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Deliberative Democracy eBulletin v.7 no.1 January 22, 2008
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In a new feature of the eBulletin, an organization deeply involved in the practice and movement for deliberative democracy will be featured in a closing "Spotlight" feature. This month, in the wake of New York City Mayor Bloomberg's presidential campaign buzz, we feature Public Agenda.
Thank you,
lars
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lars hasselblad torres
editor, ddc ebulletin
*** FROM THE BLOG ***
1 | On How To Measure Deliberation
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John Gastil writes that he and colleagues have finished the first draft of a chapter on how to measure the degree to which a small group has deliberated. It will appear in late 2008 in the Sourcebook of Political Communication Research: Methods, Measures, and Analytical Techniques, edited by Lance Holbert and to be published by Routledge. The authors would be delighted to receive comments, suggestions for revisions or additions, and so on. In particular, if you have used a particular technique to measure deliberation (quantitatively or qualitatively), they’d love to take a look at it and reference it in the chapter.
2 | Organizing Heaven - Remembering John Parr
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Reader Bill remembers a close friend and colleague of many in the deliberation field who died tragically late last year. "I don’t know what heaven is like, but I know it has changed recently. John Parr, mentor, colleague and friend, recently entered; much too early as they say. Remembrances of John as well as of Sandy, his wife, and Chase, his daughter have been circulating on the internet, our town square for dispersed communities. John, one of my colleagues, said he was one of the nicest persons he ever knew. That refrain has been common. So too was the observation that Denver and Colorado are better places because of John’s leadership and passion; because of his sense of how to bring people together — powerful people and ordinary citizens – to find the common good.
3 | A Fresh Source of Energy
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Deliberation blogger Joe Goldman posts an excerpt of a recent op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle: "What our democratic republic needs are renewed sources of energy - especially informed citizen engagement - as well as improved filtering devices to supplement political parties, labor unions and some traditional civic associations that are no longer adequate to the task. Until we re-engage the people’s participation in fulfilling their civic responsibilities, not just enjoying their constitutional rights, this government will be underpowered and off course."
*** OTHER NEWS ***
4 | Journal of Public Deliberation
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Volume 4 of the Journal of Public Deliberation is available online through Berkeley Press. Articles include, "Public Deliberation as the Organizing Principle of Political Communication" by John Gastil and Laura W. Black; "Just Talk: Public Deliberation After 9/11" by Francesca Polletta; "Identifying Deliberation in Social Movement Assemblies: Challenges of Comparative Participant Observation" by Christoph Haug and Simon Teune; and "The Civic Benefits of Imperfect Deliberation" by Marcia F. Grimes among others.
5 | News from the iSolon
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6 | [Conference] Alternative Practices in Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy
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The Transformative Learning Centre (TLC) Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (OISE/UT) has extended its abstract submission deadline to March 2, 2008 for an interesting conference October 16-18, 2008 on participatory democracy. The conference organizers hope to draw participation from different sectors, including researchers, educators in K-12, higher education and adult education, community development workers, urban planners, community organizers and a variety of governmental and non-governmental organizations invested in improving local democracy, and particularly capacity building for local democracy.
7 | [Conference] Nexus II
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Nexus II is coming this March to Bowling Green, OH March 30 to April 1. Last year, over 300 people from around the world who are engaged in whole systems change work gathered to share how we might apply what we know to the current global situation. They are gathering again this March to move the work forward. The purpose of the gathering is to share what is known and what is being learned to enhance competencies for action in these times. A Preconference Intensive March 29 to March 30 will provide a focused experience that will add concrete knowledge to participants' "toolkits" for transforming whole systems.
8 | New Charrette Institute Blog
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The National Charrette Institute (NCI) invites you to inquire, share and learn about charrettes and NCI Dynamic Planning at their new blog, the National Charrette Institute Community Forum. The blog contains dozens of tips, tools and techniques from NCI’s monthly e-newsletters, now categorized and searchable. The blog is intended to be a place for discussion, shared learning and problem solving for those interested in Dynamic Planning and charrettes around the world. Active posts are open for comment, and NCI welcomes feedback and personal stories from experience. Readers are encouraged to use "Contact" pages for questions, “war stories,” and success stories.
