Case Study 2 — Braver Angels, Bridge USA, and More in Common: The Depolarization Industry

What this case asks

If polarization is the dominant fact of contemporary American politics, what are the people trying to reverse it actually doing — and is it working? Three organizations have become the most visible American institutions devoted to depolarization: Braver Angels, Bridge USA, and More in Common. Each has a different theory of change, a different audience, and a different track record. This case study examines what each does, what evidence exists for their effectiveness, and the most serious critiques of the structured-contact approach to depolarization. The point is not to recommend or dismiss these efforts but to give you the tools to evaluate them.

Braver Angels: structured cross-partisan dialogue

Braver Angels, founded in 2016 (originally as Better Angels), grew out of post-2016-election distress among a small group of organizers in southwest Ohio. The founding event, held in December 2016, brought together ten Trump voters and ten Clinton voters for a two-day facilitated workshop. The format that emerged from that workshop became Braver Angels' core offering.

Braver Angels workshops follow a structured format. A facilitator, trained by the organization, leads paired groups of partisans through a series of exercises: each side lists "stereotypes about your group that you think are unfair," then "kernels of truth in those stereotypes," then "questions you actually want to ask the other side." The format is explicitly not debate — there is no winning. The goal is mutual understanding, not persuasion.

By 2024, Braver Angels had run several thousand workshops, trained over a thousand facilitators, and built local "alliances" (chapters) in all fifty states. Its membership claims partisan parity — roughly equal numbers of self-identified Democrats and Republicans, with some Independents.

Empirical evaluations of Braver Angels workshops have been conducted by independent researchers, primarily through the Stanford Polarization and Social Change Lab and the More in Common research arm. The findings: workshops produce statistically significant reductions in affective polarization at the individual level, measured by feeling-thermometer responses immediately after the workshop. Effect sizes are moderate — typical reductions of 5-10 points on a 0-100 thermometer scale. Effects appear to persist for months in some studies, though they fade over time without reinforcement.

The honest summary: Braver Angels works, in the limited sense that it reduces participants' affective polarization on average. It does not transform political views. It does not depolarize anyone who does not show up. Whether it can scale to anything resembling mass-level effects is genuinely unclear.

Bridge USA: the campus model

Bridge USA, founded in 2016 by college students at the University of Notre Dame, focuses on college campuses. Its core unit is the campus chapter, which hosts moderated discussions on contested topics: immigration, abortion, gun policy, the role of government, and so on. The format borrows from Braver Angels but is adapted for a younger and (generally) more politically heterogeneous audience.

By 2024, Bridge USA had chapters at more than fifty colleges and universities, including substantial presence at large public universities (Ohio State, Indiana, North Carolina), elite private universities (Yale, Notre Dame, Stanford), and several historically conservative or historically liberal campuses. Chapters operate with significant autonomy, but national staff provide training, materials, and coordination.

The college-campus theory of change has appeal. Politically active young people are still forming their political identities; intervening at this stage might produce more durable depolarization than intervening among middle-aged partisans whose views have crystallized. A generation of college graduates who have practiced cross-partisan deliberation might carry that habit into adult civic life.

The college-campus theory of change also has limits. College students are not representative of their generation; the college population skews more progressive, more urban, and more educated than non-college peers. The students who join Bridge USA chapters are themselves a self-selected subset who are already more interested in cross-cutting conversation than the average. Whether the program reaches the students who would benefit most is not clear.

The empirical evaluations of Bridge USA chapter activities are thinner than for Braver Angels — partly because the chapter activities are more variable, and partly because the population is more transient. A chapter at a state university in 2019 looks different from a chapter at the same university in 2024. Quasi-experimental studies suggest that participation is associated with reduced affective polarization and increased willingness to engage cross-partisans, but the inference is necessarily messier than for Braver Angels.

More in Common: the perception-gap research

More in Common is structurally different from the other two organizations. It is primarily a research and communications operation, not a direct-engagement program. Its 2018 report Hidden Tribes (lead author Stephen Hawkins) identified seven distinct American "tribes" based on values clusters rather than partisan identity, and made the case that the U.S. is less divided than mainstream commentary suggests, with most Americans falling into an "exhausted majority" caught between vocal extremes on left and right.

The more influential work, the perception-gap research, was published by More in Common in 2019 (lead authors Daniel Yudkin, Stephen Hawkins, Tim Dixon). The methodology: ask Republicans what percentage of Democrats hold particular extreme positions; ask Democrats what percentage of Republicans hold particular extreme positions; compare estimates with reality.

The findings, replicated in multiple subsequent studies, show systematic over-estimation. Democrats believe Republicans are more extreme on social and identity issues than Republicans actually are; Republicans believe Democrats are more extreme on the same kinds of issues than Democrats actually are. The estimation errors are largest among the most politically engaged — those who consume the most political media.

