Budgeting for Equity: How Can Participatory Budgeting Advance Equity in the United States?

Posted on January 4, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 18-page article, Budgeting for Equity: How Can Participatory Budgeting Advance Equity in the United States? , was written by Madeleine Pape and Josh Lerner and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. The article talks about the history of participatory budgeting, starting in Porto Alegre and how it has growth in the US. Two major claims of PB is that is it an opportunity to “revitalize democracy and advance equity”. Pape and Lerner share some of the challenges and strategies to equity within PB.

Read an excerpt of the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the article…

In 1989, the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre undertook a radical experiment to alter the chemistry of democracy. After decades of dictatorship and thin representative democracy had cemented Brazil’s economy as one of the most unequal in the world, the newly elected Workers Party government attempted a new variant of democracy, one that mixed participation and equity. Its experiment in “participatory budgeting” aimed to redirect resources to those with the greatest needs – and it succeeded.

Over 3,000 cities have since tried to replicate Porto Alegre’s success by empowering residents to directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. Many processes have inspired high participation, but struggled to engage or redistribute resources to marginalized communities. Participatory budgeting (PB) has recently grown dramatically in the United States, from a pilot process in Chicago’s 49th ward in 2009 to over 50 processes in a dozen cities in 2015. The once obscure concept has been heralded by the White House as a best practice of civic engagement and by scholars as the lynchpin of a “new wave of democratic innovation” (Stoker et al., 2011, p. 38; White House, 2013).

As PB has expanded in the US, scholars, practitioners, and participants have made two main claims about its impact: that it can revitalize democracy and advance equity. First, proponents argue that PB builds the trust, accountability, and effective decision-making necessary for democratic governance (Lerner 2014). Second, they suggest that PB makes participation and funding more equitable, by bringing marginalized groups to the table and allocating more money to their needs (see Baiocchi, 2001; Fung & Wright, 2003; Nylen, 2002). In the US, PB processes have experienced relative success in including the voices of less politically empowered residents, but there is less data on how PB is making funding more equitable (Kasdan et al., 2015; Great Cities Institute, 2015).

Our organization, the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), has served as lead technical assistance partner for most US PB processes, helping over seventy cities, districts, and institutions develop PB processes that advance local priorities and goals. Although equity has often been a local goal, it has proven difficult to define, measure, and prioritize. In this article, we present the findings from a study of equity in PB that we conducted in 2015. Through semi-structured interviews with 17 PB facilitators and administrators, we explored two main questions: First, what common challenges to equity do practitioners face? Second, given these challenges, what can be done to make PB and its impacts more equitable?

We identified three key equity challenges and strategies to address these challenges. First, unclear goals shift focus away from equity, a challenge that can be addressed through stronger political leadership. Second, participants’ self interest often goes against equity goals, but this can be at least partly addressed by altering the process for idea collection and facilitating interaction between participants and other residents. Third, the limiting structures of budgetary and administrative rules constrain the potential of PB to address broader equity concerns, but expanding the scope and linkages of PB can help to overcome some of these constraints. By unpacking these challenges and interventions we hope not only to deepen the equity impacts of PB, but also to uncover new ways that participatory democracy can empower and support communities with the greatest needs.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen friendly form.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol12/iss2/art9/

The Next Generation of Our Work

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 6-page article, The Next Generation of Our Work (2014), by NCDD’s own Co-Founder, Sandy Heierbacher, was published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 10: Iss. 1. In the article, Heierbacher shares her unique view of the rapidly growing dialogue and deliberation field and lifts up the shifts in the field that shape the next generation of D&D work. Changes are happening in regard to:

– collaboration with government
– openness to online tools for engagement
– consistently rapid growth
– increased energy devoted to collaborative efforts
– re-focus on the power of local
– funders are coming around
– attention to infrastructure

Read the article in full below ind the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the article…

How does one comment on the state of a field that seems to be ever growing yet constantly in flux? As the director of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD), I have a bird’s eye view of this burgeoning, vibrant field. Yet I realize I see only a fraction of the great work that is being done to engage people in the decisions and issues that effect their lives.

Here are a few of the trends I have been noticing from my vantage point.

Collaboration with government. Many engagement practitioners are accustomed to working outside of government out of necessity, pushing on the edges of power but rarely getting through. This has been gradually changing with innovations like the Citizens Initiative Review and Participatory Budgeting being embraced by local and state governments. Additionally, government networks like the National Council on State Legislators and the International City/County Management Association are beginning to recognize deliberative public engagement as vital to effective governance.

Openness to online tools for engagement. Many group process experts are still skeptical that quality dialogue and deliberation can happen online. Yet there has been a growing interest among NCDD members to understand how they might utilize technology to engage new audiences and to support their face-to-face efforts. The popularity of our Tech Tuesday events and the quick acclimation our members have shown to our own online programs using tools like Codigital, Maestroconference and Hackpad are a testament to this shift.

Although skepticism is still par for the course among dialogue and deliberation practitioners who understand the power of in-person engagement, we are learning how to selectively invest our time and energy in online technology so we are not left in the dust as the world rapidly becomes more connected and digitized. Some examples of successful online engagement include recent experiments like Creating Community Solutions’ Text-Talk-Act project (www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/texttalkact), which utilized text messaging technology to guide groups of young people through in-person dialogues, and our successful use of Codigital to get the NCDD community to crowdsource, hone and prioritize ideas for our upcoming conference. These experiences show how the deliberative democracy field is learning to appreciate the continuum Ethan Zuckerman of MIT Media Lab refers to as “thin engagement” (for texting, voting, clicking, sharing) and “thick engagement” (for the work our field is all about).

