The DDC has worked with PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement) to develop "Funding and Fostering Local Democracy," a guide designed to help the philanthropic community grapple with the question of how to support innovative and effective forms of democratic governance. The guide is free and can be downloaded here or on the DDC resources page.

The guide provides a detailed description of how local civic engagement has grown and developed over the past decade. The strategies described in the guide—and the stories of how communities have used them to break policy deadlock, reduce tension and galvanize volunteerism—can help funders, public officials and community activists better understand the possibilities, and limitations, of various approaches to working with the public.

Most citizen participation events fail to truly engage citizens and affect decisions. The Deliberative Democracy Handbook helps readers figure out which method of engagement is right for them and guides them through using the appropriate method. A top flight collection of experts critiques a wide range of deliberative practices to improve readers understanding of the best ways to bring citizens together to engage in thoughtful, respectful discussion of complex public issues.

The Deliberative Democracy Handbook is edited by John Gastil, faculty member of the University of Washington's Department of Communication, and Peter Levine, Research Scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy in the University of Maryland?s School of Public Policy. The book enjoys contributions from more than 40 scholars and practitioners in the field.

Learn more about "The Deliberative Democracy Handbook" and order the book online at Jossey-Bass Publishers.

“Leighninger brings outstanding credentials to his task of documenting the rise of democratic governance. Through his work with the Study Circles Resource Center, the National League of Cities, and many other civic organizations, Leighninger has helped hundreds of communities in 40 states launch local efforts to bring citizens to the table on many issues . . . The stories he tells are rooted in his own experience - he really knows these people and has worked side-by-side with many of them. He has learned why civic engagement initiatives work - and how they sometimes fail.”

Learn more about "The Next Form of Democracy" and purchase a copy from Vanderbilt University Press online.

In 1999, the first edition of The Change Handbook provided a snapshot of a nascent field that broke barriers by engaging "whole systems" of people from organizations and communities in creating their own future. In the last seven years, the field has exploded.

In this completely revised and updated second edition, lead authors Peggy Holman, Tom Devane, and Steven Cady profile sixty-one change methods--up from eighteen in the first edition. Nineteen of these methods are explored in depth, with case studies, answers to frequently asked questions, and details on the roles and responsibilities of the people involved, conditions for success, and more. This tremendously expanded second edition--400 pages longer, nearly twice the length of the first edition--will undoubtedly become the definitive resource in this rapidly expanding area.

The "Change Handbook" features descriptions of sixty-one change methods--up from eighteen in the first edition--and new chapters on selecting a method, mixing and matching methods, and sustaining results. It also describes each change method's essential concepts and processes and provides advice on when to use each method.

Including ninety contributors, with many of the originators of the change methods described.

Learn more about the book and read reviews at Barrett-Koehler Publishers online.

So persuasive is the power of the institutions we have created that they shape not only our preferences, but actually our sense of possibilities. --Ivan Illich

On May 8-10, 2002, I attended the conference hosted by AmericaSpeaks on Taking Democracy to Scale. The goal of the conference was to take deliberative dialogue, using all advanced technologies, to the national scale. Assembled at the conference was a diverse group of theoreticians, foundations, government officials, and practitioners to offer insight into how this might be achieved.

AmericaSpeaks is a non-profit organization that is designed to make the best use of innovative mechanisms that will allow citizens to reconnect to their representative institutions and have an impact on how policy is shaped. 

There were four questions that drove the conference:

1. What is the current state of knowledge and research in the field of deliberative democracy at the national level?
2. What are the opportunities for synergy and integration of face-to-face and online practices?
3. What are opportunities and challenges to institutionalizing deliberative democracy on a national scale?
4. What are areas for experimentation and research that require investment to advance the field?