The New World Alliance was an American political organization that sought to articulate and implement what it called "transformational" political ideas. It was organized in the late 1970s and dissolved in 1983. It has been described as the first U.S. national political organization of its type and as the first entity to articulate a comprehensive transformational political program.
The Alliance maintained a national office two blocks from the White House. It established chapters across the U.S., produced a 98-page political platform, conducted "Political Awareness Seminars" to help participants learn to communicate across ideological and psychological divides, initiated national "Consultations with Elected Officials," and produced a national political newsletter whose sponsors included Ecotopia author Ernest Callenbach and psychologist Carl Rogers.
Over the decades, social scientists and others have sought to explain why the Alliance did not achieve a longer life. There is no agreement. Explanations have touched on history (the U.S. was not ready), culture (the Alliance was too counter-cultural), process (the commitment to near-unanimous consensus decision-making was too onerous), leadership (the people on the Governing Council did not have the personalities or skills to build a mass organization), transformational political assumptions and behaviors (said to be inappropriate, self-defeating, or cult-like), and more.
Following the dissolution of the organization, many former Governing Council members and other founders of the Alliance – many near the beginning of their careers – took transformational ideas into a variety of organizational settings, including the early U.S. Green Party movement and the multinational corporate world. Their organizational efforts and published political writings extended into the 21st century.
A "transformational" politics
After the political turmoil of the 1960s, many writers and activists began searching for a new political perspective that would give special weight to such topics as consciousness change, ecology, decentralization of power, and global cooperation.Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World, Harmony Books / Random House, 2000, chaps. 6–7. .Theodore Roszak, Person / Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society, Anchor Press / Doubleday, 1978, chaps. 1–2. . Some called the emerging new perspective "transformational."Willis Harman, An Incomplete Guide to the Future, W. W. Norton & Company, 1979, chap. 2 ("A Transformation Ahead?"). .George Leonard, The Transformation: A Guide to the Inevitable Changes in Humankind, Delacorte Press / Dell Publishing Co., 1972.
Naming the Alliance's politics The New World Alliance has been described by many terms other than transformational – among them, new paradigm,Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson, Spiritual Politics: Changing the World from the Inside Out, Ballantine Books, 1994, p. 70. . Aquarian Conspiracy,Bob Olson with Marilyn Saunders, interviewer, "The New World Alliance: Toward a Transformational Politics", AHP Newsletter, December 1980, pp. 14–16. A publication of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. New Age-oriented,Alison Wells and Stanley Commons, "Moving Politics With Spirit (And Greyhound)," New Realities magazine, June–July 1979, pp. 23–25. The authors are identified as journal editor and executive director, respectively, of Self Determination, a California-wide organization advocating personal and political change. postliberal,Mark Satin, New Options for America: The Second American Experiment Has Begun, The Press at California State University, Fresno, 1991, p. 6. . post-socialist,Mark Satin, Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now, Westview Press and Basic Books, 2004, p. 29. . and Green.Sara Parkin, Green Parties: An International Guide, Heretic Books Ltd., 1989, p. 294. . A libertarian magazine found the Alliance's newsletter to be "surprisingly libertarian,"Robert Poole, Jr. and Christine Dorffi, "New Age Budget Biting," Reason: Free Minds and Free Markets, vol. 13, issue no. 7 (November 1981), p. 20. and a book about radical centrism characterized the Alliance as radical centrist.Satin, Radical, pp. 187–88.
However, "transformational" has been the term most frequently used to describe the Alliance's politics, both by political scientistsArthur Stein, Seeds of the Seventies: Values, Work, and Commitment in Post-Vietnam America, University Press of New England, 1985, pp. 134–38. . The author is identified as a political scientist at University of Rhode Island."Preface: Paths to Transformational Politics," in Stephen Woolpert, Christa Daryl Slaton, and Edward W. Schwerin, eds., Transformational Politics: Theory, Study, and Practice, State University of New York Press, 1998, p. ix. . The lead editor is identified as a political scientist at Saint Mary's College of California. and by the Alliance itself. For example, an article from the Alliance's chairperson was entitled "The New World Alliance: Toward a Transformational Politics," and the Alliance's political platform is entitled "A Transformation Platform: The Dialogue Begins."
