Publications and Resources

This is a report on an international workshop for 45 peacebuilders, co-hosted by Toda Peace Institute and the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies in June 2024. Emphasizing citizen participation and collective intelligence, the workshop explored the intersection of digital democracy and algorithmic technologies designed to enhance democratic processes. Central to the discussions were deliberative technologies, a new class of tools that facilitate collective discussion and decision-making by incorporating both qualitative and quantitative inputs, supported by bridging algorithms and AI. The workshop provided a comprehensive overview of how these innovative approaches and technologies can contribute to more inclusive and effective democratic processes, particularly in contexts marked by polarization and conflict.

This report introduces “massively parallel problem solving and democracy building”, the notion that the “solution” to failing democracy comes in the form of hundreds of thousands of different people and organizations, each working on their own little “thing,” which together add up to a massive societal response to all the various challenges democracy faces. Scholars, conflict resolution practitioners, politicians, and grassroots citizens all seem to agree: democracy is in trouble in many places around the world including the U.S. which is the focus of this report. However, the forces of resilience and adaptive change are here in more abundance than is often recognized. Rather than being a hypothetical theoretical idea, massively parallel problem solving is already happening on the ground – on a surprisingly large scale.

This is a report on an international workshop held in Beijing, convened by Toda Peace Institute and the Institute of Japanese Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (IJSCASS). The workshop suggested that, so long as the states in the East Asian region act responsibly, avoid confrontation, exercise restraint, tolerate diverse development paths and reassure one another, it should be possible to preserve and even to deepen the East Asian peace. However, the long peace is threatened by the deteriorating international environment and rivalry between the United States and China. Mistrust between China, Korea and Japan and their failure to achieve reconciliation hamper efforts to establish a common security framework in East Asia. In this context, the workshop aimed to build collaborative relationships between scholars and policymakers, encourage dialogue, and identify promising multilateral approaches to the region’s challenges.

This report addresses the positive connections between sustainable, anti-hegemonic peace and climate justice. The interconnectedness of climate change and conflicts is manifold and increasingly being addressed in politics and research. Necessary social-ecological transformations are accompanied by conflicts which must be addressed constructively. At the same time, obstacles such as (colonial) structures of domination, power, and inequality must be overcome. In this report, we combine climate policy strategies with civil conflict transformation and outline ideas towards shaping a sustained nurturing of the social-ecological transformation.