Consistently rapid growth. If NCDD’s membership is any indication, the deliberative democracy field is growing rapidly. After launching in 2002 with 50 organizational members, we now have more than 2,050 members and 33,500 subscribers. Lately, it seems like someone new finds and joins NCDD every single day, and we constantly learn of new organizations, networks and innovators we would love to bring into the network.

Increased energy devoted to collaborative efforts. Many in the dialogue and deliberation community recognize that their hopes for this work cannot be realized unless we combine efforts. An important recent example of cross-organization collaboration in the deliberative democracy field is Creating Community Solutions, an alliance of six organizations—AmericaSpeaks, the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, Everyday Democracy, the National Issues Forums Institute, the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, and the University of Arizona’s National Institute for Civil Discourse— which organized hundreds of dialogues across the country as part of Obama’s National Dialogue on Mental Health.

Also, two notable collaborative events are being planned to coincide with the National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation in October. First, the Mediators Foundation will lead a meeting-of-the-minds of top leaders and influencers in transpartisan dialogue work. Second, the CommunityMatters Partnership will convene a summit on civic infrastructure bringing together leaders in various sectors of public work. Both events will encourage collaboration and relationship building among people doing parallel, but often disconnected, work.

Other examples of successful collaboration include last year’s effort by a group of NCDD members to organize a public-at-all-levels infrastructure for national dialogue on a shoestring budget. Additionally, the Kettering Foundation has increased its attention to the opportunities for deliberative democracy organizations to collaborate, and as a field we are recognizing and dealing with the various barriers and snags we face while attempting to work together. These efforts are just a taste of the collaboration that is happening across this field.

A re-focus on the power of local. Though President Obama’s attention to open government caused a temporary spike in our field’s hopefulness that public engagement would be supported from the national stage, I’ve seen a strong swing back to a focus on the local level. Many new ultra-local efforts have formed and thrived in the past few years. These efforts tend to be self-supported, innovative, timely, and practical. One of my favorite examples comes from an NCDD member in Denver, local playwright and actor Evan Weissman, who founded an effort called “Warm Cookies of the Revolution.” Warm Cookies has created a “Civic Health Club” in Denver that runs creative civic events on everything from water treatment to pro sports—and serves milk and cookies at every event for the hungry activists and curious citizens who attend.

Even national efforts like Transition Towns and Resilience Circles, which help prepare people for environmental and economic fall-out, prioritize the establishment of local level groups. And we were reminded of the power of local relationships while running Creating Community Solutions for Obama’s national dialogue on mental health, when support, publicity and creativity came through in abundance at the local level while we struggled for attention and funds at the national level.

Funders are coming around. Though the lack of funding is a much discussed challenge facing practitioners of work focused on “process,” more and more funders seem to be focusing on convening, facilitation, and stakeholder collaboration. The Kellogg Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation both produced gorgeous guidebooks on convening last year. Community foundations across the U.S. and foundations that work intensively in select communities, like the Orton Family Foundation, are embracing their role as catalysts for community-wide dialogue and collaboration. And many foundations are devoting significant resources to “Collective Impact” efforts, which bring together issue-focused groups that typically compete with each other for funding and public attention, and facilitate and support them in setting, measuring and achieving joint goals.

Attention to infrastructure. Leaders in the deliberative democracy field are increasingly focused on infrastructure. NCDD dedicated its last national conference to examining the concept of “civic infrastructure” – the underlying structure and supports people need so they can come together to address their challenges effectively. There are also many other examples of dialogue and deliberation organizations raising questions about infrastructure. For example, the Community Matters Partnership (www.communitymatters.org/who-we-are), an alliance of seven national organizations involved in community building, place making and grant making, have turned their attention to understanding and proliferating the concept. New Hampshire Listens is working to build a statewide infrastructure to support public deliberation on complex issues affecting New Hampshire residents, and UIC’s Institute for Policy & Civic Engagement studied Chicago’s participation and activist infrastructure in order to build a robust dialogue and deliberation network in the city.

The Creating Community Solutions’ partnership has been looking at what kind of infrastructure is needed to support future multi-method nationwide deliberation efforts. Finally, NCDD is working with the Kettering Foundation to gain a better understanding of the capacity and infrastructure that already exists throughout our field, in order to uncover how this capacity can best be utilized.

What’s next for the field? Much of NCDD’s time is devoted to keeping our network strong and active, and providing valuable content and programming for our members. This is a time of extraordinary momentum and productivity in our field, and we could easily fill our staff time simply by highlighting our members’ programs on our blog and social media, sharing their resources in our online resource center, and providing them with more and more ways to connect with each other about their successes and challenges.

Yet the trends I outlined above point to a strong yearning in our field to break out of our current constraints, to find ways to collaborate more effectively with each other, to combine forces with those outside our field, and to scale up our efforts. At the 2014 NCDD conference, we will be exploring all these trends as we rally around the theme “Democracy for the Next Generation.” What do we want the next generation of our work to look like, and how can we work together to get there? Now more than ever, we have both the opportunity and, increasingly, the imperative to bring this work to a much larger stage in order to build a stronger democracy that is able to address society’s most pressing challenges.

Download the article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol10/iss1/art23

Where Have All the Voters Gone?

Posted on August 17, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 6-page discussion guide, Where Have All the Voters Gone?, was created by the Maricopa Community Colleges Center for Civic Participation and Arizona State University Pastor Center for Politics & Public Service. It was updated in July 2016 and was adapted from National Issues Forums Institute. This discussion guide provides four approaches to use in deliberation on why voter turnout is currently low and has dramatically gone down since the 1960s, especially among communities of color. With each approach, the guide offers examples and suggestions; and concerns, trade-offs, and consequences. The end of the guide offers closing reflections on how participants’ thinking changed during the discussion and what can be done to remedy the low voter turn out in current US politics.

