Dialogue and Democracy: 
some lessons from the practice

by Elena Díez Pinto,
Democratic Dialogue Regional Project

Traditional approaches to deal with complex challenges to democracy tend to be fragmented and short-termed, and they have proved to be insufficient for facing the increasing threats to social stability in the countries, and for giving an adequate treatment to the risk of violent conflicts. In view of this situation, a marked need to explore novel alternatives to address conflictivity, has emerged. And this search demands to aim our attention, not only at deeply understanding the nature and causes of conflict, but at inquiring about the relationships between people –or their absence- that caused the conflict and may influence its solution. Regarding this subject, dialogue has proved to be a useful tool for strengthening democratic institutions and democratic governance, besides being a fundamental practice of democratic societies.

Accumulated experience in the Latin American region evidences that dialogue can be a means of managing and preventing conflicts, identifying appropriate and sustainable responses to crises. In high-polarized situations, the dynamics inherent in dialogue processes contributes to achieve that people and sectors with conflicting interests and opposite ideological stances, discover common points that allow to move forward towards satisfactory solutions. Dialogue can also increase the efficiency of those solutions, when using the nature and quality of public deliberation as a fundamental means of injecting vitality to democracy and of increasing participation in the political sphere.

For advancing our democracies, innovations and changes in the sphere of individuals, groups, organizations and societies are required. At the same time, the capacity to make those changes happen depends on the ability of people to acknowledge and transcend their suppositions and mental models about how the world works, and to imagine and adopt new ways of interaction with oneself and with others. 

Many lessons and learnings have emerged from several years of experience in dialogue processes in Latin American, which we want to share.

In order to dialogue, we people must have abilities to connect with others around our basic
desires and shared values, and even around our differences, for being able to re-create possible futures. This connection can only come from a process of reflection and mutual inquiry:
the process we call dialogue. This process is characterized by being generative because
it provokes something new; transforming, since it innovates people and their relationships;
and integral because we deal with it holistically.