An orientation for acting with integrity and effectiveness under conditions of polarization, institutional strain, and ecological limits

Post-Partisan Pathways

Post-Partisan Pathways is a practitioner-oriented framework for working across political, cultural, and worldview difference when familiar political tools no longer reliably work.

It emerged from years of place-based food systems and community governance work, where people were not primarily divided by ideology, but by overlapping pressures from material precarity, institutional breakdown, identity disruption, and fragmented sensemaking. In those conditions, persuasion often failed, trust was fragile, and yet cooperation remained necessary.

This framework responds to that terrain.

Rather than attempting to resolve disagreement through persuasion or consensus, Post-Partisan Pathways focuses on building capacity for cooperation around shared material stakes such as food, water, land, housing, care, and safety, while maintaining clear boundaries against domination, dehumanization, and extractive harm.

Why This Framework Now

Many political and civic approaches assume stable institutions, shared facts, and sufficient material security to support deliberation and reform. In many communities, those conditions no longer reliably hold.

Across sectors and political identities, people are navigating:

  • declining trust in institutions

  • increasing material stress and uncertainty

  • information overload and contradiction

  • loss of shared meaning

  • pressure to choose sides even when neither reflects lived reality

Post-Partisan Pathways is grounded in the recognition that:

  • People are shaped less by left–right ideology than by material stress and perceived threat

  • Persuasion often backfires under conditions of insecurity

  • Cooperation becomes possible when agency, dignity, and shared responsibility are restored

  • Complex systems require adaptive capacity, not ideological purity

This work offers practical orientation for acting with integrity and effectiveness under constraint. It does not offer a universal solution or a new political identity.

What Post-Partisan Practice Offers

Post-partisan practice helps practitioners and leaders:

  • Ground collaboration in shared material stakes, not agreement

  • Build economic and relational capacity that reduces precarity

  • Practice discernment and boundaries, rather than indiscriminate bridge-building

  • Direct effort through triage, focusing where conditions are generative

  • Support role reconstruction through contribution, not argument

  • Cultivate meaning and belonging rooted in care and shared work

  • Coordinate across a movement ecology, rather than competing strategies

  • Act with agency at multiple scales, from local to bioregional

The framework integrates insights from complexity science, peacebuilding, moral psychology, Indigenous and decolonial thought, ecological economics, commons practice, and collapse-aware work, woven together through food systems and community governance.

Who This Is For

Post-Partisan Pathways is intended for people already working in complexity, including:

  • community and civic leaders

  • organizers and facilitators

  • institutional actors and funders

  • educators and researchers

  • practitioners working on food, water, land, housing, care, or local governance

If you are looking for reassurance, quick fixes, or a new ideological banner, this framework may not serve you.

If you are navigating real constraints and need orientation that does not flinch from power, limits, or loss, this work is offered to you.

How to Use This Framework

Post-Partisan Pathways is an orientation, designed to support discernment and action in conditions where familiar political tools such as persuasion, consensus, and institutional leverage, are unreliable or insufficient.

This framework is best used as a diagnostic and navigational tool, not a set of instructions.

You might work with it to:

  • Diagnose situations where polarization, material stress, or institutional strain are shaping behavior more than ideology

  • Design collaboration by grounding shared work in material realities (food, water, land, care, safety) rather than agreement

  • Assess readiness for cooperation, including when boundaries, triage, or withdrawal are necessary

  • Support strategy when dialogue stalls and relational or material capacity needs rebuilding

  • Create shared language with collaborators who do not share worldview or political identity

This framework is meant to be returned to when conditions shift, what is possible changes, and as discernment is ongoing.

Agreement with every element is not required to work with this framework; what is required is honest engagement, with attention to power, limits, and harm.

Framework Documents & Orienting Briefs

Post-Partisan Pathways is offered through a set of complementary documents, designed for different contexts and levels of engagement. Together, they provide orientation, strategic grounding, and practical guidance for working across difference under conditions of institutional strain and uncertainty.

1. When Post-Partisan Pathways Are Useful

A concise guide for assessing relevance. This stand-alone brief helps leaders and advisors recognize whether their context reflects threshold conditions, where agreement is unlikely, institutions are strained, and shared material stakes become essential reference points.

Download the brief

2. Cooperation Under Threshold Conditions:  A strategic brief for governance, risk, and institutional leadership

A deeper synthesis for leaders, policymakers, risk analysts, and strategists navigating cascading crises, fractured sensemaking, and declining institutional capacity. This strategic brief outlines core principles, applications across domains, and limits of the approach.

Read the strategic brief 

3. Post-Partisan Pathways: Practitioner Framework

An in-depth framework developed through years of food systems and place-based practice. Designed for practitioners already working in complexity, this guide explores principles, boundaries, power analysis, and lived application.

Download the practitioner framework 

Limits and Boundaries

Post-partisan practice does not claim to work everywhere or with everyone.

  • It does not collaborate with actors organized around domination or dehumanization

  • It does not replace policy reform, regulation, or resistance

  • It does not guarantee consensus or institutional rescue

  • It cannot prevent large-scale systems from breaking down

Its purpose is to preserve agency, dignity, cooperation, and care under real limits.

An Invitation

Post-Partisan Pathways is a living framework shaped by practice, critique, and shared learning.

If you are experimenting with cooperation across difference, organizing around shared material realities, or navigating governance under volatility, conversation is welcome.

Contact: negowetti@gmail.com
Shorter essays: https://foodforus.substack.com


Questions People Often Ask

Is this just another form of depoliticized “unity” or bridge-building work?

No. Post-partisan practice is not about harmony, neutrality, or avoiding conflict. It is a political approach grounded in material reality, power, and harm. It does not ask people to set aside values or injustice. It asks how cooperation can be built responsibly when persuasion, consensus, or institutional trust no longer reliably work.

Isn’t the real divide ontological or epistemic, not political?

Worldview differences matter. This framework does not attempt to resolve them through argument. It focuses on creating conditions where cooperation is possible despite difference, and where new ways of seeing may emerge through lived practice rather than debate.

Who is this actually for?

This work is for people already operating in complexity, including community leaders, organizers, facilitators, institutional actors, funders, educators, and practitioners working with real constraints. It is not designed as a mass movement, a moral framework, or a new political identity.

  • No. The framework does not require ideological alignment or worldview agreement. It focuses on how people can act responsibly together on shared material stakes even when beliefs differ.


  • Dialogue assumes shared facts, sufficient safety, and stable institutions that can absorb disagreement. Post-partisan practice emerges where those conditions are weakened or absent. It prioritizes shared material stake, such as food, water, land, care, and safety, over agreement, and builds cooperation through shared responsibility rather than debate.

  • No. It is one strategy within a broader movement ecology. Its role is to build relational and material capacity that makes resistance, reform, and repair more durable under strain.

  • This framework does not promise institutional rescue. It focuses on preserving agency, dignity, cooperation, and care when larger systems are unreliable, overstretched, or losing legitimacy.

  • Only when done without discernment. Post-partisan practice emphasizes boundaries, triage, and accountability. Not every context is appropriate for collaboration, and not everyone is invited into every space.