by John Gastil

Take note, fellow deliberationistas. The value of deliberation has become more widely apparent, finding its way into its first rallying cry. And it comes from the right, which some have wondered might be more skeptical about the deliberative democracy movement. The anti-tax protests organized for April 15 were the site of the "no taxation without deliberation" slogan, shown here on one protestor's sign.

As in this brief letter from an Indianan, you can see the gist of the argument.
 
The idea is that we are making enormous fiscal decisions without sufficient deliberation. On that point, I have some sympathy, for what deliberation has taken place within government is not always readily visible to the general public, and there certainly has not been much public bi-partisan deliberation on display.
 
When we get to the root of the problem, though, I think we will find some political elites actively obstructing or opposing deliberation, particularly when they anticipate ending up in the minority on the decisions being made. By refusing to publicly deliberate, it leaves open the chance to complain about the lack of deliberation.
 
In practice, it is hard to know whether the complaint about insufficient deliberation is a legitimate complaint or just sour grapes. By analogy, when political parties withdraw from elections in developing countries, sometimes it's clear that they are protesting what will be a rigged elections, but other times, it appears they are simply avoiding an embarrassing defeat.
 
I think one more task to add to the ToDoList of deliberationistas is coming up with metrics for judging the deliberative-ness of entire branches of government on different issues. If we could assess deliberative quality in such a way, it might give more credence (or less) to future calls for More Deliberation before Taxation.

There is a strong connection between the way people feel about their community and the economic vitality of that city or town - this is one of the key findings of an important new study, "Soul of the Community," conducted by Gallup for the Knight Foundation. The researchers surveyed people in the 26 communities served by the Knight Foundation, which range from big cities like Detroit and Miami to smaller places such as Milledgeville, GA, and State College, PA. In almost every case, there was a statistically viable relationship between "community-citizen engagement" and economic growth. You can find out more here.

Three evaluations of the CaliforniaSpeaks statewide effort on health care have been combined into one report on the project's impacts and lessons learned. CaliforniaSpeaks involved over 3,500 residents in eight cities, linked by satellite, in a day-long deliberation on August 11, 2007. The research was conducted by three teams of evaluators. Archon Fung (Harvard) and Taeku Lee (Berkeley) studied the effects on participants, Harder + Company Community Research evaluated the effects on policymakers, and Harbage Consulting weighed the impacts on policy outcomes. The full report is available at the AmericaSpeaks web-site. 

An excellent new study describes the use of online tools to enable public involvement between elections. "E-Consultation: Enabling Democracy Between Elections" was written by Joe Peters and Manon Abud of Ascentum, the Ottawa-based organization that has done pioneering work to combine online and face-to-face approaches in democratic governance. The study was released by the Institute for Research on Public Policy and is available at http://www.irpp.org/choices/archive/vol15no1.pdf.

Jim Diers, who used to direct the neighborhood governance work for the City of Seattle, has a terrific new paper out about the challenges and opportunities of involving citizens in neighborhood problem-solving. Jim argues that “People will get involved to the extent that the effort is fun, shows results, utilizes the gifts that everyone has to offer, and starts where people are – their network, their passion, their block. Government and other agencies can help to build community capacity by operating in ways that are neighbourhood-focused, strength-based, and community driven.” The Community’s Role in Addressing Street-Level Social Issues is a publication of the Canada West Foundation; you can find it here.

The National Conference on Citizenship just put out its third Civic Health Index. Lots of really interesting stuff, including:

• 87% of the American public support giving every young person the opportunity to earn tuition money by completing a year of national or community service

• 80% of the American public favor holding a national deliberation on a major issue and requiring Congress to respond to what citizens say

• 76% would like to see service-learning (combinations of classroom learning and community service) required in schools

• 67% would strengthen civic education by requiring new tests in the subject

At AmericaSpeaks, we’ve been waiting to see national polling results on what people think about the idea of conducting national discussions for a long time. It’s great to see that 80% number. What is really interesting is that the 80% goes across ideological lines. 60% of Republicans were “strongly in favor” and 70% of Democrats were “strongly in favor.” Support was strong across demographic groups.

Thanks so much to everyone at the National Conference on Citizenship for bringing this data to light. Lots of other interesting stuff. Check it out.