Integral Politics

Transforming a top-down political culture to one of dialog and inclusion

Editorial note:

Bernard Le Roux was the presenter in our Online Colloquium n° 20, in which he shared experience from his dialog and mediation work with Swedish municipalities. As a Kick-off question, Bernard invited participants to explore the following question:

How do we understand the resistance of powerful people to participation processes, and to an honest, open conversation that actually addresses the issue? 

Here is Bernard's reflection of the Colloquium:

Explaining the current developments in the Middle-East

Why is there an outpouring of energy for democracy and freedom in the Middle East, in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen? Trying to explain this is difficult and there are obviously many factors at play into what has led up to the public demonstrations against undemocratic and tyrannical governments throughout this region. An integral meta-studies approach is useful in providing an analysis of these explanations because it flexibly employs multiple lenses and is conscious of the limits on the range of theoretical lenses it can use to develop explanations of complex social events.