We now take it for granted that America is divided: rising political violence, a paralyzed Congress, and collapsing trust in institutions are among the signs. After decades studying conflict-affected societies, I’ve seen how some find a way through while others fall apart. The question that haunts me now is why the United States, with all its advantages, seems stuck in a cycle of polarization.

Here’s where I’ve landed: America’s passion for change as a concept has outpaced our understanding of how change actually happens in practice. We’ve mistaken expression for impact, conflating social media dust-ups with actual power. We’ve neglected the unglamorous work that holds societies together: governing, problem-solving, and cooperating across differences.

My research shows that real change happens not in viral TikToks but in drab meeting rooms — the phones-down, notebooks-out work of local governance. It’s there that we make progress and bridge divides.  The good news is that we already have the necessary tools embedded in our federal system and our communities. What’s needed now is the will to step off our soapboxes and into the weeds of civic life.

When protest replaces statecraft

Only about one in ten Americans regularly attend public meetings — a number that’s barely budged in decades, according to the AmeriCorps Civic Engagement and Volunteering Dashboard. Membership in local organizations, from neighborhood associations to service clubs, has also plummeted, eroding the civic pathways that once connected everyday life to politics.

A recent YouGov survey for Stanford’s Hoover Institution found that 64 percent of Americans have never tried to influence a local decision, and only 20 percent would act even if they saw a harmful one coming. Yet while few show up in person, millions engage online. While only one in five of Americans say they’ve shared their views online in the past year, countless others take those views in — and we know they are influenced and polarized by them.

In the U.S., today’s politics are cause-driven: Protect free speech! Defend democracy! Secure the border! Save the planet! And it’s no wonder. From the little seats of elementary school classrooms all the way up to universities and UNICEF, we urge young people to become changemakers — raise their voice, take a stand, and drive transformation. 

The implication is, advocate for what you think is right, and others will follow. Social media amplifies the problem, rewarding the loudest voices, the most provocative posts, the most righteous indignation. It all adds up to a permission structure — a playbook, even — for up-and-coming “changemakers” to let their listening skills languish in favor of converting others to their own way of thinking.

This approach runs counter to my findings at the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh. My team’s research shows that the pathway to real change is in institution-building: collaborative rather than combative, communal rather than individual, often tedious rather than immediate. It requires sitting through meetings, wading through complex systems, appreciating the pressures others face, and building coalitions with people you may not like.

A tale of two wars

Recent histories in Ukraine and Afghanistan demonstrate how citizens’ sense of ownership in governance — or lack of it — influences a country’s ability to progress while staying united.

After Ukraine’s 2014 Euromaidan uprising, which toppled the Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovych, the country launched a radical decentralization, organizing and empowering local community units called hromadas. Faced with the choice between descending into chaos or rebuilding the government, the hromadas got to work, developing local budgets and implementing procurement reform to reduce corruption.

Citizens once alienated from politics re-engaged, and investments and infrastructure skyrocketed. In other words, this cooperative governance resulted in real change. It also came with an unforeseen side benefit — national unity, which took center stage during Russia’s invasion in 2022. Ukraine’s defense capabilities surprised the world, as local governments organized volunteers, kept supply lines open, and even mobilized self-defense units. Ukrainians were not just defending an abstract state or fighting because they’d been converted to an ideology; they were protecting the communities they’d just built.

Afghanistan, where I also conducted research, tells the opposite story. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, billions of dollars flowed in from the United States and its allies to support a nascent Afghan government and provide services. But power stayed in Kabul. There were rarely local elections for mayors or councils. Communities had very limited authority over budgets or schools. When international support was withdrawn, the centralized state collapsed almost overnight. Afghans had little reason to fight for a state that never felt like theirs.

Of course, the U.S. is not Ukraine or Afghanistan. But the principle holds: For diverse societies that are in flux, change and unity are products of cooperative governance architectures.

We already built the bridge

The irony is that the U.S. already has this architecture. Federalism, local governments, school boards, and civic associations are precisely the nested institutions that allow diverse communities to self-govern while maintaining national cohesion. The Founders understood that different communities would have different values, and they designed a system to accommodate that reality.

But we have abandoned this wisdom. With our gaze fixated upward on Washington D.C. and sweeping national narratives, we’re ignoring spaces close to home, where unity is built. We consume national media instead of local news, and almost every issue — even those that are inherently local — is now filtered through your opinion of the President or political parties.

Changing course requires a mindset shift: from protest as identity to stewardship as practice, from conversion to coexistence. We need to teach young people not only how to raise their voices but also how to cooperate. This means curricula that emphasize collaborative problem-solving, the mechanics of reform, and a close study of institutions.

As the political analyst and journalist Yuval Levin reminds us, cooperation in shared organizations shapes our characters.  When people engage in the actual work of governance — not just campaigning — they develop the discipline to work across differences. They learn that the neighbor they disagree with politically still shares concerns about traffic safety, trash collection, or school funding.

This is practical pluralism. This is accepting that instant gratification is fantasy; being a country is work, and the work is incremental. It is about creating a modus vivendi — a way of living together without demanding consensus on fundamental values.

Start with a small act. Fix something broken with someone who disagrees with you. Meet face to face. Make the project the purpose, not the politics. That’s how divided communities relearn the habits of shared citizenship. If we choose stewardship over spectacle, our differences can become a source of our strength rather than our demise.

This piece from Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, PhD, was written for The Well, a Big Think publication created in partnership with the John Templeton Foundation. Together, we’re exploring life’s biggest questions with the world’s brightest minds. Visit The Well to see more in this series.