enduring issue essay on power

• 3 Examples of Enduring Issue Essays to Write Yours Like a Pro

Enduring issues are lasting problems of the world. When writing a paper for the NYS Regent Exam, you’ll get a task to craft an essay about some of those issues. It would help to have a few samples beforehand to know how to write it well, wouldn’t it?

In this article, you’ll find three enduring issues essay examples. They serve to reveal the nature of this paper type. Also, you’ll get the enduring issues list and read some practical tips on enduring issues essay writing.

So, here we go.

What Is an Enduring Issues Essay?

First, let’s explain: What is an enduring issue?

Enduring meaning is “lasting.” So, if we needed to provide an enduring issue definition, we would say that it’s a problem that exists across time. It’s an issue in global history that many societies have attempted to address with varying degrees of success.

An enduring issues essay is a paper identifying and describing some lasting problem, referring to excerpts from historical documents.

In this essay, you:

• Identify and define an enduring issue in the introduction.
• Explain why it’s significant, how it has impacted people, and how it has lasted over time. For that, you use your knowledge of the subject and evidence from the documents you get in the prompt.

An enduring issues essay is a part of the Regents Examinations in New York State.

Enduring Issues List

Enduring issues examples are many, and it’s hard to predict which one you’ll get in the exam prompt. We can divide them into five top categories:

• Environment
• Wants and Needs

Each category has sub-topics your essay prompt may include. So, here is the list of enduring issues. We’ve made it a table for better clarity and understanding:

How to Write an Enduring Issues Essay

Before writing an enduring issues essay, you examine the provided documents to analyze which issues exist there. There can be several different issues, and you have the element of choice here: 

• Name and define the enduring issue you’ll discuss.
• Choose the documents among those provided to support your thesis.
• Develop your essay introduction and thesis. (Use the formula: Thesis = Enduring Issue + Why It’s Important + Topics of Discussion . See the example below.)
• Write a body. (The number of paragraphs = the number of documents you address in the essay.)
• Conclude an essay, restating the claim in your thesis.

Here’s an example of a thesis statement in your enduring issues essay:

Our colleague Melissa Keele did a great job visualizing the structure of a body paragraph . It should include the following elements:

• Topic sentence
• Document information
• Analysis of both: Explain how the issue impacted people/places and how it continued/changed over time
• Outside information whenever possible
• Closing sentence (optional)

As for enduring issues essay conclusion examples , let’s go to the complete samples below. Such an essay’s concluding paragraphs are usually short (3-5 sentences). Just reiterate your claim again, insisting on its significance and effect over time.

Enduring Issues Essay: Examples

As a rule, prompts for enduring issues essays are super detailed (1). Read them carefully and examine the corresponding documents precisely — and you’ll know what and how to cover in your paper.

Below are several samples of complete essays. Each example is on a different issue for you to see how to structure this type of writing.

Sample 1: Social Studies topic

Sample 2: global history and geography topic.

In this sample, we’ve covered just one body paragraph for you to see how to structure it. Two other paragraphs about Maximillian Robespierre and Napoleon Bonaparte would have the same format, with corresponding evidence from historical documents.

Sample 3: Climate Change topic

Tips on structuring your enduring issues essay.

Now that you have enduring issues essay examples and know what to include in each paragraph, the final note from us:

These tiny steps and easy-to-follow rules will help you craft an A-worthy paper.

1) Focus on evidence-based claims and arguments. Make every sentence of your essay matter: Avoid generic categories, conflicts, and points.

2) Don’t be afraid to explore beyond the given documents. Enduring issues essays are also about your knowledge. So if, after analyzing the sources, you see the lack of points to cover the issue, feel free to explore more and support your claims with extra points.

3) Stay objective. This essay isn’t opinion or reflective but analytical and based on evidence. Structure it accordingly:

• Introduce the issue
• Present its historical context and importance
• Finish with its impact and relevance

Ready to Write Yours?

An enduring issues essay is about a lasting problem in global history. It’s a part of the Regents Examinations for New York State’s students. You’ll get a detailed prompt with guidelines.

So, you’ll need to define the issue you’ll discuss and find the evidence in the documents the examiners will give you. Use the above enduring issues essay examples as samples to understand the structure. We hope they’ll help you format your paper the best you can.

References: 

• https:// w ww.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/programs/state-assessment/2-sample-enduring-issue-essay.pdf
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• Essay writing
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How to Write an Enduring Issues Essay: Guide with Topics and examples

Writing Enduring Issues Essay

Writing an enduring issues essay is not easy. You must discuss a topic that can get people to discuss and think long after they read your paper.

