived experiences matter the most, those of the immigrants or those of the country’s native citizens. Democrats and the left go with immigrants, while Republicans and the right opt for citizens, and thus we have the basis for one of our countless national schisms.
But, what if we reject the question? What if, rather than making value judgments about the cares of good people, we approached problems from a purely practical standpoint? What if we listened to everyone affected by issues without judgment and tried to formulate policy responses that address all of their concerns?
Following this approach, the undocumenteds debate becomes a question of how we can provide for the welfare of both migrants and the residents of their magnet communities, plus help local businesses fill vital portions of their workforce, while also helping public services handle additional stress and minimizing risk to residents’ jobs and neighborhoods. Also, taxpayers must be factored in, because they would be affected by any policy response we implement.
Is such a solution even possible? Perhaps. If we realign our politics so as to seek solutions not victories, so that we no longer pit natives against immigrants, taxpayers against immigrant communities and town services against businesses, then it’s feasible that we could devise immigration policies that accommodate the concerns of all stakeholders.
But, what matters even more is that we try. Choosing solutions over victory and cooperation over conflict doesn’t just produce the most effective and responsive policies.
It’s also the right thing to do.
** Portions of this post have been adapted from my upcoming book The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down (2024).
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