Below is an abbreviated version of the guide, which can be downloaded in full at the bottom of this page or found on NIFI’s site here.

From the guide…

Many Americans express frustration and concern about poor and decreasing voter turnout rates in local and national elections. Discussion about why citizens aren’t voting tends to focus on voter attitudes toward politicians and politics, and on the implications of a disengaged voting populace for the future of our democracy.

Given these concerns:
What, if anything, should be done to increase voter participation?
What are the key elements of a “healthy democracy”?

The discussion guide gives four options for deliberation:

Approach One: Eliminate the barriers
Proponents of this approach say that the act of voting has become too complicated and poses obstacles and barriers that can prove challenging for some voters to overcome. They suggest changes to the voting and elections system to make it easier and more convenient for voters to participate in elections.

Approach Two: Increase election issue awareness
Some research suggests that a major factor contributing to low voter turnout is a lack of awareness or familiarity with the candidates, positions, or ballot measures that will be voted on in a given election. Critics point out a declining emphasis on civics education in public schools as a cause for this trend. Others point to a vicious cycle for voters in communities that vote in low numbers: Candidates and campaigns focus efforts on communities that vote in high numbers. So minorities and poor voters, for example, get less information about elections, which leads to low turnout.

Approach Three: Reform the election process
Many voters and non-voters alike express concern and frustration about problems with the election and voting process. Some are concerned about security and accuracy issues relating to voter fraud and vote tabulation (“Will my vote even be counted?”), while others worry about the role and influence that the political party system, lobbyists and political campaigns have, and about the fairness and transparency of the election process.

Approach Four: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”
Some policy leaders argue that it is not necessary or even ideal for all citizens to participate in every election. They say that voters will participate in elections that have particular interest for them, and will perhaps endure the consequences for not voting, and that that is the nature of democracy.

To explore the full discussion guide with examples, suggestions, concerns, trade-offs, and consequences; click the link below.

About Maricopa Community Colleges Center for Civic Participation
The Maricopa Community Colleges’ Center for Civic Participation (CCP) seeks to enrich public life and public discourse on our Maricopa Community College campuses and in our communities. The Center also serves to promote effective practices that support Maricopa’s mission relating to community education and civic responsibility.

About Arizona State University Pastor Center for Politics & Public Service
Located in the ASU College of Public Service and Community Solutions, the Center serves as a dynamic, student-centric hub of activity that promotes, publicizes, and encourages political engagement and public service among ASU students and the broader community. It embodies ASU’s commitment to being an active agent of change, addressing society’s problems.

About NIFI Issue Guides
NIFI’s Issue Guides introduce participants to several choices or approaches to consider. Rather than conforming to any single public proposal, each choice reflects widely held concerns and principles. Panels of experts review manuscripts to make sure the choices are presented accurately and fairly. By intention, Issue Guides do not identify individuals or organizations with partisan labels, such as Democratic, Republican, conservative, or liberal. The goal is to present ideas in a fresh way that encourages readers to judge them on their merit.

Follow on Twitter: @NIForums

Resource Link: Where_Have_All_the_Voters_Gone

A Public Voice That’s Missing [Kettering 2016]

Posted on August 2, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 16-page report, A Public Voice That’s Missing, by David Mathews was published July 2016 and found on the Kettering Foundation’s site. This report grew from a speech David Mathews gave at the National Conference for Dialogue and Deliberation in 2014. This report discusses the need for more of a public voice presence in civic engagement from both “sides”; from the government or organization to more authentically engage the community and the citizenry to be more active in engage those who make decisions.

A feeling of hope for an increasing public voice is instilled throughout this report because of the rise of organizations dedicated towards working to engage the community via dialogue and deliberation. The public has deeply held values about the shape of their lives and this report proposes that the lack of interest from the public may be more a lack of connections being made by government or organizations from these values to decisions/policy. It is important to lift up these connections and also, working through the conflicts which may arise because of conflicting values. No matter the place, “it is important to know what people feel is valuable, what options they want to consider, what role they think citizens should play, what tensions have to be worked through, whether judgment is being exercised, and if people are ready to move forward in a direction they can ‘live with’.”

Below is an excerpt from the report and you can read the original on KF’s site here.

From the report…

Introduction
It is no secret that the American people have been unhappy with our political system for some time, and they doubt that the system can reform itself. The public’s loss of confidence in government as well as other major institutions is well documented and widely reported. Worse still, the distrust is mutual. Under these conditions, polarization flourishes. All of this is occurring despite numerous efforts by institutions to engage the public and demonstrate accountability. Many officials aren’t persuaded that what citizens have to say is useful. As one officeholder described the problem: he hears both everything and nothing from the public.

In Washington, as well as in our statehouses, policymaking is usually dominated by three voices. Obviously, one is the voice of elected officials. Another is the voice of special interests, whose number has grown enormously in a relatively short time, as have the issues they represent. The third voice, also quite powerful, comes from professionals who staff our bureaucracies. They speak in an expert voice. There is value in all of these, yet there is little of what I think of as a public voice being heard.

…

However, the issues where a public voice is needed most are those that have no well-defined solutions and no demonstrably right answers that can be measured objectively. We have to depend on our best collective judgment. At the end of the day, we, the people, have to decide.

Making a public voice more audible in our capitols won’t cure all our political ills. However, if the political system doesn’t seem likely to reform itself, people reason that they have nowhere else to turn but to themselves as a public. While a public voice may not be totally sufficient, it is certainly necessary.

