Monthly Archives: December 2013

Government Crowdstorming with the Public

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What ever you call it, crowdstorming, ideation, or online idea generation, it’s my observation that this technique is the second most often used online method for governments to engage the public, after social media (like Facebook and Twitter). Government hosted crowdstorming is usually focused on generating ideas, and sorting them by public preference via votes.

The latest uses of these tools move away from asking the public to contribute many, many ideas for the government to sort through and perhaps act on. Ideation is now commonly used for internal engagement where government employees can make suggestions for improving the workplace and work products. Ideation is also being used in challenge competitions where government agencies use prizes to stimulate innovation to advance their core missions.

Why So Popular?

Nonetheless, it’s a useful tool to gain public input in early stages of policy development or program design. Why is it so popular? Well, here’s a few thoughts:

  • Easy to participate at any level of commitment. You can vote on an idea, comment or submit an idea yourself
  • Transparent without the risk of needing to engage with everything you hear. Good moderation recognizes participation, encourages participants to define their ideas and why they are important, and ignores ranters/ragers/trolls.
  • Shared ownership with the community. The community decides what’s most popular. The convener decides what they are going to do with those ideas (e.g. host an ideaslam for the top 10, use a public list of criteria to select 3 out of the top 10 to receive funding, etc.)
  • Proven. It’s easier to convince your leadership or colleagues to take a risk by engaging the public online when others have done it before you.

IBM Crowdsourcing Gov Cover

Resources

Thinking about doing it yourself? Here’s a few great resources from IBM’s Center for the Business of Government:

Top Five Considerations

Shaun Abrahmson, author of the book Crowdstorm: The Future of Innovation, Ideas, and Problem Solving, recently shared with the Huffingon Post his top five things to think about in setting up a project:

1. A great question – Solve a real problem, make it easy to communicate and share, and make it clear to potential participants

2. Rewards – How will you reward the best – sometimes tricky mix of good, attention, money, experience and stuff (games)

3. Recruiting – Your outcomes are only as good as your ability to reach and motivate loads of people who might be able to solve your problem

4. Choosing the best – You need to be clear on this so you can deliver fairly on your promises

5. Delivery – If you want to be able to work with crowds again, you need to be able to not just deliver rewards, but put the ideas/plans/prototypes into action (very often this is where crowdstorming fails)

Tools

There are lots of tools you can use for online crowdstorming including: IdeaScale, UserVoice, Spigit, Delib Dialogue App, Bubble Ideas, Salesforce Ideas, Mindmixer, Thoughtstream, OpenIdeo and more.

Examples

Here’s a small list of government-led ideation projects asking the public for their ideas. Know of others? Please leave them in the comments.

Government of BC Education Plan. 2012

USA Federal Communications Commission. 2010

UK Coalition Government’s Your Freedom Project, which was the world’s biggest ever political crowdsourcing project, gathering 10,000′s ideas from over 40,000 people, and with over 500,000 visits to the site
and the lessons learned from Delib, their engagement shop

City of Vancouver, Talk Green To Us. 2011
(not supported anymore so the layout is weird but the content is the same)

The following three were hosted by National Academy of Public Administration, which is a Congressionally chartered, non-profit, non-partisan institution

Open Government Dialogue on behalf of the Obama Administration. 2009
Lots was learned from this one, the highest profile test at that time

The National Dialogue On Health Information Technology and Privacy on behalf of the Bush Administration’s Office of Management and Budget
Disclosure: I worked on this
Video overview

The National Dialogue on Green and Healthy Homes on behalf of National Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning and the Department of Housing and Urban Development

Manor Labs, Texas

Improve San Francisco, 2010

Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygene. 2012
and a description from the vendor, Spigit

City of Seattle. Share YOUR ideas for a better Seattle. 2010

Government of Ireland, Your Country, Your Call. 2010

Opportunity to Contribute to IIAS Study Group

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We hope that you will consider taking advantage of a significant opportunity that NCDD Sustaining Member Dr. Tina Nabatchi shared with us recently from the International Institute of Administrative Sciences. Her study group is seeking paper submissions, and it could be a great way for some of you NCDDers to contribute to the field while also getting your work out there. For more information, read the full announcement below or find the original here.

