Are bridging programs effective?
One bridger says...maybe not
Editor’s note: Are bridging programs effective? Under what conditions? What are their unintended effects? Hear reflections from Dr. Allison Ralph, former Associate Director of the Aspen Institute’s Religion & Society program.
A couple of weeks ago I published a blog on the website of my consulting firm, Cohesion Strategy, about the disappointing performance of contact-based bridging initiatives.
I think I touched a nerve.
Responses have varied from dismissive to appreciative, with a good chunk implying I’m reading the data wrong (and sending me research articles). I’ve also had a number of generative conversations in which I feel I’ve learned something.
So here, for Democracy Takes, is another look at the effectiveness of bridging initiatives incorporating what I’ve learned since.
The results of studies on intergroup contact and some kinds of bridging initiatives are poorer than I—as a bridger by temperament and strategic instincts—would want them to be. A few examples:
This 2021 metastudy found dismally small long-term change in a variety of bias types across 418 different interventions. Yeesh.
The Strengthening Democracy Challenge out of Stanford University found small but meaningful change in partisan animosity from 25 interventions. But, they only tested a few on behavior change, and these results were even smaller. All results diminished after only two weeks. Some of these interventions actually made things worse on presumably related issues like support for political violence. Oy.
A new pre-print on the effectiveness of listening on persuasion, which is a big part of the theoretical underpinning of the Listen First Project and its coalition, shows—wait for it—no effect of listening on persuasion. Ouch.
My gut instinct is that high quality, light-touch bridging strategies do have a net positive impact. A small change for a lot of people in affective polarization, bias, and violence, for example, is still good. I also have a suspicion that light-touch contact strategies provide on-ramps for a few people toward much more extensive engagement in pro-democracy work and even building pro-democracy projects of their own.
However, the downsides to some light-touch strategies remain deeply concerning. Contact strategies that reach too far across single divides often ask disadvantaged individuals to show up to spaces that validate the interests of the already advantaged. Then, even when successful, the principle-implementation gap means that advantaged participants often don’t pony up with behavior change. And that leads to more burnout and distrust from disadvantaged communities.
Alternatively, successful bridging strategies can undermine activism by reducing affiliation with disadvantaged identities necessary for identity-based organizing, thus quashing opportunities for near term policy change.
Some conversationalists I’ve met since my initial post have argued that broad-based, deliberative, goal-oriented initiatives such as citizen’s assemblies and councils are really where it’s at in terms of effectiveness. I have to say, done well and especially when policy makers and implementers are involved, they avoid the worst negative outcomes of simple contact strategies, in that they avoid the principle-implementation gap by going straight to policy, provide an outlet for disadvantaged participants to directly influence policy, and implement the best practice of “dual-identity” contact by ensuring that stakeholders maintain their distinctive identities.
We already know that broader coalitions have greater strategic capacity and are better protected against political backlash. I suspect, though I don’t know of academic evidence of it, that policies developed by broadly formed citizens assemblies have similar characteristics. There is also some limited evidence that participation in citizens’ assemblies can have long term positive effects on participants and the broader community. But even here, researchers warn not to expect miracles.
All in all, I still see useful roles for light-touch bridging strategies, when really attending to the potential for ugly unintended consequences. At this point, I see more promise in broad-based deliberative initiatives. But long term evaluation and research efforts will be necessary to find out what is really happening. And if we find that the approaches we thought would work actively cause harm, backfire, or otherwise fail, then it will be up to us bridgers to acknowledge that and try something else.
Allison Ralph is a thought leader in religious pluralism and social cohesion and the founder of Cohesion Strategy.
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we should talk gabriel