The question is whether those in the best position to help this voice emerge realize the opportunity they have and what it will take to seize it. They are the only ones who can answer this question. I fervently hope they will.

Download the interim report for free here.

About Kettering Foundation
The Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? Kettering’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people can do collectively to address problems affecting their lives, their communities, and their nation.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: KF_PublicVoice_2016

Democracy by Design

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 8-page article, Democracy by Design (2014), by Nancy Thomas was published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 10: Iss. 1. Thomas puts forth, Democracy by Design, which offers the framework for evolving democracy into one that is more robust and truer to the core tenets of the concept of democracy. This framework has four major foundations in order to have a better democracy: active and deliberative public participation; freedom, justice, and equal opportunity; an educated and informed citizenry, and; effective government structures. It was co-created by Thomas, the Democracy Imperative, Deliberative Democracy Consortium, the Campaign for Stronger Democracy, the Kettering Foundation, Everyday Democracy, CIRCLE, and the New England Resource Center for Higher Education.

Below is an excerpt from the article and you can find the PDF available for download from the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the article…

American democracy works better when all citizens (referring to residency, not legal status) possess the knowledge, skills, social networks, and inclination, and have the opportunity, to address difficult public problems together.

In this essay, I make the case for connecting the kind of public engagement reviewed in this Special Issue with a broader reform agenda, what I will call Democracy by Design. It is a pragmatic and relatively simple framework for a robust democracy, consisting of four foundations: active and deliberative public participation; freedom, justice, and equal opportunity; an educated and informed citizenry, and; effective government structures. The language “by design” suggests a framework for democracy, not just disconnected mechanics, intentionally crafted and integrated for positive social consequences. I developed this concept, captured in the graphic below, as a road map for undergraduate education for democracy. Exploiting Thomas Huxley’s adage “learn something about everything and everything about something,” I propose that college students (and all Americans) should learn this framework or a version of it to fulfill their obligation to know “something” about how democracy works. And by the time they graduate, college students should know “everything” about at least one dimension of one of the four foundations (one “small box”).1 Democracy by Design is a work-in-progress, open to discussion, critique, and improvement.

Active and Deliberative Public Participation
Much has been written about the so-called crisis in civic life and the decline of social capital, of associations, trust, and norms that enable public problem solving. Robert Putnam’s compelling image of Americans “bowling alone” rather than in leagues captured concerns over declining engagement in faith communities, nonprofits, PTAs, labor unions, and the like. He and many others rallied civic leaders, policy makers, and educators and arguably spurred an industry concerned with measuring and improving civic life. Emerging around the more localized civic renewal efforts, grass-roots problem solving, such as the healthy communities movement and local crime prevention efforts. Old organizations (e.g., fraternal orders and women’s leagues) were replaced with issue-driven coalitions (e.g., child advocates and immigration organizations). Alongside these efforts and deeply embedded in the best of them has been deliberative democracy—informed citizens with diverse life experiences and perspectives coming together, exchanging viewpoints, deliberating choices, and collaboratively implementing fair solutions, with and without government involvement.
…
The challenge may be in knowing when to employ more deliberative versus more active approaches, or, stated another way, when to remain neutral. On this point, I would argue that advocates of public participation should never be neutral about the foundations of a robust democracy.

Freedom, Justice, and Equal Opportunity
Freedom to prosper and freedom from an overly intrusive government seem well-understood in American society, but I question whether the same holds true for other core American principles of justice and equal opportunity.
…
Power dynamics may persist because the dominant culture has projected its particular way of seeing social and political norms and systems so successfully that that view has become the natural order, even by those disempowered by it (Tong, 1989). This problem is stickier than overt oppression, individual bigotry, or discrimination. As a result, well-meaning people maintain the status quo, usually unconsciously, by going about their business without realizing the implications (Adams, et. al. 1997, 11).

We can’t be neutral about giving people an equal opportunity to participate in and shape the social, political, and economic systems that affect their lives. Advocates for active and deliberative engagement need to be attentive to power dynamics, structural inequality, and unconscious privilege. If we don’t, we risk becoming those well-meaning people who unconsciously perpetuate the status quo.

An Educated and Informed Citizenry
Few people question the value of quality public education, liberal and civic learning, free speech, an impartial press, and an attentive citizenry able to examine and critique information. Unfortunately, our public education system is not educating for citizenship.
…
Deliberation advocates lament their inability to get to scale, to make active and deliberative public participation the norm in American society. Imagine how much easier that task would be if students at all levels learned through discussion. Discussing controversial issues emerged in CIRCLE’s research as a high impact practice in civic learning at the K-12 level (Kawashima-Ginsberg, 2013). And studies show that students learn better through inquiry and discussion (McKeachie, 1994; Hess, 2009, 18). Everyday citizens without expert knowledge are capable of public reasoning. The task of engaging citizens would be easier if Americans developed the habits of active and deliberative citizens while in school and college.

Effective Government Structures

We need to change the way campaigns are financed, restore transparency and accountability to government, and flip power back to American citizens. At a conference in June 2014, Bob Brandon of the Fair Elections Legal Network lamented, “We have a system in which politicians select their voters rather than voters selecting their politicians.” Gerrymandering, long lines, registration problems, poorly formatted ballots, suppression efforts, and money in politics persist despite the tireless efforts of reform advocates. Only about half of eligible voters actually vote in federal elections (roughly 60% in presidential elections and 40% in mid-term elections).