Describing the Alliance's politics
Many attempts have been made to describe the Alliance's approach to transformational politics. Cultural critic Annie Gottlieb interviewed an Alliance member who said its goal was "to embody a new holistic vision of politics in America."Annie Gottlieb, Do You Believe in Magic?: Bringing the Sixties Back Home, Simon & Schuster, 1987, p. 153 (quoting Marc Sarkady). . Note that the pagination in the Times Books / Random House edition of this book is different. Futurists Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps said the Alliance was attempting to introduce values into politics that had traditionally been outside it.Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps, Networking: The First Report and Directory, Doubleday, 1982, pp. 107–08. . British Green activist Sara Parkin named some of those values, including "healing," "rediscovery," and "spirituality." Scholar J. Gordon Melton and his colleagues focused on the Alliance's commitment to combining supposed opposites – left and right, personal and political.J. Gordon Melton, Jerome Clark, and Aidan A. Kelly, New Age Encyclopedia, Gale Research, Inc., 1990, p. 324. ISSN 1047-2746. ISSN retrieved April 1, 2016. Citing the ancient Greek concept of Paideia, Alliance chair Bob Olson told an interviewer that the Alliance wanted to build a society where every institution was geared to developing people's abilities and potentials.
Political theorists Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson identified what they felt was a defining passage in one Alliance document: Politics is the way we live our lives. It is not just running for office. It is the way we treat each other, as individuals, as groups, as government. It is the way we treat our environment. It is the way we treat ourselves.McLaughlin, Spiritual, p. 70 (quoting a New World Alliance document).
Arthur Stein, a political scientist at University of Rhode Island, pointed to another passage in an Alliance document: The NWA seeks to break away from the old quarrels of "left against right" and help create a new consensus based on our heartfelt needs. It emphasizes personal growth – and nurturing others – rather than indiscriminate material growth. It advocates "human scale" institutions that function with human consideration and social responsibilities. It draws on the social movements of the recent past for new values like ecological responsibility, self-realization and planetary cooperation and sharing. It draws on our conservative heritage for values such as personal responsibility, self-reliance, thrift, neighborliness and community. It draws from the liberal traditions a commitment to human and civil rights, economic equity and social justice. We call this synthesis "New World" politics.Stein, Seeds, p. 135 (quoting a New World Alliance document).
Author Kirkpatrick Sale observed that the Alliance's newsletter boiled its definition of transformational politics down to a phrase – "the reconceptualization of politics along human growth, decentralist, and world order lines."Kirkpatrick Sale, "Kirkpatrick Sale's Letter from America", Resurgence magazine, vol. 89, November–December 1981, p. 6. "As sorry a mouthful of rhetoric as that is," Sale concluded, "that's roughly what this 'transformational' idea is all about."
History
The organizing tour
Organizing for the Alliance began in 1978, when author Mark Satin embarked on a two-year tour of North America. Although the tour was initially designed to promote one of his books at conferences and other events, it quickly expanded into an effort to locate those who wanted to start a new political organization with a new political perspective. Satin told the authors of the book Networking that he traveled "systematically" to 24 cities and regions across the continent. He was especially interested in finding people committed enough to want to fill out an extensive questionnaire about the future organization. According to one magazine, by the summer of 1979 Satin had traveled over 50,000 miles, mostly by Greyhound bus. He stopped when he found 500 people that were willing to answer the questionnaire.
The questionnaire The questionnaire, when finally composed and sent out, came to 21 pages. One political science text later compared it to a Delphi survey. It consisted largely of multiple-choice questionsBelden Paulson, Odyssey of a Practical Visionary, Thistlefield Books, 2009, pp. 500–03. . The author is identified as a political scientist at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. about what a transformation-oriented political organization should consist of. Some questions dealt with policy; for example, "How can we make small family farming more of an option for Americans?" Others dealt with structure – "How large should the Board of Directors be?"
Of the 500 people the questionnaire was sent to, 350 responded. The author of the book Green Parties described the respondents as people involved in personal-growth work and social change. The editors of a book on transformational politics described them as "academics, policy experts, and political activists interested in this emerging political perspective."
While it is not clear how closely the organization followed the questionnaire in shaping itself, one political scientist thought it significant that the "overwhelming source" of U.S. political problems among questionnaire-answerers was found to be "our attitudes and values."
"Governing Council"
The questionnaire determined that a 39-member board of directors, called the Governing Council (GC), should be chosen to run the Alliance. In addition, it determined that the GC should be chosen from among the questionnaire-answerers themselves. Eighty-nine of them volunteered to stand for the GC, and the first 39 GCers were chosen by a variety of means: 40% by mail ballot, 30% by lottery, 20% by Satin (who'd met the questionnaire-answerers during his bus tour), and 10% by four women.
The selection process produced a diverse GC. A political scientist pointed to "teachers, feminists, think-tank members." A journalist called attention to a Ronald Reagan speechwriter, a former Robert F. Kennedy speechwriter, a corporate vice-president, and a spiritual teacher.Ted Cox, "New Age People: Alternative to Militarism," The Churchman, August–September 1980, p. 7. A spokesperson for the Alliance touted "a co-author of the Pentagon Papers" as well as "several people from the erstwhile counterculture."Olson, "New World," p. 14.