The Domination/Partnership lens makes it possible for policy-makers to transcend single-issue, short-term, fragmented thinking. It connects the dots between seemingly distinct issues like early childhood education, gender equity, racial justice, and a humane and sustainable economics. The Partnership Systems view leads to policies that get at root causes of injustice, poverty, and violence.
The Politics of Partnership: Four Cornerstones
Policy-makers who believe that top-down domination systems are the only option recognize the foundational importance of early human relations. For them, return to the traditional family — an authoritarian, male-dominated, highly punitive family — is a top priority. Progressives, by contrast, have marginalized parent-child and gender relations as "women's and children's issues", leaving the base for domination systems to rebuild themselves in place.
The Politics of Partnership focuses on four cornerstones: childhood, gender, economics and narratives/language. These are the cornerstones that regressives have successfully focused on as the foundation of their domination politics. Rebuilding these four cornerstones with the values of partnership, is the long-term work that must start now to build a solid foundation that supports more equitable, sustainable and caring societies.
Resources
View and download these valuable resources for progressive policy makers:
The Politics of Partnership
The Elephant in the Political Room: What Progressives Can Learn from Regressives
The Ignored Issue That Can Get Progressives Elected
The Social Wealth Index
Learn more about the Social Wealth Index, a CPS initiative to develop economic metrics that make visible the true value of care.
The Partnerism Movement
Join the Partnerism Movement to help build a socio-economic system that values and rewards caring for one another, nature, and our collective future.
The Caring Family Policy Agenda
As practical as it is principled, the Caring Family Policy Agenda is based on the shared moral principles of religion and humanism: caring, compassion, justice, and nonviolence. Its principles and programs are easily articulated and have powerful emotional appeal. The Caring Family Policy Agenda has three interacting components: the Children's Bill of Rights, Caring Family Values, and a Family-Friendly Economy.
The Caring Family Policy Agenda
The Family Security Agenda
The Family Security Agenda recognizes the economic value of the care work provided for free in families and low- wage jobs. This is key to reducing family stress, cutting through cycles of poverty, and producing the "high quality human capital" needed for the new postindustrial age.
