Overcoming barriers to dialogue and collaboration

Our challenge is that people who participate in dialogue find it difficult to address long term needs, inform decisions with available data, and move to action strategically. 

History:  Guatemala transitioned to democracy in 1983 after an internal armed conflict that lasted over 30 years in the context of the ideologically rooted Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now, after more than 40 years of electoral democracy, Guatemalan society has not been able to mature its democratic practices to build a shared vision about how to achieve human development in which society is committed to contribute. Instead, there has been competition among small and fragmented social groups that try to impose their narrow interests on others by controlling influence over public institutions. The creation of wealth in Guatemala is strongly reliant on the use of land and low cost labor. This has lead to several missed opportunities and failures to agree and work together to address already complex development challenges of very large magnitude such as: marginalization of social groups, poverty, vulnerability to disasters, violence, among others.     Some of these failures have included the inability to build strong and effective public institutions. Although the 1984 Constitution made very important advances in the recognition of human rights, the institutions to advanced them where weak and ineffective by design, possibly out of fear that one group could use them to threaten the interest of other groups. Since then, attempts to agree on how to strengthen institutions have failed or required enormous pressure from the international community. Examples include several failed attempts to improve political representation, access to justice, public finances and spending, civil service, education, health, infrastructure, management of natural resources, among others.  The democratic regime almost failed in 1993 with a failed coup initiated by the President who attempted to dissolved and uncooperative Congress. A window of opportunity was experienced during the signing of the Peace Accords between Army Officials, Insurgency Leaders, and Central Government in 1996. However, the lack of dialogue and collaboration in society resulted in a lack of support from the public, who voted against the recommendations from the accords.  As the root causes of human development challenges remained unaddressed in an integral way, Guatemala followed into a period of intense polarization around transitional justice for human rights violations during the armed conflict. This scenario os social tension compounded with new pressures such as: increased frequency and intensity of extreme climate events (particularly storms and droughts), worldwide financial crisis, cross-national organized and violent crime, support for authoritarian/populist leaders, misinformation, pandemics, and other challenging world trends. Adding to this, the establishment of a Commission Against Impunity (CICIG) from 2006 to 2019, which linked corruption from criminal organizations with powerful elites, lead to increased confrontation between social groups and a political backlash condemming the intromission of the international community. Moreover, antagonism between social groups has been powered by new communications technologies, weakening of independent news, and shrinkage spaces for the participation of civil society.    The general elections in 2023 almost saw the collapse of the democratic system. After the expulsion of CICIG, the coalition in power consolidated control of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government. In particular, after the General Attorney (Jefa del Ministerio Público) was reelected, with the support of the Constitutional Court and no counterweight, her actions threatened to invalidate the electoral results. Despite this, the surprising decision of citizens to elect a president with strong democratic convictions has opened new opportunities to learn how to overcome the barriers to dialogue and collaboration for development.  Causes or drivers:  With the collaboration of a diverse group of professionals, we looked to identify some of the economical, legal, political, social, technological, environmental causes that dialogue and collaboration for development has barriers. The group included women and men with different ages and ethnicities, expertise in fields such as political science, international relations, anthropology, sociology, economics, local development, and affiliation with think tanks, social organizations, private companies, news media outlets, public administration, and political parties. All the participants had a trajectory of commitment to dialogue and identified a pattern that drives antagonism between groups regarding development policies. The pattern goes as follows. When a policy dialogue threatens a political, economic, or social interest of powerful actores, they activate persuasive or coercive mechanisms to force society to take positions. Some of the persuasive mechanisms include: appealing to the threat of loosing deeply held values; appealing to the threat of loosing self determination; or exacerbating stereotypes or past grievances. Among the coercive mechanisms are limiting access to satisfying needs or services (such as health, employment, security or social status), as well as enforcing social norms such as loyalty, reproducing attitudes and behaviors. In resistance to the mechanisms to incite antagonism, the society can responde by counteracting messages of fear or hate, managing emotions, sacrificing access to satisfactory, prioritizing personal relations over opinions, activating institutional mechanisms for dialogue. How difficult is to engage in dialogue and collaboration depends on the balance between mechanisms to incite and mechanisms to resist social confrontation.  According to the group, the main drivers of cooperative dialogue that have the most effect and their future values are the most uncertain include: (1) institutional capacity to represent social interests and solve conflicts; (2) reach and credibility of messages that create fear, hate or isolation; (3) commitment from the elites to compete through democratic means; (4) capacity of people to manage their emotions in the face of provocations; (5) social cohesion across diverse groups; (6) degree of dependance from people to social groups to satisfy needs. Additional causes included: history of social fragmentation, economic inequality, asymmetric political representation, among others. Interestingly, the reference to an economic model that relies on protecting privilege access to resources was not necessarily considered the cause.  Actors involved:  This challenge involves the whole society, but in particular political, social, and economic elites. Within the anticipated work, some public institutions include: the Presidency and the institutions represented in the System of Local Development Committees. Some actors from civil society include: Academia, Think Tanks, News Media, as well as representatives from Indigenous Groups, Women, and Youth. Some actors from the private sector include: private companies linked to the use of natural resources or land, financial companies, and corporate social security. Some actors within UNDP's country office include: Governance and Local Development programatic areas.  Current situation:  As mentioned in the historical section, the current situation is one with a long trajectory of failed dialogue; however, with an new window of opportunity to advance dialogue as a result of a recently elected government with strong democratic convictions.  Regarding the three most important variables in the analysis, currently, public institutions and civil servants continue to be characterized as being absent, have limited capacities, or responde to conflict only in extraordinary circumstances and according to the power of actors involved. Also, currently, discourse and campaigns that incite fear, hate or isolation do gain a lot of attention, but tend to be opportunistic. Their results are uncertain and difficult to control, mainly creating chaos, confusion or distraction. Finally, currently elites are neither committed to democratic completion, but haven't turned violent yet. Mainly, the main way for elites to compete is impatient and intolerant. Mistrust prevails, so coordination is generally limited to defend from common threats, resisting change, and limiting the power of rivals.  Undesired effects:  As mentioned in the sections before, the main undesired effect of not overcoming the barriers to dialogue and cooperation is missing opportunities to implement coordinated actions to solve development problems using the knowledge and resources already available. Without dialogue and cooperation, the root causes of development challenges will remain unaddressed, compounding with additional pressures. The risk is further erosion of the democratic regimes, a return to authoritarian leaders, increase poverty and inequality, violence and migration.  Regarding the three most important variables in the analysis, the most undersized outcomes is that public institutions and civil servants systematically suppress the expression of interests that oppose the dominant coalition, using public institutions with discretion to impose particular interests. Also, it will be undesirable that discourse and campaigns that incite fear, hate or isolation become effective at distorting reality in deliberative ways, provoking violent behaviors. Finally, the way elites compete could easily recur to violence, considering the mere existence of rivales threatening and intolerable. 

