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Politics of Love in Action Research – Hilary Bradbury (2026)

I join the average citizen today who may despair that politics is not delivering what we need given our global problems. I also join AR+ Yes/And Podcast co-host Dr. Thomas Boatwright to talk about this work. The link to the podcast is also below.

This paper grapples with creating a new culture of politics at a time when our challenges and eco-crises seem to disappear into media tirades and grandstanding among politicians. Bradbury (2026) offers an entirely different path forward. It’s something way smaller, more personal and honestly a lot more surprising than we often hear about.

I introduce the concept and practice of developmental friendship, which is fundamentally about speeding up the process of personal growth while simultaneously targeting organizational and social innovation. Aristotle who referred to all people as zoon politicon (political animals), might call it friendship of virtue. 

What has developmental friendship got to do with real-life politics?

My invitation to developmental friendship kicked off a multi-year experiment with a group of European politicians. Instead of only debating policy for the green recovery they were working on, I asked them, also, to analyze their own behaviors, their own biases, their own ways of interacting, especially amongst themselves and with citizen groups. In other words, I asked them to become the subjects of their own action research.

Wow is not a formal action research term, but the initial invitation evoked consternation.  Politicians, quick-witted by nature, saw the call to action as a call for self-scrutiny. Agonized questioning was imagined about role in a system, landing as “Wow and Oh No!” So, then – and here’s the key part – to get going we had to model the potential. Transparent deliberation was encouraged. The question boiled down to how, fundamentally, does anything change if we don’t change how we work with one another? OK, it was time to turn the camera around on themselves. No surprise that it took the politicians and policy makers nearly an hour of debating to agree to try it on.  And congratulations to us, a majority did agree and a first group of volunteers stepped up to start the process.

What really is this new way of relating?

Developmental friendship aims to tackle the very issue that may seem so obvious as to be overlooked, namely that decision makers, unable to collaborate, can begin to see and transform their own habits of refusing feedback, hoarding power and avoiding inquiry.

They – and we – start here, with themselves and ourselves. I made a mobile assessment available, keyed to an algorithm of global data on leadership development. Each person could equip themselves to start with a personal report on their habits with power, feedback and inquiry. Each could then design for themselves an experiment in developmental friendship. Most were amazed at the gap between how they wish to act and how they actually act.

In an action interview, each then discussed their habits and designed a personalized path for working a bit differently within the group. Start with facilitation, each used the following as design parameters for developmental friendship. Staying formally focused on their work task (say tax policy) they ALSO agreed to:

1) engage in shared work, i.e., allowing that others offer necessary perspectives;

2) bring high relational regard toward one another i.e., especially when goodwill fails

3) allow oneself to become more known to one another; e.g., sharing decision-making transparently;

4) commit to self-development through reflexivity, e.g., starting with the assessment and asking for feedback, sharing power and being in conscious inquiry;

5) experience a quest that increases – and requires – mutuality on the way to a more sustainable world, e.g., noticing the small wins in which accomplishments are collective;

6) recognize the significant role of a “third” presence – namely facilitation and/then the community of co-practitioners, by, e.g., respecting engagement agreements.

The core idea of this entire experiment wasn’t about crafting better arguments or replacing bad decision makers with good. It’s about becoming conscious of sharing space with others to transform political decision-making. This happened through self-scrutiny and invite new perspectives. 

New cultures don’t land from the heavens. Those willing to do the really hard (private) work of looking in the mirror at their own habits of power hoarding, lack of transparency and inability to work with feedback – it is those people who bring a new political culture into reality.

The work described went well and is, obviously, but a drop in the ocean of what is needed for meaningful political response to global eco-social crises. And yet. If we consider that a series of Irish citizen assemblies starting in 2016 helped shift a former repressive theocracy toward a bright light of democratizing culture within just a decade (Irish Citizens Assembly project, 2020), then small groups in conversations with avenues to politicians’ decision-making matter greatly. Consider that citizen assemblies might be, in the terms of this paper, described as “developmental friendship” processes.

This work has wide applicability to human groups intent on important work. These may be in businesses or in intentional community, in other words where any groups of agentic individuals are seeking to live/work in more learning oriented and ecologically minded ways.

The contribution of the paper lies in bringing a psychologically and interpersonally toned approach that complements technical and economically focused understandings of transformation. Read the details, including an occasional need to burst into song when facilitating…!

P.S., this article was selected for the special issue on Mindset Transformations for Action Research by Dr. Simon Divecha. 

Link to podcast

Forever Citation Link

Bradbury, H. (2026). Culturing Developmental Friendship for a Politics of Love. Action Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/14767503251398480

Brief media presentation of the ideas in Bradbury 2026