This guide will teach you how to write an enduring issues essay. You will find the topics list and examples of each one. In addition, we go over the different types of essays used for this purpose and give you a brief overview.

What is an Enduring Issues Essay?

An enduring issues essay is a written task where the author identifies and describes a historically significant challenge that endured for a long duration and has been addressed with different degrees of success.

You should describe the challenge, explain why it has endured and how different people successfully addressed it at different times.

Mostly, this can be either by a group or an individual, but it must be historically significant so that the argument you present can be backed up with historical evidence.

An enduring issues essay is a written task where you are to identify and describe a historically significant challenge that has endured over time and has been addressed with varying degrees of success.

For example, if you were asked to write an enduring issues essay on women’s rights in America, you would need to determine if women’s rights have improved or not since the beginning of the nation.

You could then compare these results from past times with present-day trends. This task can happen by looking at how women were treated in colonial times compared to now.

You could also compare them to those who came before us, such as those who were slaves during slavery, compared to today’s race relations which do not discriminate based on race but rather on merit.

Typically, an enduring issues essay allows for historical analysis to see how our society has changed over time and what is still relevant today.

How to Write an Enduring Issues Essay

1. choose your topic.

When you are writing an essay, you need to choose a topic that is interesting and interesting enough to draw the attention of your readers. The topic should be something that can get discussed in several different ways.

To ensure that your essay is successful, it needs a clear structure.

An outline will help you plan exactly what you want to say in each section of your essay and how they relate to one another. In addition to planning your essay, several tips can help you write an enduring issues essay.

First, write down some ideas for the essay. Write down what questions or topics you would like to discuss; for example, if you wanted to write about global warming in your essay, then write down all the things happening worldwide on this issue.

You must consider something that impacts everyone, not just someone specific or something local such as pollution.

Next, think about where these ideas come from. For example: do you have friends who are interested in this issue? Can they help you find information about it? Can they give examples of others who have written about this topic before?

2. Choose your Thesis Statement

The best way to write an enduring issues paper is to start with a thesis statement. This sentence or two summarizes your argument and explains why you are writing.

The thesis statement should be a strong one that states your main point clearly and concisely but also broad enough to encompass many other points of view. It should be like: “All of us need to find ways to improve our communication skills.”

You can then support this thesis by using examples from your own life or others in your family, school or community. You might also use statistics or other research materials from books or online resources, such as Wikipedia.

3. Write your Introduction

You should write your introduction in an engaging and emotional tone. You can achieve this by writing about a personal connection, experience or something that makes you feel strongly about the issue.

If you are writing about a social issue, discussing how it affects people and what it means for those involved or affected by it is important.

You can use examples to illustrate this point and help your readers understand the importance of your argument.

For example:

In this essay, I will discuss how climate change is affecting our future generations by highlighting some of the problems they face due to climate change, such as rising sea levels and ocean acidification, droughts and wildfires, extreme weather events and food shortages (Klein and Sams).

In addition, I will discuss how we can tackle these issues by implementing new technologies that reduce carbon emissions and help us adapt to climate change (Klein and Sams).

4. Include body sections

The body section is where you will elaborate further on the issue, giving examples and evidence that support your argument. You may also include an additional supporting quote if you have any. The body section should be no less than three paragraphs long.

The essay’s body sections should explain each issue’s causes and effects. The body section should not be longer than three paragraphs unless you are going for a detailed explanation of your chosen topic.

A good way to structure your body section is by using a question-and-answer format. You can ask yourself questions such as: ‘What are the causes?’ or ‘How does it affect me?’ and answer them with your own opinion or research findings.

The body section is where you need to explain what you have learned about the topic and why it matters to you personally. You can use quotes from others who have experienced similar problems or relevant statistics on how many people are affected by these issues worldwide.

5. Conclusion

The conclusion is the final part of a written essay, which can be either a paragraph or a point, and it should give you a summary of your main points. It should not be too long and should include some conclusion statement.

The conclusion is the last line of your essay that summarizes all the points previously discussed in your writing. The best way to conclude an essay is by stating your main points, followed by an explanation.

Enduring Issues Essay Example Topics

A) climate change.

For example;

The issue of climate change has been a topic that has been discussed in the past and will continue to be discussed in the future.

Climate change is a global phenomenon affecting all parts of Earth’s life. It is caused by human activities such as fossil fuel burning, deforestation and agriculture. It devastates agriculture, water supply, food production and human health.