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol10/iss1/art17/

Beyond Deliberation: A Strategy for Civic Renewal

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 6-page article, Beyond Deliberation: A Strategy for Civic Renewal (2014), by Peter Levine was published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 10: Iss. 1. Many well-organized deliberative spaces exist in the US and also, is still small activity compared to the energy used to purposely manipulate public opinion. Levine talks about how civic society has changed from organizing people en masse via churches, unions, and political parties; to a new civic society, where fewer people are organized in these traditional groups and even fewer funders are willing to put money into the engagement needed. There needs to be an active effort to expand the opportunities for discussion and deliberation within groups and organizations that are not-neutral but come together to drive change.

Find the PDF available for download from the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the article…

I would not claim that our traditional civic organizations were maximally deliberative, in that they tried to promote ideologically diverse conversations that were civil and inclusive. They had agendas and they were in conflict with various opponents. My own political theory would assign some value to deliberative values—but only some. I think mobilization, contention, and negotiation are also essential elements of a democracy. Further, an important byproduct of participation in groups like churches, parties, and unions was recruitment into the broader public sphere in which individuals of diverse backgrounds and opinions exchanged ideas.

The old civil society recruited people by offering them personal (non-civic) benefits and then gave them motivations and support to talk about political issues. Its leaders were dependent on grassroots members for dues and votes, and hence accountable to the members.

In contrast, the new civil society is all nonprofit and voluntary. It asks people to participate for explicitly civic reasons. Very few do. And it depends on the grace of powerful institutions, funders and agencies.

Deliberative democracy is the theory that citizens can and should come together to talk and form reasonable public opinions. I think this theory identifies some genuine values, but there are other values to consider as well. Further, deliberative democracy presumes the unrealistic psychological premise that people will choose to deliberate. And it makes the naïve political assumption that institutions will choose to support public deliberations. These assumptions are most egregious when deliberation (talking and listening) is divorced from membership and relationships, from work and common action. A more plausible strategy involves connecting moments of deliberation to ongoing struggles, which is certainly the goal of Study Circles and similar practices that straddle the border between deliberation and community organizing.

I would look well beyond even those examples. If we want opportunities for discussion and reflection about public issues, then we will also find deliberative impulses in efforts to preserve and enhance common resources (such as wetlands and forests); in volunteer service groups that decide where and how to work; in civics classes, from kindergarten through graduate school; in partisan, ideological, and faith-based movements that have some interest in discussion; in grassroots public media efforts; and in local partnerships built around community development corporations, hospitals, and colleges. Like unions, churches, and parties, these are not primarily vehicles for deliberation. Only a small proportion see themselves as politically neutral; many are adversarial. Few see themselves as primarily involved in talking and listening. Not many share the widespread preference in deliberation for a “positive atmosphere” and “good emotional interaction” (Mansbridge et al 2006). Instead, many are angry.

But they have a common interest in confronting the forces and decisions–often intentional–that have sidelined active citizens in countries like the US. They have a common reason to challenge laws and policies, funding streams, educational priorities, and media coverage that ignore or marginalize citizens. They are all threatened by the rising signs of oligarchy in the United States. Collectively, they have considerable resources with which to fight back, both cash and people. It is time for us to begin to stir and organize–not for deliberation, but for democracy. Download the case study from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol10/iss1/art19/

15 Key Metrics for Evaluating Participatory Budgeting: A Toolkit for Evaluators and Implementers

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 29-page toolkit, 15 Key Metrics for Evaluating Participatory Budgeting: A Toolkit for Evaluators and Implementers, was created in collaboration with Public Agenda (PA), the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), and the North American Research Board. The toolkit includes 15 metrics to capture major elements of a PB process, to support the evaluation of a specific PB site and use the data to inform the larger PB movement.

Below is an excerpt from the toolkit, which you can find in full PDF, both in English and in Spanish on Public Agenda’s site here.

From Public Agenda…

Evaluation is a critical component of any PB effort. Systematic and formal evaluation can help people who introduce, implement, participate in or otherwise have a stake in PB understand how participatory budgeting is growing, what its reach is, and how it’s impacting the community and beyond.

We developed the 15 Key Metrics for Evaluating Participatory Budgeting toolkit for people interested in evaluating PB efforts in their communities. It is meant to encourage and support some common research goals across PB sites and meaningfully inform local and national discussions about PB in the U.S. and Canada. It is the first iteration of such a toolkit and especially focused on providing practical and realistic guidance for the evaluation of new and relatively new PB processes.

Anyone involved in public engagement or participation efforts other than participatory budgeting may also be interested in reviewing the toolkit for research and evaluation ideas.

To develop the 15 PB metrics, the North American Research Board, Public Agenda (PA) and the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) drew on previous evaluations of PB in the U.S. and around the world, the academic literature on PB as a democratic innovation and the experience of local evaluators in the U.S. and Canada. To create the research instruments, Public Agenda and PBP adapted surveys originally developed and used by local evaluators in various PB sites across North America.

The toolkit includes:
-15 Key Metrics for Evaluating Participatory Budgeting: 15 indicators (“metrics”) that capture important elements of each community-based PB process and the PB movement in North America overall
-Key PB Metrics Research Instruments: A set of Research Instruments (all customizable) to support local evaluation and facilitate the collection of data that address the key PB metrics: Idea Collection Participant Survey Template, Voter Survey Template, and Questionnaire for Evaluators and Implementers
-Introduction to the Instruments and Evaluation Timeline: An introduction to the above instruments, which also includes a timeline for how evaluation can fit into PB roll-out

15 Key Metrics for Evaluating Participatory Budgeting

Measuring PB’s Impact on Civic and Political Life:

To what extent does PB engage a significant and growing number of residents, including those who cannot or do not participate in mainstream political life?

