Businesses need political stability to thrive, and so when democracy is jammed, companies can feel threatened. But few would see business as a solution to political system woes; to the contrary, business is most often depicted as a corrupting influence, attempting to tilt the scale towards particular candidates or parties. But businesses can also help to invigorate and strengthen our democratic systems and cultures. They can boost voter participation in various ways; support the administration of fair elections; create programs that encourage people to run for office. And they can create specific policies and practices to help foster constructive dialogue and engagement in the workplace.
Elections are critical junctures of democracies. In principle, electoral campaigns should enable citizens to debate the most pressing issues of the time and to choose candidates that propose convincing remedies and demonstrate competence. In practice, the democratic process has been increasingly malfunctioning. Recent electoral campaigns have only fueled polarization and hostility between opposite camps and instilled distrust regarding the fairness of the election — far from the constructive deliberation one could hope for.
Business leaders take note of these developments and frequently express concern: When democracy is jammed, the political stability required for business to thrive is threatened. Yet few see business as a possible solution. Quite the contrary, business and politics are seen as distinct realms that should remain separate. Corporate money in campaigns is most often depicted as a corrupting influence: Campaign donations made by businesses to specific politicians and political action committees are often perceived as an attempt to tilt the scale towards candidates whose policies these businesses prefer or, worse, to obtain favors in return.
However, business can also help to invigorate and strengthen our democratic systems and cultures. They can help reboot the machinery of democracy in ways that may be less visible but more important than campaign contributions, improving the scale without putting a thumb on it. Here are some important examples.
Encourage voter participation.
Any business can play a role in encouraging voter participation. The forthcoming U.S. elections are a case in point.
In midterm elections, voter turnout often falls well below 50% of eligible voters. (Turnout was 49% in 2018, but only 36% in 2014.) Low participation rates are routinely lamented as a sign of disinterest or dissatisfaction, but their true cause can be much more mundane. Because the likelihood of casting a pivotal vote is close to zero, the benefits of voting are modest, and even a minor obstacle can lead to a person not voting. Companies are in an ideal position to change this dynamic for the better by removing some obvious hurdles faced by voters.
Consider, first, the fact that U.S. elections take place on Tuesdays. This timing creates a barrier for employees expected to be at work during polling stations’ opening hours. Those who want to vote need to miss work and risk getting penalized or suffering a pay cut. Businesses can alleviate this obstacle by giving their employees a few hours off on Election Day. In fact, many are already doing so: Walmart, Coca-Cola, Gap, Boston Consulting Group, and more than 2,000 other companies have joined the business-led coalition “Time To Vote,” pledging to provide their employees with paid time to vote.
What businesses can do to improve turnout is not limited to their employees. In recent elections, some companies have gone further and also helped their customers or users to vote. In the 2010 midterms, Facebook delivered messages to tens of millions of users encouraging recipients to vote. It allowed users to click a button reading “I Voted,” and displayed profile pictures of their friends who had already clicked that button. They successfully increased the participation of targeted users and of their friends.
In the current cycle, Facebook says that it has already provided more than 80 million notifications with information about how, when, and where to register and vote to users searching for terms related to the midterms. In an experiment in France, I observed that information of this type might improve participation if it finds its way to voters.
In the same study, we also found that reducing the time required to register and vote can have an even larger impact than simply providing information. A straightforward way for companies to facilitate voting is to allow voters who would otherwise walk to their polling station or use public transportation to benefit from a car ride. Ahead of the November 8 elections, Lyft announced that it would give passengers 50% discounts off their rideshare, bikeshare, or scooter ride to their polling place. In addition to directly helping their users, such efforts also nudge competing companies to take action.
Support the administration of free and fair elections.
Beyond initiatives directed at employees and users, business leaders seeking to improve participation can also support the apparatus responsible for administering elections.
Some companies provide ballot drop boxes, office supplies, beverages and snacks, hand sanitizers and face masks, and even direct funding to election officials who often lack sufficient material resources. Others such as Patagonia provide human resources: They offer additional days of paid time off to their employees volunteering as poll workers.
Such actions can benefit the voters living in the corresponding areas in at least two distinct ways. Waiting times will be shorter in better-staffed polling stations, and additional resources may be used to open new polling places in previously underserved neighborhoods. In turn, we have solid evidence showing that shorter waiting lines and shorter distance to the polling station both increase participation substantially.
Facilitate other forms of participation.