The causes of climate change can be attributed to human activities such as fossil fuel burning, deforestation and agriculture (UNFCCC).

Fossil fuels are the main contributors to greenhouse gases (GHG) which are responsible for trapping heat within the atmosphere through a process known as radiative forcing.

Deforestation is another cause of climate change as it contributes to land-use changes, which results in increased carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into the atmosphere.

Agriculture contributes to CO2 emissions because it releases methane gas into the atmosphere when animals eaten by humans are released back into the environment after being consumed by humans.

Climate change has serious consequences for all life on earth, including humans, who have become a major contributor to climate change through their consumption habits, such as over-fishing or consuming meat from animals raised using non-sustainable practices such as intensive farming methods and fertilizers.

b) The Great Depression

One example of this kind of essay is “The Great Depression,” which was written by John Steinbeck in 1939. In this essay, he talked about how people worldwide suffered during this time because they had no jobs, money or food.

He also talked about how people turned to crime to survive financially, which brought down society’s values even more than before.

c) The Nazi Holocaust

Another example would be “The Nazi Holocaust” by Hannah Arendt, which discusses the systematic genocide done by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party against Jews during World War II.

In this essay, she talks about how many German citizens were happy when Hitler took control of their country because they thought it would bring glory to Germany again after losing wars with other countries such as France.

With over 10 years in academia and academic assistance, Alicia Smart is the epitome of excellence in the writing industry. She is our chief editor and in charge of the writing department at Grade Bees.

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Writing a Winning Enduring Issues Essay

Are you taking geography, history or related courses? If the answer is “yes,” the chances are that your teacher will, at some point, ask you to write an enduring issues essay. Note that even teachers outside the above two disciplines might also ask you to write an enduring issues essay. So, how do you go about writing a winning enduring issues essay?

This post is a comprehensive guide to help you understand what an enduring issues essay is and how to craft it. Furthermore, we have also provided a sample and special tips to help you craft top-rated essays.

What is an Enduring Issues Essay?

This is a type of essay where students are required to identify and describe historically significant challenges that have persisted over time and efforts to address them implemented with varying levels of success.

In most cases, you are provided with a set of historical documents, which you need to analyze, and finally write a report.

Examples of Enduring Issues

To be able to craft a great essay, it is important to start with enduring issue definition. Enduring issues are problems that people encounter daily and that have been looked at or debated in anthropology, history, geography, and social studies or other related disciplines. Therefore, studying them helps to look for solutions, and essay writing is one of the best ways to present such recommendations. Here is a list of some common enduring issues that you are likely to find in excerpts.

Inequality Conflicts Power Cooperation Impacts on the environment Interconnectedness Beliefs and ideas Scarcity Environmental impacts Innovation Cybercrime Religious extremism

How to Write a Great Enduring Issues Essay

The process of crafting a good enduring essay starts with answering the question, “what are some enduring issues under consideration?” Then, go ahead and identify a good title and a thesis for your essay. The thesis statement is very crucial because it will be reflected in the entire essay. Then, develop a good enduring issues essay outline, which details what you should discuss at different points in the essay. You might also want to check a few enduring issues essay examples to see how their outlines were developed. Here is a sample outline that you can use:

Introduction: The introduction should capture the background of the study and bring out the thesis. Also, you should use the introduction to grab the readers’ attention, and make them want to go through the entire essay.

Body: In the body of your essay, you describe how the issue you are focusing on has affected people over the generations. If your teacher provided the excerpts about the issues you will discuss, make sure to understand the context of the problem well. Then, present the issues logically and use additional evidence to make the story look professional and informative. Make sure also to bring out the counterarguments.

Conclusion : This is the last section of the essay and should be used to summarize it. Note that you should not use the conclusion to introduce new points, but should only summarize what was discussed on the essay.

Enduring Issues Essay Prompts

If you take a closer look at the most enduring essay prompts, they are almost similar. Take a closer look at these examples:

• Define a nesting issue by bringing out its historically accurate explanation captured the three documents
• Human rights violation: Why is it an important enduring issue?
• A closer look at inequality from the viewpoint of industrial revolution.
• How has global warming impacted society?

Enduring Issues Essay Example

When you finally submit the completed essay, some of the things that your teacher will check include succinctness, flow, facts, and sentence structure. See the following enduring issues essay sample that demonstrates how to do a great paper.