1. Number of PB participants and percentage of eligible residents who participate. Indicates PB’s reach and ability to engage the targeted population.
2. Number and percentage of PB voters who are eligible to vote but did not vote in the most recent local election. Indicates PB’s potential to engage residents who don’t participate in the mainstream political process.
3. Number and percentage of PB voters who are ineligible to vote in local elections. Indicates PB’s potential to engage people who are excluded from standard forms of political participation owing to age, immigration status or other reasons.
4. Number and percentage of participants who report prior civic engagement or participation. Indicates PB’s potential to attract otherwise less civically engaged residents.
5. Number and percentage of participants who report being new or returning to PB. Indicates both growth and retention of PB participants and various patterns of participation over time.

To what extent does PB foster collaboration between civil society organizations and government?

6. Number of nongovernmental and community-based organizations involved in PB. Indicates the extent to which PB engages civil society. Also an indicator of variation in how processes are implemented.

Is PB associated with elected officials’ political careers?

7. Number and percentage of elected officials re-elected. Helps to assess over time PB’s association with officials’ political careers.

Impact on Inclusion and Equity:

Is PB engaging traditionally marginalized communities?

8. Number and percentage of participants who are of low socioeconomic status (SES) and/or people of color; and relative to demographics in the jurisdiction and in the most recent local election. Indicates PB’s potential to engage communities that are marginalized in the traditional political process.

Through what means does PB facilitate participation?

9. Accessibility indicators for idea collection phase, project development phase and voting. Captures aspects of the process implementation that increase access during the idea collection phase, the project development phase and the voting phase.

Is PB fostering equitable distribution of resources?

10. Allocation of PB funds by project type (to be compared with the allocation of comparable funds prior to PB). Describes how PB funds get allocated across types of projects. Informs study of differences in allocation and of equity in the distribution of PB funds.

Impact on Government:

How are the number of PB processes and dollar amounts allocated to PB changing from year to year?

11. Number of new, continued and discontinued PB processes from year to year. Tracks growth and sustainability in PB processes over time.
12. Amount and percentage of funds allocated to PB projects. Tracks the money allocated to PB projects in any one year.

What is the implementation rate of winning PB projects?

13. Project completion rates and final project costs. Highlights the # and % of winning ballot projects that are completed and how much money was spent on them (compared with how much was allocated).

Are additional resources being allocated to projects or needs identified through PB?

14. Amount of additional money allocated to projects and needs identified through PB. Indicates PB’s potential to bring additional funds to communities and/or to allocate funds differently by raising the importance of an issue.

What is the cost to government of implementing PB?

15. Dollar amount spent on PB implementation. Makes transparent how much money is spent on implementation and how that compares with the funds allocated to projects, with quality indicators of the process and with outcomes.

Above is an excerpt of the toolkit. It can be found in full PDF form on Public Agenda’s site here.

About the Participatory Budgeting Project
The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) is a non-profit organization that helps communities decide how to spend public money, primarily in the US and Canada. Their mission is to empower community members to make informed, democratic, and fair decisions about public spending and revenue.

Follow on Twitter @PBProject

About Public Agenda
Public Agenda is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that helps diverse leaders and citizens navigate divisive, complex issues and work together to find solutions.

Follow on Twitter @PublicAgenda

Resource Link: www.publicagenda.org/pages/research-and-evaluation-of-participatory-budgeting-in-the-us-and-canada

Should Public Civic Education Be Descriptive or Normative?

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Joshua Miller

Over at The Conversation, Peter Levine lays out what he takes to be the state of the art on US civic education in public schools in response to criticism from education scholar Jonathan Zimmerman. Levine recounts some basic facts: the vast majority of students study something called “civics,” and they usually have a good basic understanding of our founding documents. Yet students can rarely apply that basic understanding to contemporary politics and current events, and they largely fail to learn about the mainstream political beliefs of their fellow citizens, and thus only a very small percentage (10% in 2012) could be said to exit high school as “informed voters.”

Unfortunately, we have come to expect that our public schools will solve the political problems of adults, as when Jonathan Zimmerman accused our public schools of failing to teach “the country’s future citizens how to engage respectfully across their political differences.” But here’s the problem: how can adults embroiled in adversarial political speech agree on a curriculum to teach their children how to be less adversarial?

What we have tended to do is to reduce civic education to volunteerism and community service. Some schools, mostly in richer and whiter neighborhoods, also allow students an opportunity to develop more adversarial skills in civil and protected contexts by discussing social problems and current events. It’s almost always sensible to call for a more equitable distribution of instructional resources in such cases, and this is no exception. Poor and non-white students should have the same opportunities–and receive the same kinds of disciplinary treatement–as white and rich students.

But we haven’t really resolved the relevant questions: if presidential candidates are arguing about whether some of the students in the civics classroom should be deported immediately because they (or at least their parents) are rapists and murderers, how can the students in that classroom work through those claims civilly while preserving both the kind of partisan neutrality and inclusiveness we expect of public schooling? What should schools do about the fact that politicians are frequently both wrong and immoral in ways that violate educational norms? How can civics education be civil if civic engagement rarely is?

My sense, following Hannah Arendt, is that it is rarely possible for educational institutions to resolve problems in the larger polis, and that efforts to do so usually end up being illegitimate to the citizens who are asked to trust their children to the state for cultivation. Thus it is inherently undemocratic, even when fundamental human rights are at stake. I’m generally okay with the ways in which human rights are designed to trump democratic outcomes, but it’s worth noting that when a democratically organized citizenry puts its mind to it, they’ll generally find the levers of power required to overcome more accurate or fair bureaucratic and judicial outcomes.