The NCI Community Forum can be found at http://www.charretteinstitute.org/blog.
9 | Call for Papers: Knowledge Politics and Converging Technologies
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May 6-7, 2008 the EU-funded social science program Knowledge Politics Converging Technologies will gather in Brussels to, "reflect on the meaning and implications of knowledge politics in general; and to draw out theoretical conclusions about how knowledge politics in the field of life sciences and converging technologies can be expected to impact on science and research, on the one hand, and on democratic deliberative institutional practices, on the other hand. Theoretical papers and papers based on empirical research are welcome from academics working in the field and practitioners from civil society, industry and public policy. Comparisons of knowledge policies and politics across scientific fields or countries are encouraged. For a full description of the abstract submissions request, please visit: http://www.converging-technologies.org/events.html
10 | How Can We Build Political Will for Participatory Governance? CIVICUS Wants to Hear Your Success Stories
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The goal of the CIVICUS Participatory Governance (PG) programme is to build the capacity of CSO practitioners and government counterparts to promote citizen participation in processes of public decision-making that affect their lives. On June 17-18 2008, immediately prior to the CIVICUS World Assembly in Glasgow, Scotland, the PG programme will host a 2-day global workshop on the theme of “How can we build political will for participatory governance?”. In preparation for this event, CIVICUS is currently looking for examples of how implementers of PG who have faced initial resistance on the part of state actors, or started from a situation of antagonism between citizens/CSOs and the state, were able to improve those relationships and build genuine political will for participatory governance approaches.
Please share your ideas or examples by writing to governance@civicus.org. PG practitioners/specialists who have submitted ideas or case studies (especially those from the global South) will be considered to receive a bursary to participate in this event and to join the CIVICUS PG community of practice.
11 | News from the National Civic League
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All-America City Awards Application Deadline February 29, 2008 The 2008 All-America City Award Application is available at http://www.ncl.org/aac/2008/application_options.html The next online briefing is January 15. Sign up by contacting Kristin Seavey at kristins@ncl.org. MetLife Foundation Ambassadors In Education Awards Program Seeks Principal Nominations, Deadline March 7, 2008 NCL has issued a call for nominations of exemplary middle- and high-school principals who connect school and community. Winners will be named Ambassadors In Education and earn $5,000 grants for their schools. Principals in 25 public school districts are eligible. http://www.ncl.org/metlife/2008/Press%20releases/Nominations%20releases/National1.doc Most Requested Publications The 8th Edition of the Model City Charter and 2nd Edition of The Civic Index were NCL's most requested publications for 2007. Copies available at http://ncl.org/publications/
12 | 2008 CARE Grant RFP from the USEPA
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Around $3 million will be available in 2008 to support community-based partnerships to reduce pollution at the local level through the Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) program. EPA anticipates awarding CARE cooperative agreements in two levels. Level I cooperative agreements range from $75,000 to $100,000 and will help establish community-based partnerships to develop local environmental priorities. Level II awards, ranging from $150,000 to $300,000 each, will support communities which have established broad-based partnerships, have identified the priority toxic risks in the community, and are prepared to measure results, implement risk reduction activities, and become self-sustaining.
This year the application time line has been extended to 3 months and the deadline is March 17, 2008. The CARE website has additional information related to the CARE RFP, including our upcoming Q&A Webcasts, so also visit: http://www.epa.gov/CARE
13 | 2008 Politics Online Conference
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The Politics Online Conference sits at the intersection of smart politics, good governance, transparent democracy, and innovative technology, spotlighting tools, applications, strategies, and ideas that affect a range of functions, from writing policy to organizing democratic movements to running a smarter political campaign to building dialogue with your constituents. People come to the Politics Online Conference to learn about cutting-edge trends and to gain access to the visionaries who make those trends possible. They come to find solutions. They come to discuss their ideas with other experts in the field and outside the Beltway. And they come to network.