Nationalism is the identification with a person’s own country and supporting its interests, but this happens to the detriment of the interest of other people in other nations. Nationalism happens through people uniting and forming a united front that helps to define them. In history, many countries felt the extreme attachment and, indeed, pride for their countries. Although people mainly see nationalism positively because it is their source of pride, there are others, especially the excluded ones, who see it to be extremely negative. The events that make a country view nationalism both positively and negatively make it a hot enduring issue. Nationalism changes the way people think, making them look for ways to benefit, whether socially or economically, to the detriment of others. In history, nationalism was a key source of conflict that fueled major conflicts, including World War I and II. It influences cultures and nations, as shown by Count Camillo di Cavour’s statement about driving foreigners away from Italy in 1852, Unification, and Death in the 20th century in Serbia…

Enduring Issues Essay Writing Tips

To make your essay shine and earn you more marks, it is prudent to ensure you understand the instructions from your lecturer well and follow them. For example, what format does your teacher recommend? Here are other useful tips to consider.

• Ensure to read about the selected issue or issues widely.
• Develop an enduring issues chart to help you understand the extent of their implications.
• Carefully follow the guideline provided by your teacher.
• Make sure to support the issue that you are discussing with credible resources.
• Read other enduring issue essay examples to learn from other writers.
• Proofread your work well before submitting it.

Seek Writing Help from Experts

When it comes to writing enduring issues essay, many students often find it a challenge. Some find the deadline tight while others have poor writing skills. However, it would help if you do not give up because custom writing help from experts is only a click away. The assistance is provided by expert writers with experience and commitment to help you rake the best grades. Why go for a standard or a failing grade when you can scoop an A with an expert?

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How to Write an Enduring Issues Essay

An enduring issue essay is a significant part of the Global History and Geography II Regents Examination in the New York State. How do you prepare for it and make sure you’ll do your best?

One good way is practice. Learn how to write an enduring issue essay from this guide. It gives step-by-step instructions on working with documents and analyzing the evidence to elicit the issue. Another way is to read as many examples as you can – luckily, your friendly free essay writer is always there to help.

Let’s Start With The Enduring Issue Definition

Before we talk in detail about the essay’s format and structure, let us first understand the unique subject of it. What is an enduring issue?

An enduring issue is a lasting problem or challenge that has been manifesting itself in various forms throughout history. Different societies faced it and dealt with it with varying degrees of success, but it persists thought time. The conflict of new ideas and beliefs with custom and tradition or the scarcity of natural resources can serve as examples of enduring issues.

How to Work with the Enduring Issues List

The enduring issues essay rubric is the most important in the Global History and Geography II exam. It will consist of five excerpts from historical documents and a pre-planning worksheet with an enduring issues chart to help you identify the underlying issue that is common for all five documents.

To identify the issue quickly and successfully under time pressure and in a stressful environment of the examination, you should start preparing for it today. The first thing you should do is familiarizing yourself with the list of topics that might come up. The list of enduring issues varies, but here are some of the potential ones:

• traditional culture vs. modernization
• discrimination and inequality
• human rights violation
• impact of the environment of humans
• human impact on the environment
• industrialization
• urbanization
• desire for power
• cooperation
• imperialism/expansionism
• nationalism
• colonization
• cultural diffusion
• population growth

To talk about the issue raised by the set of documents, you can (and are encouraged to) use any outside knowledge that you have learned from other courses, such as Social Studies or US History, or personal experience and observations. However, you must include the evidence from at least three of the documents presented in the examination worksheet.

Here is an exercise you can do to feel more comfortable with identifying the issues. Make three columns in your notebook or word processor, put the enduring issues from the list above into the first column. Think about any related words or events that are associated with each issue. For example, for Technology , you can put innovations and the industrial revolution, and for Conflict , write French Revolution and Civil War.

Then, in the third column, try to look for less obvious connections – the accompanying issues that emerge when the bigger one is in motion. For example, for Revolution and War, these would be mass killings, reign of terror, new visions being discredited by the horrors of conflict, scarcity of resources, poverty, diseases.

The documents you will receive for analysis during the examination will most likely deal with some of the accompanying issues, a neutral or even a positive phenomenon that emerged from a bigger, underlying issue you must unpack. That means, during the exam, you will have to go through this process in reverse. That is why it is important to exercise in seeing these connections.

