The Deliberative Democracy Consortium

A report summarizing the ways in which community organizing and deliberative democracy are converging, the remaining differences, and overarching priorities shared by both strands of active civic engagement.

neighborhood governance report

This is a collaborative document about public deliberation. It was created in a way appropriate to its subject matter. It does not have named authors because it emerged from interviews, face-to-face discussions, and a mode of collaboration called a “wiki” (in which many people edit one document online). We do not have a precise count of the contributors, some of whom were anonymous, but the number certainly exceeds 35. The whole process was organized by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) and supported by the Charles Kettering Foundation, which is a DDC member.The purpose of this report is to derive lessons from more than four years of discussions and research projects. In 2003, the DDCDDCDDC convened leading researchers and practitioners at a meeting on public deliberation. The goal of the meeting was to improve collaboration between the two communities and to advance the field of public deliberation by building knowledge. At this meeting and two subsequent face-to-face conferences (2005 and 2007), researchers and practitioners formed a network and undertook several key activities: to identify important unanswered questions about public deliberation, to rank these questions in importance, to develop joint projects that would contribute answers, and to report back on their research findings.

An outline of key aims and activities of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium over the next 5 years.

Report to the Deliberative Democracy Consortium by Peter Muhlberger.