Call for papers for the IIAS study group on ‘Co-production of public services’

IIAS WG logo

The IIAS Study Group on ‘Coproduction of Public Services’ is organizing its second open meeting. Our aim is to create and nurture an intellectual platform for the theoretical discussion and empirical analysis of coproduction and its implications for the organization and management of public services.

Topic 
Coproduction refers to the involvement of both citizens and public sector professionals in the delivery of public services. Although countries differ in the extent to which citizens play a role in the provision of public services, the idea of coproduction is gaining ground around the world. Financial crises, austerity in public finances, and growing doubts about the legitimacy of both the public sector and the market, have led numerous governments to involve and cooperate with citizens and civil society in the production of public services. Unfortunately, practice is leading both theory and research, and there is a need to bring together theoretical insights and empirical data to enable a better understanding of public service coproduction. Specifically, this study group is interested in:

  1. Coproduction in different national and policy contexts. What ideological and normative stances about the role of government shape the debate on coproduction? What variations are seen across the policy fields in which coproduction takes place? What variations are seen in national (western and non-western) structures of service provision, and what factors explain this variation?
  2. The organization and structure of public service organizations. Do existing structures enhance or work against coproduction?  How can public service organizations be better structured to utilize coproduction processes and approaches?
  3. Challenges of coproduction for the work of public sector professionals. How can professionals find ways to meaningfully interact with people using and coproducing services? What are the (dis)incentives for professionals in promoting and using coproduction?
  4. The role, capacity, and willingness of citizens to engage in coproduction. What characteristics distinguish citizen-coproducers from passive service recipients? What motivates citizens to engage in coproduction?
  5. The potential benefits and pitfalls of directly involving citizens in the production of public services. What is the impact of coproduction on efficiency, democratization, responsiveness, accountability of public service delivery?
  6. The way in which coproduction is accommodated in public law and/or constitutional law. How do various legal frameworks support (or not) coproduction? How can law be enhanced to further and sustain coproduction activities?
  7. The relationship between public spending and coproduction. What financial models can be used to nurture coproduction? Can coproduction compensate for the withdrawal of public spending in times of financial crisis, or does collaboration with citizen-users demand additional resources?
  8. What are the implications of a service-recipient/coproducer dominant approach to public services for the further study of public administration? What insights can be brought in from other disciplines, such as political science, law, economics, psychology, sociology and history? What insights can be gathered from complementing research on coproduction with research on active citizenship, service management and customer engagement, or citizen self-organization?

Meeting Format 
The meeting will open with keynotes by Prof. Elio Borgonovi, Professor of Economics and Management of Public Administration at the Bocconi University and Prof. Tony Bovaird, Professor of Public Management and Policy at the University of Birmingham.

The meeting will consist of individual paper presentations and conclude with a round table discussion about the study group’s plan for future intercontinental collaboration in coproduction research.

The goal of the study group is to shed light on the current theory, research, and practice of coproduction. Therefore, we welcome both theoretical and empirical papers on all topics addressed above. We also invite scholars to use a variety of disciplinary analyses: public administration, political science, law, economics, psychology, sociology, and history among others. Interdisciplinary papers are also welcomed.

As a study group of IIAS, we seek to establish an intercontinental discussion, and therefore invite scholars from both western and non-western settings to submit paper abstracts. Submissions are particularly encouraged from doctoral students working on the topic of coproduction.

Output 
The study group co-chairs aim at providing outlet for papers presented at the meeting, most likely through a special issue in an international public administration journal. A special issue of IRAS (International Review of Administrative Sciences) is in process, as a result of the successful first meeting of the study group, which was held in The Hague last May.

Moreover, the study group aims at setting up close intercontinental collaboration among coproduction scholars beyond the scope of this meeting, including the development and sharing a database of international cases on coproduction and strategies to enable effective interaction between professionals and citizen-users in the production of public services. In addition to special issues of international journals, the study group is exploring the possibility of a book project at the closing of its three-year (2013-2015) collaboration.