The 2008 Politics Online Conference will be held at a new location, the Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel March 4th through 5th 2008. To learn more and to register, visit:
14 | eDemocracyCamp (A Barcamp On E-Democracy)
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eDemocracyCamp will take place March 1-2, 2008 in Washington DC - the weekend before the 2008 Politics Online Conference (see above). A barcamp is a free, open, and highly participatory conference/workshop, at which both the agenda and the content are completely attendee-driven (oftentimes in an ad hoc fashion the day of the event). The barcamp movement started in 2005 in Palo Alto, CA, and barcamps are now being held all across the world. Read this description on Wikipedia for more details and the history of this format: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp
If you live in the greater DC area or know anyone there who is an e-democracy enthusiast, please help spread the word. Organizers are hoping to attract a diverse audience (people from the political, non-profit, government, and education/research sector, techies/geeks as well as -- most importantly -- ordinary citizens). More information online at:
15 | International Journal of Public Deliberation
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Issue 2 (Winter 2007) of the newly produced International Journal of Public Deliberation is available online. In this edition, a broad range of authors explore a variety of very interesting topics related to public deliberation, among them John Gastil and Todd Kelshaw ("When Citizens and Officeholders Meet: Variations in the Key Elements of Public Meetings"), James Price Dillard and Steven J. Backhaus ("Civic Deliberation, Emotional Response, and Political Involvement") and Matt McKinney and Will Harmon ("Governing Nature, Governing Ourselves: Engaging Citizens in Natural Resource Decisions").
16 | Homeland Security at the Local Level - An Assessment of Opportunities and Challenges for Collaboration
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In April of 2006, the Center for Collaborative Policy at California State University Sacramento, in partnership with the Institute for Local Government’s Collaborative Governance Initiative, convened a process to engage local homeland security providers in California with key state and federal agency representatives to help discover and define the needs of local officials dealing with multiple emergency management and homeland security challenges – specifically with regard to requirements for public engagement and other key stakeholder interaction across multiple grant programs and jurisdictions. A focus group workshop and subsequent interviews uncovered concerns that the administrative apparatus at the federal and state levels currently does not adequately support the broad mandate of local governments for all-hazards emergency management. The direct outcome of the stakeholder discourse was development of a discussion paper in 2007: "An Assessment of Collaborative Challenges and Possibilities for Emergency Services and Homeland Security at the Local Level."
The discussion paper proposes eight areas for further elaboration and action, which include convening a diverse statewide forum of government jurisdictions, developing a template for stakeholder involvement, increasing public awareness and participation, training, linking new and existing networks, providing collaborative policy development tools, developing strategic planning templates at each level of government to accommodate public involvement, and exploring interest to initiate a dialogue among statewide associations of public officials. This project was partially supported by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
17 | [Conference] Toward Collaborative Governance in California
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Across California, innovative methods of civic engagement -- deliberative democracy, public policy consensus-building, mediation and more -- are being used to resolve land use disputes, set budgeting priorities, and construct the public's policy agenda. This conference presents a unique opportunity to hear from the practitioners and government officials who have firsthand experience with this collaborative "New Governance", and the scholars who study it.
The one-day conference is sponsored by the UC Hastings College of the Law, the Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution and the Center for State and Local Government. It will take place Friday, February 1, 2008 8:30 am to 6 pm at Hastings College of Law, 198 McAllister Street, San Francisco. For further information, contact Jolynn Jones, jonesj@uchastings.edu or call 415.581-8941
18 | [Spotlight] Changing Business As Usual In American Politics?
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There was the potential for big campaign news coming out of Oklahoma the weekend before the Iowa Caucuses if New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had announced his candidacy for the Presidency at a conference addressing the crippling effects of bipartisanship hosted by former Senator David L. Boren. But in a pre-conference statement from its president, Public Agenda says that neither a third-party candidate nor the efforts of a few Washington insiders are likely to impact a problem that requires citizens to be part of the solution.
“Until leaders invest trust in the American people, create more opportunities for average citizens to explore issues from multiple points of view and help them confront the facts of our nation’s greatest challenges through dialogue, our government will remain shackled by political maneuvering and gamesmanship,” said Public Agenda President Ruth A. Wooden. “Remember, parties are made of people. So until there is substantial change in the way our citizens are engaged in policy issues, efforts to overcome partisanship will, at best, shift who controls the bully pulpit.”
To see an example of public dialogue at work on one of the most vexing problems, visit http://www.FacingUp.org. The site profiles nonpartisan efforts to engage citizens around the country in “Facing Up to the Nation’s Finances.” |