Enduring Issue Essay: Introduction to Writing

To have a 5 score on your Enduring Issues Rubric, you should:

• accurately identify and define one enduring issue common for at least three of the five documents
• build an in-depth argument about how this issued affected people, how it persists or has changed over time
• not only describe the issue but analyze it, create new information from evidence
• support your argument with details and evidence from at least three documents
• support your argument with relevant outside knowledge
• organize your essay logically with a clear plan: the introduction paragraph, the body, and the conclusion.

As you can see, the basic requirements are not that different from any other essay, however, the key to success is to identify the enduring issue and support it with the evidence from the documents you will not see until the exam itself. However, here are the good ways to identify an enduring issue, whichever it might be:

Instead of an issue you know a lot about or an issue you would like to write about, look for challenges and problems in the documents.

Instead of settling on a general name, try to narrow the issue down to be as specific, as possible (it must still cover at least three documents). For example, instead of just “discrimination” you can identify an issue as racism, sexism, xenophobia, or prejudice against LGBTQI+.

If possible, try to expand on your core enduring issue by analyzing its causes or identifying the effects. For example, “Racial discrimination that led to marginalization and economic disadvantage of the discriminated group”.

You don’t have to limit yourself to the issues we provided as examples. If in the documents you clearly see an enduring issue that is not on the list above, go for it. For example, the generation gap or pollution aren’t given as examples, but they are enduring issues nonetheless.

Let’s suppose that you have identified the issue and have chosen the evidence from the documents. Now let us look into how to start an enduring issues essay and write it on time.

How to Prepare an Enduring Issues Essay Outline

The 5-paragraph essay format you have probably been using for your high school essays will be appropriate for the enduring issues essay as well. Here is how to apply it for your enduring issue essay outline.

Introductory paragraph

Remember that your exam is timed. You should spend about 8 minutes or less on writing your introduction, so keep it short and sweet – 5 or 6 sentences will be enough. Best way to outline it is:

• A short definition of an enduring issue, followed by an example of the issue you are writing about. For example, “An enduring issue is a challenge that persists throughout human history. One example of such challenge is the scarcity of freshwater”.
• Define your chosen issue and provide some examples that you will later expand on in the body of your essay (remember about the documents).
• Close the introduction with a generalization that affirms that the issue you’ve chosen is indeed an enduring one. For example, “From ancient times to nowadays people continue struggling with water shortage”.

Outlining the body

In this part of your essay, you will analyze the evidence according to the requirements of the prompt. The number of paragraphs in an enduring issues essay depends on the number of documents you cite and the additional external evidence you may want to provide. Three paragraphs are the minimum. Here is how you should organize each of them:

• A short and simple topic sentence introducing the subject of the paragraph and providing a smooth transition from the previous one.
• Evidence from the document, rephrased and properly cited (Doc. 4)
• Explanation of the evidence: how has it affected people, how it persists or changes through time.

To write an engaging and coherent essay, assume your audience knows nothing about the topic:

• Write in short , straightforward sentences
• Explain your point in detail
• Use linking expressions (accordingly, as a result, meanwhile, afterward, furthermore) and signal words (to illustrate, specifically, because of, however, consequently) to help your reader navigate the essay
• Use only the essential parts of the documents to illustrate your point

Concluding paragraph

In the concluding paragraph, you should summarize your essay, generalize it, and provide a wider context for the issue you’ve analyzed in the main part of your essay. For a short and effective conclusion, stick to the following plan:

• Restate your selected enduring issue
• Sum up the body of your essay. List key ideas – one for each paragraph. You don’t need to repeat the details here, only the gist.
• Finish with a though-provoking generalization about enduring issues (For example, how these issues stem from the flaws/strengths inherent to human nature or how they cannot be solved forever but must be addressed by each new generation).

Remember, you must not include any new facts or evidence here. Also, avoid unsupported opinions that do not follow from the evidence.

How to Get an Enduring Issues Essay Example

If you are still confused about writing this particular type of essay, you can search our sample essays collection for the enduring essays or papers on similar topics. Read and learn from the examples – they are absolutely free!

Another way to get a perfect customized enduring issues essay sample is to send us your enduring issues essay prompt and let us write it for you! Our writers have vast experience with all formats of academic writing and great expertise in various research fields. They will provide an in-depth analysis, expert insight, and a perfectly formatted paper that adheres to the requirements.

Jana Rooheart

Jana Rooheart came to WOWESSAYS™ with a mission to put together and then slice and dice our vast practical experience in crafting all kinds of academic papers. Jana is an aspired blogger with rich expertise in psychology, digital learning tools, and creative writing. In this blog, she willingly shares tricks of pencraft and mind-altering ideas about academic writing any student will find utterly beneficial.

