Report No.200: Massively Parallel Problem Solving and Democracy Building: An Ongoing Response to the Threats to Democracy in the U.S.

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.