Date and Location 
The meeting of the Study Group on Coproduction of Public Services will take place in Bergamo, Italy from May 20 to 21, 2014.

Cost
The registration fee is 100 Euro. Participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodations.

Submissions 
Please submit abstracts (maximum 600 words) by March 15th, 2014 to mariafrancesca.sicilia@unibg.it and t.p.s.steen@cdh.leidenuniv.nl.

Participants will be notified of acceptance by March 31st. Full papers should be submitted by May 10th.

Organization
The IIAS study group on ‘Coproduction of Public Services’ is co-chaired by Trui Steen (Leiden University, the Netherlands and KU Leuven, Belgium), Tina Nabatchi (Syracuse University, US) and Dirk Brand (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa). The second meeting of the study group is organized by Mariafransesca Sicilia (University of Bergamo, Italy).

The Ecuador Free/Libre Open Knowledge Project Seeks Your Help

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Readers of my blog may recall the announcement several months ago of Michel Bauwens’ appointment to head a strategic research project for the government of Ecuador. Under the auspices of the Free/Libre Open Knowledge (FLOK) Society Research Project, Bauwens and a small team have embarked upon an ambitious effort to imagine how to “remake the roots of Ecuador’s economy, setting off a transition into a society of free and open knowledge.” 

The Project is now seeking the help of people around the world who are engaged in transformative social change inspired by open knowledge, co-operation, and the building of commons.  Here is a lengthy excerpt from the FLOK Society’s letter:

Our aim is to finalize proposals to be presented at a conference in April 2014, which will bring together the President, government officials, civil society participants, and global experts on the commons. The project received its impulse from IAEN Rector Carlos Prieto, Project Leaders Xabier E. Barandiaran & Daniel Vázquez, and Research Director Michel Bauwens.

Here is the link to the FLOK Society project: http://www.floksociety.org

The project seeks the involvement and input of local civil society, but also includes an explicit appeal to the global co-operative and commons movements to assist us with advice and policy proposals. It is our belief that the Ecuadorian people will be inspired by the best of what is happening abroad, in all countries of the world. Hence our appeal to you, global co-operators and commoners.

If you are engaged in transformative social change that is inspired by open knowledge, co-operation, and the building of commons for the well being of all, we ask you to send us information and benchmark proposals on leading local or global initiatives in your area of expertise.

Imagine a society that is connected to open knowledge commons in every domain of human activity, based on free and open knowledge, code, and design that can be used by all citizens along with government and market players without the discrimination and disempowerment that follows from privatized knowledge.

read more

Will Crowdsourcing Revolutionize Government?

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Our partners at the Davenport Institute recently shared a fascinating article via their Gov 2.0 Watch blog on the growing use of “crowd-sourcing” to seek the public’s help with government tasks. This innovative approach is definitely a way to engage the public, just not in the form we’re used to seeing. Read more below or find the original post here.

DavenportInst-logoJohn M. Kamensky, Sr. Fellow with the IBM Center for the Business of Government offers insight on how governments are embracing crowd-sourcing and how it can be used to best effect:

Most government leaders are restlessly on the search for new ideas, for innovation, for whatever is next. It may be their good luck that this is shaping up to be a Golden Age for engaging citizens, customers and employees. For evidence of this, one need look no further than the rapidly expanding use of “crowdsourcing.” This social-media tool is going mainstream in many communities as a source of innovative ideas.

. . . In the government sphere, crowdsourcing is an approach that uses online tools to break a problem down into manageable tasks and engages people to voluntarily help produce those results, according to Daren C. Brabham, a scholar at the University of Southern California who is following this phenomenon.

You can read more here.

tenured and tenure-track professors are worse teachers?