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Guest Essay

Why Losing Political Power Now Feels Like ‘Losing Your Country’

By Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.

Is partisan hostility so deeply enmeshed in American politics that it cannot be rooted out?

Will Donald Trump institutionalize democratic backsliding — the rejection of adverse election results, the demonization of minorities and the use of the federal government to punish opponents — as a fixture of American politics?

The literature of polarization suggests that partisan antipathy has become deeply entrenched and increasingly resistant to amelioration.

“Human brains are constantly scanning for threats to in-groups,” Rachel Kleinfeld , a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a September 2023 essay, “ Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says .”

“As people affectively polarize, they appear to blow out-group threats out of proportion, exaggerating the out-group’s dislike and disgust for their own group, and getting ready to defend their in-group, sometimes aggressively,” Kleinfeld argued.

Kleinfeld acknowledged that “a number of interventions have been shown in lab settings, games and short experiments to reduce affective intervention in the short term,” but, she was quick to caution, “reducing affective polarization through these lab experiments and games has not been shown to affect regular Americans’ support for antidemocratic candidates, support for antidemocratic behaviors, voting behavior or support for political violence.”

Taking her argument a step further, Kleinfeld wrote:

Interventions to reduce affective polarization will be ineffective if they operate only at the individual, emotional level. Ignoring the role of polarizing politicians and political incentives to instrumentalize affective polarization for political gain will fail to generate change while enhancing cynicism when polite conversations among willing participants do not generate prodemocratic change.

Yphtach Lelkes , a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, succinctly described by email the hurdles facing proposed remedies for polarization and antidemocratic trends:

I don’t think any bottom-up intervention is going to solve a problem that is structural. You could reduce misperceptions for a day or two or put diverse groups together for an hour, but these people will be polarized again as soon as they are exposed once more to campaign rhetoric.

The reality, Lelkes continued, is that “a fish rots from the head, and political elites are driving any democratic backsliding that is occurring in America. Most Republican voters do not support the antidemocratic policies and practices of their elected officials.”

In their March 2024 paper, “ Uncommon and Nonpartisan: Antidemocratic Attitudes in the American Public ,” Lelkes, Derek E. Holliday and Shanto Iyengar , both of Stanford, and Sean J. Westwood of Dartmouth found that public opposition to antidemocratic policies is not adequate to prevent their adoption:

More ominous implications of our results are that 1) public support is not a necessary precondition for backsliding behavior by elites, and 2) Americans, despite their distaste for norm violations, continue to elect representatives whose policies and actions threaten democracy. One explanation is that when partisanship is strong, voters place party and policy goals over democratic values. Indeed, one of the least-supported norm violations — removing polling places in outparty-dominated areas — has already been violated by elected officials in Texas, and there are concerns about pending similar laws in other states. Such unconstrained elite behavior suggests that threats to democracy could well manifest themselves in both parties in the future.

The level of public support for democratic institutions will be a crucial factor in the 2024 elections. President Biden is campaigning on the theme that Trump and his MAGA allies are intent on strengthening authoritarian leadership at the expense of democracy.

Political scientists and reform groups seeking to restore collegiality to political debate and elections have experimented with a wide variety of techniques to reduce partisan hostility and support for antidemocratic policies.

These efforts have raised doubts among other election experts, both about their effectiveness and durability. Such experts cite the virulence of the conflicts over race, ethnicity and values and the determination of Trump and other politicians to keep divisive issues in the forefront of campaigns.

I have written before about the largest study of techniques to lessen polarization, which was conducted by Jan G. Voelkel and Robb Willer , sociologists at Stanford, along with many other colleagues. Voelkel and Willer are the primary authors of “ Megastudy Identifying Effective Interventions to Strengthen Americans’ Democratic Attitudes .” Given the heightened importance of the coming election and the potential effects of polarization on it, their study is worth re-evaluating.

Voelkel, Willer and 83 others

conducted a megastudy (n=32,059) testing 25 interventions designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes. We find nearly every intervention reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting sympathetic and relatable individuals with different political beliefs. We also identify several interventions that reduced support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence, most strongly by correcting misperceptions of outpartisans’ views — showing that antidemocratic attitudes, although difficult to move, are not intractable.

Their own data and their responses to my inquiries suggest, however, that the optimism of their paper needs to be tempered.

In the case of the “six interventions that significantly reduced partisan animosity,” the authors reported that two weeks later “the average effect size in the durability survey amounted to 29 percent of the average effect size in the main survey.”