By introducing innovations, the Accelerator Lab will contribute to reducing barriers to dialogue and collaboration between society and public institutions. The relevance of the Accelerator Lab lies in that this is an unresolved complex problem with uncertainty. Although other actors within UNDP have great expertise and experience supporting and promoting dialogue, they have not incorporated the potential benefits of new methodologies to anticipate the future, use of emerging physical and digital technologies, alternative ways of informing dialogue with data, or connecting global experiences. It is worth investing in reducing the barriers to dialogue and cooperation, because not doing so risks violence or continued stagnation, and limits the effectiveness of current resources and knowledge available to act.

UNDP's Accelerator Lab in Guatemala is contributing to overcome barriers to dialogue and cooperation for development using innovative methodologies, technologies, data analysis, global experiences, and strategic action. 

How actors that participate in dialogue can address longer term perspectives? 

We will use prototyping to test if the design of methodologies that introduce future analysis to participatory workshops helps create shared visions of the future.

The Academic Literature will address data gaps regarding the repertoire of future analysis alternatives available, in order to identify which may be relevant. Focus groups and participatory observation will address gaps regarding what works to create shared visions of the future, and if these shared visions reduce barriers to dialogue and collaboration. 

How actors that participate in dialogues an inform decisions using available information or gather information?

We will prototype different ways to introduce data analysis and information into dialogues to test if this reduces barriers to dialogue. The data analysis and information in themselves may use innovation methods as well, such as collective intelligence (integration of different data sources). 

The data gaps that are needed to address are about conditions and drivers of local development, that lead to unresolved disagreements. Participants in dialogue may have different understandings of the development problems that are biased and not based. Data sources are needed to reduce biases and uncertainty about the condition and drivers of local development. 

How actors can move to action more quickly and strategically? 

We will use co-design for proposing actions in response to the agreements reached during dialogue.

We will use surveys and interviews to address gaps in the understanding on how actions are needed to increase satisfaction and engagement in dialogue.

The beneficiaries from work on this challenge are both public institutions and civil society. In particular, central government is emphasizing this line of work, with immediate beneficiaries including the Private Secretariat of the Presidency (SPP), the General Planing Secretariat of the Presidency (SEGEPLAN), the Executive Coordination Secretariat of the Presidency (SCEP), as well as the Local Governments. These instances have an explicit mandate to facilitate the inclusion of social demands in public policy and budgeting. More broadly, all public institutions have been struggling with ways to conduct dialogue and facilitate the participation of society. On the other hand, community leaders and civil society organizations will benefit from the creation of spaces and methodologies that allows them to express their needs and contribute to efforts. In particular the Local Development Committees at the Local Level (COCODES), organizations of women, youth, and indigenous peoples, as well as activism for thematic areas such as human rights, environment, economic development, among others.