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(Providence, RI) According to a new paper by David Figlio, Morton Schapiro, and Kevin Soter,* if you take a class with a non-tenure track (contingent) professor, you are more likely to choose to take another class in the same subject and you will get a higher grade on that next class than if you studied with a tenured professor or someone on the tenure track. You are especially likely to benefit from having a contingent professor if you scored relatively low on academic measures before the course.

The measures of success seem reasonably persuasive, and the method seems tight. (The authors compare first-semester students, who generally don’t pick their instructors, and they look at changes in the same students’ grades over time.) The main limitation is that the study only involves Northwestern University, which is certainly not typical of American higher education and could have quirks other than just being highly selective and well-resourced.

It’s also possible that the tenure-track and contingent faculty differ in other ways than their tenure status. I would like to see the results adjusted for the age of professor. I don’t want to be ageist, but that could be a factor, and given the ban on mandatory retirements and the demographics of the tenured professoriate today, it could just turn out that the contingent faculty are younger.

This study is not an argument against tenure, which has other benefits–notably, academic freedom. But it is a cautionary note. It certainly reminds us of the enormous skill and dedication of the many young scholars who are working as adjuncts today. Many would have easily gotten tenure 30 years ago and are now working for $3,000 a course. On the other hand, there is nothing completely new here. As Max Weber said in his lecture “Science as a Vocation” (1917):

According to German tradition, the universities shall do justice to the demands both of research and of instruction. Whether the abilities for both are found together in a man is a matter of absolute chance. Hence academic life is a mad hazard. If the young scholar asks for my advice with regard to habilitation [getting the most advanced degree], the responsibility of encouraging him can hardly be borne. If he is a Jew, of course one says lasciate ogni speranza [abandon all hope]. But one must ask every other man: Do you in all conscience believe that you can stand seeing mediocrity after mediocrity, year after year, climb beyond you, without becoming embittered and without coming to grief? Naturally, one always receives the answer: ‘Of course, I live only for my “calling.”‘ Yet, I have found that only a few men could endure this situation without coming to grief.

*See Figlio, D. N., Schapiro, M. O., & Soter, K. B. (2013). Are tenure track professors better teachers? (NBER Working Paper 19406). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w19406

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how to use empirical evidence

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I’ve written a chapter for a forthcoming book edited by Harry Boyte (Democracy’s Education: A Symposium on Power, Public Work, and the Meaning of Citizenship, Vanderbilt University Press) in which I summarize evidence that colleges and universities can improve the economy by teaching their students civic skills and by being good institutional citizens, participating in local networks for community development.

I think the evidence is reasonably strong. But, like all empirical claims, it has exceptions and caveats. And even if civic education and engagement really do pay economic dividends, something else could work even better: for example, distance-learning, educational video games, or installing surveillance cameras in schools.

Thus we must be careful about how we generate, interpret and use empirical findings. This is where the emerging idea of Civic Studies provides guidance.

Often, social scientists presume that their job is to study a real-world practice that is already fully developed to learn whether—and why—it “works.” Usually they define success in terms of the objectives of the practitioners or their funders. In this case, we would ask whether college-level civic education and engagement generate what politicians demand: jobs.

But nothing simply “works.” Success always requires experimentation, assessment, adjustment, reflection, and new experimentation, in an iterative cycle. By the same token, many things can work if they are developed properly. One could start with civic engagement or with surveillance cameras in schools and improve either one until it enhanced students’ employment prospects.

In the best cases, the researchers who study a given practice are part of the reason that it works. They contribute to its development by offering their data and insights. They choose to work on this practice rather than something else because of a more fundamental commitment. I, for example, have studied deliberation. I want deliberation to work and I hope that the research that I produce will contribute to its success. I have no such commitment to surveillance cameras. I would not study them or strive to improve their impact.

The reason for my hope in deliberation is fundamentally moral. I think a world in which people reason and work together is better than one in which they achieve the same levels of security, income, or welfare without freely collaborating. Deeper down, I believe in a theory that the good life is a life of freedom, reflection, and mutual commitment.