I asked Voelkel to explain this further, posing the question: “If the initial reduction in the level of partisan animosity was 10 percentage points, does the 29 percent figure indicate that after two weeks the reduction in partisan animosity was 2.9 percentage points?” Voelkel wrote back to say yes.

In an email responding to some of my follow-up questions about the paper, Voelkel wrote:

I do not want to overstate the success of the interventions that we tested in our study. Our contribution is that we identify psychological strategies for intervening on partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes in the context of a survey experiment. We still need to test how big the effects could be in a large-scale campaign in which the psychological mechanisms for reducing partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes get triggered not once (as in our study) but ideally many times and over a longer period.

Voelkel cautioned that “one-time interventions might not be enough to sustainably reduce affective polarization in the mass public. Thus, successful efforts would need to be applied widely and repeatedly to trigger the psychological mechanisms that are associated with reductions in affective polarization.”

Willer sent a detailed response to my queries by email:

First, to be clear, we do not claim that the interventions we tested have large enough effects that they would cure the problems they target. We do not find evidence for that. Far from it. I would characterize the results of the Strengthening Democracy Challenge in a more measured way. We find that many of the interventions we tested reliably, meaningfully and durably reduce both survey and behavioral indicators of partisan animosity.

Willer wrote that “the interventions we tested were pretty effective in reducing animosity toward rival partisans, particularly in the short term. However, we found that the interventions we tested were substantially less effective in reducing antidemocratic attitudes, like support for undemocratic practices and candidates.”

Other scholars were more skeptical.

I asked Lilliana Mason , a political scientist at Johns Hopkins and a leading scholar of affective polarization: “Are there methods to directly lessen polarization? Are they possible on a large, populationwide scale?”

“If we knew that,” she replied by email, “we would have definitely told people already.”

There is evidence, Mason continued, that

it is possible to correct misperceptions about politics by simply providing correct information. The problem is that this new correct information doesn’t change people’s feelings about political candidates or issues. For example, you can correct a lie told by Donald Trump, and people will believe the new correct information, but that won’t change their feelings about Trump at all.

“We think of affective polarization as being extremely loyal to one side and feeling strong animosity toward the other side,” Mason wrote, adding:

This can be rooted in substantive disagreements on policy, identity-based status threat, safe versus dangerous worldview, historical and contemporary patterns of oppression, violations of political norms, vilifying rhetoric, propagandistic media and/or a number of other influences. But once we are polarized, it’s very difficult to use reason and logic to convince us to think otherwise.

Similarly, “there are methods that reduce polarization in academic research settings,” Westwood, an author of the March paper cited above, wrote by email. He continued:

The fundamental problems are that none “cure” polarization (i.e., move the population from negative to neutral attitudes toward the opposing party), none last more than a short period of time and none have a plausible path to societywide deployment. It is impossible to reach every American in need of treatment, and many would balk at the idea of having their political attitudes manipulated by social scientists or community groups.

More important, in Westwood’s view, is that

whatever techniques might exist to reduce citizen animosity must be accompanied by efforts to reduce hostility among elected officials. It doesn’t matter if we can make someone more positive toward the other party if that effect is quickly undone by watching cable news, reading social media or otherwise listening to divisive political elites.

Referring to the Voelkel-Willer paper, Westwood wrote:

It is a critically important scientific study, but it, like nearly all social science research, does not demonstrate that the studied approaches work in the real world. Participants in this study were paid volunteers, and the effects were large but not curative. (They reduced partisan hatred and did not cure it.) To fix America’s problems, we need to reach everyone from fringe white nationalists to single moms in Chicago, which is so costly and logistically complicated that there isn’t a clear path toward implementation.

One problem with proposals designed to reduce partisan animosity and antidemocratic beliefs, which at least three of the scholars I contacted mentioned, is that positive effects are almost immediately nullified by the hostile language in contemporary politics.

“The moralized political environment is a core problem,” Peter Ditto , a professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine, wrote by email:

Unless we can bring the temperature down in the country, it is going to be hard to make progress on other fronts, like trying to debias citizens’ consumption of political information. The United States is stuck in this outrage spiral. Partisan animosity both fuels and is fueled by a growing fact gap between red and blue America.

Ditto argued that there is “good evidence for the effectiveness of accuracy prompts (correcting falsehoods) to reduce people’s belief in political misinformation,” but “attempting to reduce political polarization with accuracy prompts alone is like trying to start a mediation during a bar fight.”

