Bridging Political Divides

Michael F. Mascolo is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Merrimack College, USA, and Executive Director Common Ground Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to helping people bridge divides on contentious interpersonal, social, and political issues. He has authored or edited eight books and over 100 scholarly articles.

• Introduction. Is it possible to bridge political divides?; Part I. The Crisis of Adversarial Democracy: 1. Is democracy in crisis?; 2. Political polarization and its discontents; 3. Paradoxes of adversarial democracy; 4. The politicization of social identity; Part II. The Collaborative Alternative: 5. The collaborative alternative; 6. Reconciling power and care; 7. Humanizing the political other; 8. Ideological engagement; Part III. Bridging Political Divides in Action: 9. Bridging divides through collaborative engagement: a longitudinal study; 10. Preparing for collaboration: school uniforms I; 11. Solving problems together: school uniforms II; 12. Capital punishment and heinous crime; 13. Engaging ideological clashes on the death penalty; 14. Race relations involving police; 15. Reconciling ideologies about race relations with police; Part IV. Toward A Collaborative Democracy: 16. The promises and prospects of collaboration; 17. Toward a more collaborative democracy; 18. Bridging divides in an age of rising authoritarianism; Coda: the case for hope; Appendix A: tools for collaborative problem-solving; Appendix B: list of human needs.