Thus I hope that civic education and civic engagement boost employment because I am fundamentally committed to civic values. My colleagues and I seek evidence of economic benefit to persuade policymakers to support what they should support anyway. If the economic evidence is favorable, we will use it strategically to expand support. If not, our values and commitments should encourage us to improve civic education until it enhances democracy and also produces jobs. Regardless of the empirical results we find, we owe a public explanation of our core values.

A public defense of our values also yields criteria by which to assess the practices that we have been studying empirically. For instance, my chapter for Harry Boyte’s book is about college-level civic engagement (an input) and jobs (an output). I discuss the empirical link between the input and the output, as they exist today. But both are subject to criticism and change.

Today, many civic programs basically take the form of volunteering. But civic education can be reconceived so that it is less about volunteer service than about working on public concerns, where “working” implies serious commitment and accountability for results. “Public work,” in the phrase championed by Boyte and colleagues, means work that is done in public, by diverse citizens, on common issues. Reconfiguring civic education at the college level to look more like public work would satisfy core values that Boyte and colleagues have defended well. It might also strengthen the impact of civic education on jobs and careers. Students would be more likely to learn skills useful for employment if their civic experiences in college were more like paid work.

Meanwhile, jobs could become more public. A given job might serve only the interests of the employer and deny the worker any scope to address community problems in public with diverse other citizens. But even if the employer is a for-profit firm, the job can promote and encourage public work. For example, I presume that the corporate executives, government officials, and labor leaders who attended meetings of the Lehigh University board contributed insights from their daily work to the conversations about Lehigh and Allentown. They then brought ideas from those discussions back to their jobs. If that is true, they were doing “public work” in the Lehigh boardroom and in their own offices. Public work is obviously harder for low-paid service workers and low-ranking bureaucrats, but within many industries and professions, a struggle is underway to recover their public and democratic traditions.

If we made civic education into public work and also created jobs of greater public value, then the alignment between civic education and employment would be stronger and we would find more impressive evidence of economic impact. The data would then satisfy governors and presidents who want to see colleges produce jobs. More importantly, we would be building a better society and the educational system to support it.

The post how to use empirical evidence appeared first on Peter Levine.

New CommunityMatters Conference Call Series Starts Thursday

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We are excited to share that our partners at CommunityMatters, in collaboration with the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design, are launching a new conference call series on moving community projects from planning through completion called “Making it Happen”. Their first call, “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper”, will take place this Thursday, December 12th from 4-5pm Eastern Time. We highly encourage you to register now! You can read more about the call below, find the original post on the CM blog, or find more info on the series here.  

Start with Petunias: A Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper Approach to Community Action

CM_logo-200pxRaise your hand if this sounds familiar:

You’ve just finished a great community design or planning process. Hundreds of people participated, you came up with dozens of brilliant ideas for fixing your Main Street or revitalizing a run-down park, you drew up spiffy designs, and everyone is jazzed.

There’s just one problem: you don’t have the money to do much of anything. And your volunteers are tired. Oh, and you don’t even really know what to do first. (Make that three problems.)

We get it. You’re not alone. So where do you start? With the petunias.

Welcome to the school of Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper community action (“LQC”). When you’re just starting to implement designs and projects you need to build momentum, earn some quick wins, and make the most of every single dollar and volunteer hour. That means picking some ridiculously easy, cheap, and non-controversial projects that you can get done immediately and that will help build support for something bigger.

“Many great plans get bogged down because they are too big, too expensive, and simply take too long to happen,” writes the Project for Public Spaces (PPS). “Meanwhile the high cost of missed opportunities for economic development – and public life – continue to add up.”

Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper thinking and action can change all of that.

Here’s how it works: Forget trying to raise five-, six-, or seven-figure sums to implement all of your streetscape improvements right away. Instead, go spend $15 at a garden center, grab a helper, and transform one weedy corner with some new planter boxes. Once people see what a difference that can make, it won’t be hard to get $100 bucks and enough volunteers to create a sidewalk café for a day, showcasing the potential of the space. And when people see how cool that is, it won’t be long until you have $1,000 and to buy some tables and chairs and create a pop-up pedestrian plaza. And if that works? Then you think about shelling out more money and making it permanent.

