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Allison Ralph on Democracy Takes: Are bridging programs effective?

Writer's picture: Allison RalphAllison Ralph

Allison Ralph, Cohesion Strategy Founder, wrote for the substack Democracy Takes:


"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:


  1. This 2021 metastudy found dismally small long-term change in a variety of bias types across 418 different interventions. Yeesh.

  2. 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.

  3. 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 ..."


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