And that’s perhaps where Arendt becomes less useful: she diagnoses the problem but retreats to a kind of educational purity that’s unacceptable. Over the last sixty years, we’ve been treating schools and other educational institutions as sites of democratic contestation. Our schools are shared spaces where we can have proxy battles about facts, norms, and strategies that ought to dominate in the larger polis. That’s perhaps unfortunate for the students who must live and learn in the partisan battleground, but it’s unavoidable.

On this view, students don’t learn politics (just) in civics class; they learn politics from their parents’ and teachers’ reactions to standardized testing, curriculum requirements, and budget and redistricting battles. They even become political agents of their own–long before they become eligible to vote–by crafting their own responses to those problems and organizing on their own issues.

I always learn something new from Levine on issues in civic education, and this latest contribution is no exception. But I do think we need to move beyond the curriculum-first model of civic education to a (gasp) more Deweyan account of the ways that schools are disciplinary institutions that hide their most important political lessons behind the rhetoric of professional normalization. The most important civic lessons are the forms of life that schools prepare us to live in a society where our political agency has become increasingly hamstrung and our fellow citizens increasingly polarized.

Our schools are pretty good at teaching future citizens to sit still, respect authority, and constantly try to achieve success within a narrow definition of what that means. They’re also very good at producing delinquency, as Levine himself mentions in citing the Kupchick/Catlaw paper on the relationship between disciplinary contact and political paralysis.

So let me end with a metaphor: our democracy is like a ship that we must mend and repair at sea, working on the planks and spars while using them to stay afloat. There is no hope of returning to dry dock to tinker and optimize, every institution is simultaneously bearing the strain of our policy-making and disputes even as its weaknesses and flaws are buckling under that pressure. Thus: discussions of schools as apolitical spaces from whence we safely prepare non-citizens for the rigors and dangers of politics are always going to be founded on an error.

Zimmerman is pretending that the appropriate response to detestable policies ought to be civil disagreement, and that the appropriate response to the appeal of Trump’s incivility must be to educate (read: discipline) such behavior out of the next generation. That seems destined to fail, but more importantly it raises deliberative refutation over organizing and protesting in a way that doesn’t seem true to our own civic ideals.

What if the appropriate response to uncivil politicians is uncivil resistance?

Creative Acts as Democratic Work (Connections 2015)

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The four-page article, Creative Acts as Democratic Work by Paloma Dallas and Melinda Gilmore was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”. In this article, Dallas and Gilmore explore the role of art in civic engagement and community problem solving, in response to David Mathew’s query, “If the public has to do more than observe – if it has to be a citizenry-at-work – then the question is, how does art affect people doing the work of citizens?”

After much research, the two gathered a mixed group of folks for the first Civic Capacity and the Arts exchange at Kettering, and determined that the arts often play a critical role in community engagement. Below is an excerpt of some of the insights gained from Dallas and Gilmore’s research and multiple Kettering exchanges. Connections 2015 available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

A few insights are currently coming into focus. Like any discipline, there are many arts organizations that have a more conventional notion of their role and their place in community life. They tend to look to communities as their audience and their funders. This is fine, and even good. But those with whom we have been working see a different role for themselves.

The arts have an ability to tap into other ways of knowing. As Esther Farmer wrote in her article “Strange Bedfellows: Community Development, Democracy, and Magic” in a 2015 issue of Community Development, “Traditional models of democratic debate have tended to privilege abstract, ‘disembodied’ forms of reason. . . . These kinds of disembodied environments that are overly intellectualized and abstract are dangerous on two fronts; they engender boredom, the enemy of enthusiasm, creativity, and imagination (i.e. magic), and even worse, these heady environments can also engender feelings of resentment and inadequacy.” Another participant, a professor of communication studies who has been collaborating with a visual artist, speaks about his concern with the professionalization of dialogue and deliberative work. His collaborations with a visual artist are born of a desire to explore the full range of democratic participation.

Another ongoing theme has been the power of imagination. While an important democratic capacity is the ability to make sound collective decisions, another important capacity is to be able to imagine beyond one’s experience. Many see this as a key role for the arts. For some, art creates a space for play and imagination, which can open up new options and possibilities to explore. At the same time, art can be a word that leaves some people out. It can feel exclusionary.

Building Democratic Muscles

Again and again, we’ve heard that the practice of working with others to literally create something together can help build up “democratic muscles.” Making something together can create a sense of ownership as well as a sense of collective identity. As one participant said in a research exchange, “When I do things, they are embedded in me in a different way than when I am just talking in a head space.”

The research has continued to evolve. Many foundations and municipal governments are funding “creative placemaking” initiatives that incorporate the arts in efforts to build vibrant communities. In the summer of 2015, we held a research exchange with a group of people to look at the democratic potential in these creative placemaking efforts. The organizations we brought together are all trying to ensure that citizens in community drive the work.

As a new area of Kettering’s research, it has generated enormous energy and expanded the networks with whom we exchange. As with all of our work, the questions we are asking overlap with other areas of research. For example, in Kettering’s community politics research, cooperative extension agents began experimenting with the arts in naming and framing issues to encourage more members of the community to participate in solving public problems.

We’ve seen art affect the work of citizens in myriad ways; each discovery has opened up new questions. As we continue to move forward in this work, we’ve been thrilled to find experiments not only across the United States but also around the world. Insights about the role of the arts don’t just come from artists and arts organizations but from other professionals and organizations. They are created in community themselves.