Fun, right? But more than just fun, LQC is actually cutting-edge strategy. By choosing the right actions first, and testing things in an experimental and incremental way, you can have a surprisingly large impact while saving resources and building support for longer-term actions. LQC lets you hone in on the actions that will actually work the best for a place and the people who use it. And it lets you actually make places livelier, prettier and more functional fast – long before you could accomplish traditional big-budget projects.

On the December CommunityMatters conference call, in partnership with the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design, you’ll learn about the LQC model and how to apply it in your town.

PPS recommends a three-phase process:

  1. Start with amenities (like seating or gardens) and public art, which can quickly transform a space and encourage people to return.
  2. Then add events and “interventions” (such as temporary bike lanes or street closures) that can help test design solutions before fully implementing them.
  3. Finally, use “light development” (adaptive reuse, temporary structures, and building facelifts) to make changes quickly and relatively inexpensively.

But, there are somewhat messier stories from real communities that have moved from ideas to action.

Take Elkhorn City, Kentucky. Tim Belcher, a local attorney and President of the Elkhorn City Area Heritage Trust, has helped bring two Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design workshops to this town of just over 1,000 people. Elkhorn City wanted to find ways to increase tourism and economic development, and they focused on two of their biggest assets: whitewater paddling (they are located on the Russell Fork of the Big Sandy River) and theater (they are home to the renowned Artists Collaborative Theater). The community honed in on key action steps, experimented with small programs and events to build momentum, and leveraged that early work to attract more funding and complete more projects than many cities 50 times their size.

Still not sure how your community’s long-term plans can be transformed into a quick-and-dirty to-do list? Hundreds of other communities have paved the way, and their ideas are there for the taking. Start with “Spontaneous Interventions”, an exhibit at the recent Venice Biennale. Brendan Crain, Communications Manager at the Project for Public Spaces, was a member of the curatorial team for that project and will join us on the line to share LQC lessons and ideas from around the world. You can also get great ideas and advice from the Tactical Urbanism guides (Volumes 1 and 2).

So go ahead. Put that plan back on the shelf (for the time being) and just go buy some petunias. Read up on Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper community action at the Project for Public Spaces. Join us on December 12 to learn how to make your community stronger in a flash.

Think you have this LQC approach in the bag? This call is for you budding experts, too!  Tell us about your Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper success when you register for the call. We’ll ask a few people to share their story on the line!

This call is the first in a three-part series co-hosted by CommunityMatters and the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD). The series is designed to help any community move from a design or planning process into taking action.  

The People’s Politics of Nelson Mandela

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Across the world, people have rightly celebrated Nelson Mandela as a figure who "now belongs to the ages," as President Barack Obama put it in his tribute to the late South African leader. But recognition of his people's politics has been largely absent. We need to switch from the dominant "great man" view of Mandela as a singular savior of South Africa to an understanding of his citizen-empowering politics if we are to do justice to his legacy and its potential for contribution to a world in turmoil and crisis.

Nelson Mandela was a populist not in the sense in which the term is commonly used in the media, to mean a rabble-rousing demagogue. Mandela was a populist in the deepest meaning of term. He had a profound and also unromantic belief in the potential of everyday citizens to shape the world.

Today's public discussion of Nelson Mandela is decontextualized and depoliticized, as well as sanctified. Lost is his schooling in the ancient civic culture of the Eastern Cape.

Mandela was born in Mvezo, a tiny village in the Transkei, in the southeast of South Africa. When his father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyisa, was stripped of his chieftainship after defying British authority, he was taken into the home of the paramount chief of the Thembu people.

In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela described the meetings at "the Great Place," Mquhekezweni. "Everyone who wanted to speak did so. It was democracy in its purest form. There may have been a hierarchy of importance among the speakers but everyone was heard, chief and subject, warrior and medicine man, shopkeeper and farmer, landowner and laborer. ... All were free to voice their opinions and equal in their value as citizens."

