The Knowledge Building task group of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium is led by Archon Fung (Harvard University) and Peter Levine (CIRCLE).  The mission of this task group is:

To increase the quantity, quality and availability of knowledge about the theory and practice of deliberative democracy through: (1) setting the scholarly research agenda, (2)  conducting high-quality research and experimentation on deliberative democratic practices, and (3) collecting and distributing knowledge about theory and practice to researchers and practitioners.

Major goals identified include:

• Increase academic research and experimentation on deliberative democratic practices and shape the agenda for that research and experimentation.
• Expand discussion of such experiments in scholarly work on deliberation and democracy.
• Improve knowledge and understanding of how deliberative democratic institutions function, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of various models.
• Increase information about the outcomes of deliberative processes and highlight their value to various constituencies.
• Develop better assessment tools.
• Increase interaction and communication amongst researchers and practitioners and develop an ongoing network among them.

Connecting Practitioners & Researchers:
In 2003, the Knowledge Building task group convened leading researchers and practitioners to set a research agenda for the field and to promote collaborative research endeavors.  Critical Research needed to advance the field included the following priorities:

1. How does design & structure affect quality of deliberative process & outcomes?
2. Under what conditions does deliberation impact public policy (success, failures, conditions)?
3. Outcomes of deliberation other than policy outcomes?
4. How do we measure deliberation and norms?
5. What is relationship between deliberation and advocacy/public involvement?
6. What can deliberative democracy movement learn from other social movements?
7. What is public’s interest in deliberation?
8. How can deliberation be scaled? (multilevel deliberation) and institutionalized?

Teams of researchers and practitioners developed a set of 15 research projects that would address some of the critical questions facing the field.  The projects were developed into full proposals by the research teams that each contained at least one researcher and one practitioner.  The DDC Steering Committee reviewed the proposals and based upon the 12 proposals received, selected five projects to fund:

Norms of Deliberation
The goal of this project is to clarify the norms of good deliberation, beginning with the insights of members. The project is completely inductive, trying to discover and name what is already “out there” in practice.

Advocacy and Deliberation
This project will explore advocacy and deliberation as two approaches to public participation. These approaches may turn out to be conflicting, mutually supportive, or perhaps subject to fruitful combinations.  This project has the potential to aid a movement for deliberative democracy. If deliberation turns out to have value for advocates, then it might be used on a much larger scale, since in all countries advocacy is much more common than work on promoting deliberation.

Map of the Field
A widely recognized gap in the field of deliberative democracy is the lack of a synthesis of the purposes and design of various methods for deliberation that are employed around the world, and the policy environments in which they occur. The “mapping” of the field will produce a typology of methods, taxonomy for organizing information, and a single document that brings methods together in an accessible format.

Journal of Public Deliberation
This project will create a publication to expand and synergize the field of deliberative democracy.

Building a Deliberation Measurement Toolbox
This project aims to identify and compare means for measuring and recording the deliberative quality of public dialogue and the individual consequences of such deliberation. That is, to provide a toolkit of measures of the quality of deliberation ("deliberativeness") and deliberation outcomes, such as increased political sophistication. And, the project will test some of the more promising measures. This project builds on the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation’s (NCDD) Evaluation Tool Project, as well as preliminary empirical work to define and operationalize deliberation.

2005 Researcher & Practitioner Conference
In 2005, the Knowledge Building task task group convened another Researcher & Practitioner meeting to identify new opportunities for learning, building upon the 2003 research agenda.  DDC is in the process of soliciting a second round of research proposals to be considered for another round of grant awards.