Attempts to improve political decision making, Ditto added, “are unlikely to have a substantial effect unless we can tamp down the growing animosity felt between red and blue America. The United States has gone from a politics based on disagreement to one based on dislike, distrust, disrespect and often even disgust.”

Citing the Voelkel-Willer paper, Jay Van Bavel , a professor of psychology and neural science at N.Y.U., emailed me to express his belief that “there are solid, well-tested strategies for reducing affective polarization. These are possible on a large scale if there is sufficient political will.”

But Van Bavel quickly added that these strategies “are up against all the other factors that are currently driving conflict and animosity, including divisive leaders like Donald Trump, gerrymandering, hyperpartisan media (including social media), etc. It’s like trying to bail out the Titanic.”

Simply put, it is difficult, if not impossible, to attempt to counter polarization at a time when partisan sectarianism is intense and pervasive.

Bavel described polarization as

both an illness from various problems in our political system and an outcome. As a result, the solution is going to be extremely complex and involve different leadership (once Trump and his inner circle leave the scene, that will help a lot), as well as a number of structural changes (removing gerrymandering and other incentive structures that reinforce extremism).

Affective polarization, Bavel added,

is really just a disdain for the other political party. Political sectarianism seems to be an even worse form because now you see the other party as evil. Both of these are, of course, related to ideological polarization. But affective polarization and political sectarianism are different because they can make it impossible to cooperate with an opponent even when you agree. That’s why they are particularly problematic.

Stanley Feldman , a political scientist at Stony Brook University, pointed to another characteristic of polarization that makes it especially difficult to lower the temperature of the conflict between Republicans and Democrats: There are real, not imaginary, grounds for their mutual animosity.

In an email, Feldman wrote:

There is a reality to this conflict. There has been a great deal of social change in the U.S. over the past few decades. Gay marriage is legal, gender norms are changing, the country is becoming more secular, immigration has increased.

Because of this, Feldman added:

it’s a mistake to suggest this is like an illness or disease. We’re talking about people’s worldviews and beliefs. As much as we may see one side or the other to be misguided and a threat to democracy, it’s still important to try to understand and take seriously their perspective. And analogies to illness or pathology will not help to reduce conflict.

There are, in Feldman’s view,

two major factors that have contributed to this. First, national elections are extremely competitive now. Partisan control of the House and Senate could change at every election. Presidential elections are decided on razor-thin margins. This means that supporters of each party constantly see the possibility of losing power every election. This magnifies the perceived threat from the opposing party and increases negative attitudes toward the out-party.

The second factor?

The issues dividing the parties have changed. When the two parties fought over the size of government, taxes and social welfare programs, it was possible for partisans to imagine a compromise that is more or less acceptable even if not ideal. Compromise on issues like abortion, gender roles, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and the role of religion is much more difficult, so losing feels like more of a threat to people’s values. Feldman continued:

From a broader perspective, these issues, as well as immigration and the declining white majority, reflect very different ideas of what sort of society the United States should be. This makes partisan conflict feel like an existential threat to an “American” way of life. Losing political power then feels like losing your country. And the opposing parties become seen as dangers to society.

These legitimately felt fears and anxieties in the electorate provide a fertile environment for elected officials, their challengers and other institutional forces to exacerbate division.

As Feldman put it:

It’s also important to recognize the extent to which politicians, the media, social media influencers and others have exacerbated perceptions of threat from social change. Take immigration, for example. People could be reminded of the history of immigration in the U.S.: how immigrants have contributed to American society, how second and third generations have assimilated, how previous fears of immigration have been unfounded. Instead there are voices increasing people’s fear of immigration, suggesting that immigrants are a threat to the country, dangerous and even less than human. Discussions of a “great replacement” theory, supposed attacks on religion, dangers of immigration and changing gender norms undermining men’s place in society magnify perceptions of threat from social change. Cynical politicians have learned that they can use fear and partisan hostility to their political advantage. As long as they think this is a useful strategy, it will be difficult to begin to reduce polarization and partisan hostility.

In other words, as long as Trump is the Republican nominee for president and as long as the prospect of a majority-minority country continues to propel right-wing populism, the odds of reducing the bitter animosity that now characterizes American politics remain slim.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here's our email: [email protected] .

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Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Wednesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post. @ edsall

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Enduring Issues Essay Prewriting Process: How to Annotate and Contextualize Documents, Identify an Enduring Issue, and Construct a Pre-Writing Chart

A process for students to follow when preparing to write an enduring issues essay sketched out step-by-step.

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