More in Common's theory of change: surface and correct the perception gap. If much of affective polarization is driven by inaccurate beliefs about the other side, then accurate information might reduce affective polarization. The organization has produced communications campaigns, school curricula, employer-facing materials, and journalist-facing resources designed to spread accurate information about cross-partisan beliefs.

The empirical evidence for this theory is real but limited. Experimental studies confirm that exposure to perception-gap-correcting information does reduce affective polarization in the short term. The effects are measurable. But translating these experimental findings into mass-level depolarization has proved difficult. The information environment that produced the perception gap in the first place continues to operate; correcting the gap once does not prevent it from re-forming.

The skeptical case

Each of these efforts has serious critics. The strongest version of the skeptical case has several strands.

The selection problem. The people who attend Braver Angels workshops, join Bridge USA chapters, or absorb More in Common research are self-selected — they are the Americans already most interested in cross-cutting conversation. The Americans who most need depolarization, by this argument, are the ones least likely to participate.

The scale problem. Even if the programs are effective for participants, the participant population is small. Braver Angels reaches perhaps tens of thousands of Americans per year through its workshops. Bridge USA reaches similar numbers. The total population whose affective polarization could be measurably reduced through these programs is, at most, a few percent of the engaged American electorate. The structural drivers of polarization — media, primary system, gerrymandering, money, sorting — operate on the entire system regardless.

The elite-driven nature of the depolarization industry. The funders, staff, and volunteers of these organizations are heavily clustered in a particular demographic: educated, upper-middle-class, often religious or formerly religious, often older. Critics from both sides argue that this demographic profile shapes the organizations' assumptions. Right-leaning critics argue the organizations are insufficiently sympathetic to populist or working-class concerns and treat depolarization as a project of educated centrism rather than genuine political competition. Left-leaning critics argue the organizations underweight the role of structural inequality, corporate power, and material concerns in producing the dissatisfaction that polarization expresses, and that "we just need to talk to each other more" is a strategy that sidesteps real grievances.

The "false equivalence" problem. A critique from those who believe asymmetric polarization is real: depolarization programs typically treat both sides as equally responsible for polarization, which understates the degree to which one side has departed from democratic norms. By bringing both sides together for civil conversation, the programs implicitly grant equal legitimacy to positions that, by this critique, do not deserve it. This argument is not unique to either party; both right-leaning and left-leaning critics make versions of it about the other side's behavior.

The measurement problem. Affective polarization on a feeling thermometer is one measure of depolarization. Political behavior — voting, donating, engagement, civic participation — is another. The depolarization industry has shown more success on the former than the latter. Whether reducing the feeling-thermometer gap actually translates into reduced political dysfunction is genuinely uncertain.

The defenders' response

The defenders of these efforts respond to each critique.

On selection: yes, the participants are self-selected, but every social-change movement begins with the most interested participants and grows outward. The civil-rights movement, the women's-rights movement, and other comparable efforts started with small numbers of committed participants and expanded over decades. Demanding mass participation in year ten of a depolarization movement is unfair; the appropriate question is whether the movement is growing.

On scale: the programs do not claim to be sufficient, only necessary. They are one component of a larger set of changes — structural reform, media reform, civic education — that together might produce mass-level effects. Dismissing them because they are not sufficient ignores their actual claim.

On elite-driven nature: yes, the founders and funders of these organizations have a particular demographic profile, but they are explicitly attempting to recruit beyond that profile, and the workshop participants are increasingly diverse. Demanding ideological purity from a movement attempting to bring together people across ideological lines is incoherent.

On false equivalence: the programs are explicitly bipartisan and explicitly do not take positions on the asymmetry question. This is not a failure of the programs; it is a feature. Their work is to facilitate conversation, not to adjudicate which side is right.

On measurement: feeling-thermometer reductions are not the entire goal, but they are a real and meaningful goal. Reducing the felt enmity between citizens is intrinsically valuable, even if it does not by itself solve institutional dysfunction.

What this case study teaches

The depolarization industry is real, well-intentioned, and modestly effective at what it claims to do. It has measurable effects on participants. It also operates at a scale that cannot, by itself, address the structural drivers of polarization.

A reader who concludes "these efforts are pointless because they cannot scale" has dismissed measurable effects on real participants. A reader who concludes "these efforts will solve polarization" has overweighted the demonstrated effects. The honest assessment is somewhere in between: useful, important, insufficient.

The deepest question this case study raises is whether elite-driven depolarization can succeed against mass-level forces. Mass-level forces — primary electorates, partisan media, residential sorting, social media incentives — push the system toward polarization. Elite-driven depolarization — workshops, chapters, research reports — pulls in the other direction at much smaller scale. Whether the smaller force can meaningfully resist the larger force, or whether structural reform of the larger force is necessary, is the central strategic question of contemporary depolarization work.

That question does not have a clean empirical answer yet. The work continues. The skepticism continues. Both, on the available evidence, are warranted.