Citizens’ participation in politics does not stop at voting on Election Day. Beyond simply encouraging voter turnout, some companies have gone one step further and facilitated other forms of political participation.
For instance, making a small contribution to a candidate was for a long time prohibitively cumbersome. But new conduits such as ActBlue, WinRed, and other online platforms intermediating contributions have made this considerably easier. In a new study with researchers from Georgetown and Sciences Po, we find that this innovation has considerably expanded and diversified the set of donors. In the 2020 cycle alone, the number of individuals contributing less than $200 to candidates’ campaigns each reached 12 million. Women account for 52% of such small contributors, against 38% of larger donors. Similarly, the share of minority citizens among small donors is twice as large as among large donors.
A second example concerns running for office. In past elections, Snapchat helped its users register to vote, but the company did not stop there. One year ago, it launched a Run for Office initiative to encourage its (often young) users to explore opportunities to get on the ballot. This portal allows users to filter local offices from school board to state representative by issue that they are interested in. It provides them practical information on deadlines and signature requirements, and gives them access to candidate recruitment organizations and training programs spanning the political spectrum.
Encourage constructive engagement in the workplace.
Strong participation of citizens in politics is crucial, but by itself will probably not be enough to steady our wobbly democracies. In the 2020 election, electoral participation and political division were both at record high levels. Both Democratic and Republican voters not only expressed polarized policy preferences, they also confessed to distrusting and disliking voters on the other side. Today, a growing number of politicians choose to radicalize their base instead of engaging in a constructive debate with opponents, fueling further polarization of the electorate.
Fortunately, voters receive information from many other sources besides political candidates and their teams, including from interpersonal discussions. Based on survey data from 62 elections in 10 countries since 1952, my coauthor Caroline Le Pennec and I have found that up to one third of voters make up their mind during the final two months of campaigns, a fraction that varies across countries but that has remained stable for several decades.
This is where businesses can play a key role. While most of our friends, social media contacts, family members, and even our neighbors, support the same party, in contrast, the workplace is one of the rare places in which we interact and collaborate with individuals that we respect and admire, but who hold differing views. Discussions with political content or implications are bound to arise at work, particularly shortly before an election.
Accordingly, business leaders should articulate policies to ensure that their employees are mindful of the existence of diverse political views among colleagues, and that all views are expressed respectfully and without fear of discrimination. Executives should first set the example by showing humility and receptiveness to opposing political views, avoiding stereotyping the other side, and intervening when conversations with like-minded peers veer into contempt for others. Research in psychology and sociology, including by colleagues at Harvard, suggests that the tone used by executives in emails and meetings is likely to be emulated by others in the company.
Business leaders should also explicitly encourage their employees to cultivate a receptive mindset, emphasize the benefits of engaging with different views, and train them to do so. Executives may balk at the idea of communicating about political matters at work, let alone taking concrete action in this domain. Fortunately, they can tap into a growing pool of resources to do so, including services of specialized organizations, such as Braver Angels and the Constructive Dialogue Institute, founded in 2017 by Caroline Mehl and Jonathan Haidt.
These organizations propose research-based e-learning programs and live workshops with participants of differing political views to facilitate constructive dialogue on challenging topics. They offer workshops to first teach employees to better comprehend the psychological roots of their own opinions, and they help them discover cognitive biases that may affect their reasoning. They further train them to understand the perspectives of co-participants by discovering misperceptions, asking non-judgmental questions, and trying to adopt others’ point of view. Finally, they coach participants to look for common ground. This entails acknowledging room for doubt and using nuance when expressing one’s views, as well as pointing to areas of agreement.
While organizations such as the Constructive Dialogue Institute are relatively new, there is already mounting evidence that one-on-one discussions between individuals of different partisan affiliations substantially decrease policy and affective polarization. Fostering a culture of tolerance requires daily attention to one’s actions and tone, but leaders should also leverage specific occasions for training themselves and others. For instance, they may consider including workshops on how to handle constructive political dialogue as part of onboarding processes for new employees, team-building retreats, and leadership development programs.
. . .
Business is indeed a separate sphere from politics. But this separation means that it can be a space in which one learns to listen to the other side again, constructive conversations across the political spectrum take place, and de-polarization begins. Furthermore, businesses can leverage their privileged relationship with employees and customers to encourage and help millions to vote. In these ways, business can move beyond its image as merely a threat to our politics, instead helping to reinvigorate democracy. It is difficult to imagine higher stakes.
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