These experiences became seasoned in the anti-apartheid movement of the 1950s called the Congress of the People (CoP). It produced the Freedom Charter of 1955, the anti-apartheid movement's manifesto, and aimed at a national awakening instilling freedom consciousness.

In the view of its organizers, the people, not the African National Congress or other political parties, were the driving force of change. As one leader, Rusty Bernstein put it, the ideas of the Charter needed to be "an exercise in getting the people to tell the leadership and self-regarding elites what THEY ought to work for in the name of the people."

The Congress of the People also challenged anti-apartheid whites to organize in their own communities. Estranged from the white mainstream, they were largely unable to do so.

This movement powerfully shaped Mandela. The Charter, he argued was "by no means a blueprint for a socialist state." Rather it was "a programme for unification" involving "a democratic struggle of various classes and political groupings."

Mandela's schooling generated a clear distinction in his thinking between ideological politics, or "party politics," and people's politics. The distinction is clear in an interview published last year in the Australian journal Thesis Eleven with Jakes Gerwel, aide to Mandela throughout his presidency.

Mandela, Gerwel argued, stressed psychological liberation akin to the emphasis of Black Consciousness Movement leader Steve Biko. "Not to be victim to your suffering [and] to be victim of those who perpetrated it against you ... He rose above that by the generosity of spirit...."

Gerwel traced such generosity to Mandela's politics. "People often talk about Mandela's values," Gerwel said. "The thing that I remember him teaching me was: 'Jakes, never let your enemy choose the terrain of combat by reacting in anger. If you act in anger to anybody, you are allowing that person to choose the terrain.' This was a combination of genuine principled morals with a great tactical sense."

Gerwel emphasized that "Mandela is a politician through and through. He understands party politics and politics to his finger tips. He is not a saint, and he often made that point. He is a hard politician [who] uses power and his political agency for the good."

In his prison years on Robben Island, Mandela further developed his commitment to nonracial people's politics. Afrikaner guards who smuggled in newspapers for him to read, provided extra rations, and taught him Afrikaans, the main language of the white population, tempered any desire for racial recrimination.

Meanwhile, exchanges with young hotheads brought home the dangers of a politics of posture. "When you say, 'What are you going to do?' they say, 'We will attack and destroy them!'" he recounted. "I say: 'All right, have you analyzed how strong they are? Have you compared their strength to your strength?'"

In 1986, Mandela, still in prison, began negotiations with moderates in the National Party government. Simultaneously, parallel efforts began to appear among whites on a large scale.

In 1986, Van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine, leaders of the white opposition party in the South African Parliament, resigned in frustration at the Parliament's inability to address the country's growing crisis. They founded the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (Idasa), with the aim of generating discussion and work across the deepening racial divide. Slabbert called this "the politics of negotiation." Their politics, in the same vein as Mandela's, took up the challenge to whites made by the Congress of the People and leaders like Mandela, more than thirty years before.

For most whites in South Africa in the 1980s, the everyday lives, concerns, talents, and oppressive conditions of blacks were invisible. Idasa's work closely paralleled Mandela's efforts.

In 1987 in Dakar, Senegal, the organization brought together white moderates among politicians, labor unionists, journalists, religious and business leaders with exile leaders of the African National Congress for the first time. The meeting reverberated around the world. Over the next seven years, Idasa followed up by organizing hundreds of meetings which brought whites together with blacks, colored and Indians.

After the 1994 election, Idasa became the leading force on the African continent emphasizing the idea that democracy is a society, not simply a state. Its grassroots popular education efforts taught organizing community methods and nonpartisan empowering citizen politics to thousands of people. Throughout its history, Mandela remained Idasa's friend.

Nelson Mandela believed that ordinary citizens can become bold, confident, responsible agents of change, able to rise to the occasion of even the most daunting challenges. He devoted his life to seeing the democratic potential of the people realized.

The wisdom of his people's politics has never been more needed.

Harry Boyte, Director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg College and Senior Fellow at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, lives several months a year in South Africa, where he is also a Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.