About Kettering Foundation and Connections
The Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? Kettering’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people can do collectively to address problems affecting their lives, their communities, and their nation.

Each issue of this annual newsletter focuses on a particular area of Kettering’s research. The 2015 issue, edited by Kettering program officer Melinda Gilmore and director of communications David Holwerk, focuses on our yearlong review of Kettering’s research over time.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Dallas-Gilmore_2015.pdf

5 More Ways to Overcome Barriers to Youth Engagement

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The article, 5 More Ways to Overcome Barriers to Youth Engagement by Rebecca Reyes and Malana Rogers-Bursen was published in 2016 on the Everyday Democracy site, and is the second installment of challenges, after the first article of a similar name, 5 Ways to Overcome Barriers to Youth Engagement. Again, the authors share 5 common challenges to getting youth to participate and offer solutions to address each of these challenges. These tips are helpful when designing events that are more inclusive for youth and also good to keep in mind for other groups of people. Read a condensed version of the article below and find it in full on Everyday Democracy’s here.

From Everyday Democracy…

Challenge #6: Transportation
Young people may not have a car they can use on a regular basis, or even a license. Your recruitment efforts won’t be successful unless they have a way to travel to the meeting place.

Possible solutions:
-Schedule meetings and events in locations that are easily accessible by public transportation.
-Consider meeting spaces at a local school or college campus, or at least within walking distance of one.
-Set up a carpool system.

…

Challenge #7: The same young people are always invited
It’s easy for existing group members to invite their friends or family members to a meeting. Often times this is the most effective tactic to boost membership. However, if you’re not intentional about inviting a diverse group of people, it’s easy for the group to be homogeneous…

Possible solutions:
-To make space at the table for different youth perspectives, reach out to local schools, colleges, community centers, youth groups, and other places where young people are.
-When reaching out to student and youth groups, don’t stop with student council and student government. Have you reached out to the Black Student Alliance? The statistics club? Tutoring services?
-In addition to getting recommendations from adults, also ask the young people in the group to suggest someone to join the effort. This gives young people a voice in decision-making even before they come to your meeting.

…

Challenge #8: Allowing young people to try something that didn’t work in the past
It would be impossible to follow up on every idea people proposed. However, many times adults quickly dismiss ideas because “we’ve tried that before.” Young people are more likely to suggest things that have already been tried since they were not around to hear about it the first time. When we invite young people to come to the table, we need to also make space to express their ideas and opinions.

Possible solutions:
-Give everyone a fair chance to explain an idea. Perhaps once you hear more details you’ll discover that it’s not exactly the same as what’s already been tried. They may have a different way of implementing the idea. Or, the timing might be better and there’s a good chance it will successful at this point.
-If you listened to the idea but still don’t think it would be in the program’s best interest to implement it, be sure to explain why. Simply saying “no” without an explanation can lead to misunderstandings. They might think that you’re dismissing the idea just because of their age, experience, skills, etc.

…

Challenge #9: Young people may not be aware of unspoken norms
Many of the norms your group follows likely come from working with groups of adults and/or work settings. Young people have limited experience in both of those areas. This can have an impact on things such as what experience to highlight when applying for a position, how to format emails, understanding what certain terms mean, or how to interject in a discussion.

Possible solutions:
-Sometimes we perpetuate certain norms just because we’ve always done it a certain way, even if it might not be the most efficient way of doing things anymore. Be open to new ways of doing things. Having new people in the group can be refreshing and can help you work more effectively, so take advantage of this opportunity. It might be helpful to develop group norms together for things like how to run meetings or how to communicate with each other.
-It may be helpful t ask young people if and how they’d like to get up to speed on the topics of conversation or how things are run. Make some suggestions, but let them decide what they think will work best. And, some may feel that they don’t need any guidance at the moment. Here are some ideas you could run by them:

…

Challenge #10: Understanding how young people can contribute
The idea that young people don’t have as much to contribute as adults is ingrained in our culture. And as adults, we often perpetuate the same things adults told us when we were young. Young people of all ages can make a contribution whether they go to school, work in a grocery store, or are a small business owner.

Possible solutions:
-Change your frame: instead of thinking that young people are at a deficit because they don’t have much experience, start seeing the opportunity for young people to build skills at a young age by contributing to your efforts.
-We all have things to learn; young people and adults can learn from each other. As with any group member, find out what they’re good at and challenge them to take it to the next level. If they are on the debate team, perhaps they’d be interested in helping to develop messages. If they are technically savvy, they may be able to help with some of the technical logistics of an event.

Read more solutions to each of these challenges on Everyday Democracy’s site here!

About Everyday Democracy
Everyday Democracy (formerly called the Study Circles Resource Center) is a project of The Paul J. Aicher Foundation, a private operating foundation dedicated to strengthening deliberative democracy and improving the quality of public life in the United States. Since our founding in 1989, we’ve worked with hundreds of communities across the United States on issues such as: racial equity, poverty reduction and economic development, education reform, early childhood development and building strong neighborhoods. We work with national, regional and state organizations in order to leverage our resources and to expand the reach and impact of civic engagement processes and tools.

Resource Link: http://everyday-democracy.org/tips/5-more-ways-overcome-barriers-youth-engagement

Civic Studies

An intellectual community of researchers and practitioners dedicated to building the emerging field of civic studies

Category Archives: civic engagement

The Next Generation of Our Work

Where Have All the Voters Gone?

A Public Voice That’s Missing [Kettering 2016]

15 Key Metrics for Evaluating Participatory Budgeting: A Toolkit for Evaluators and Implementers

Should Public Civic Education Be Descriptive or Normative?

Creative Acts as Democratic Work (Connections 2015)