Category Archives: decision making

Group Decision Tip: Flat for planning, stacked for doing

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In principle, different ways of deciding should be applied to different types of decisions.

Group Decision Tips IconDeciding how things should be — planning — is well-suited to a flat decision-making structure; that is, where several decision makers are equal and all fully participate. Some call this consensus decision making. As a rule, the longer and wider the reach of the plan, the broader and flatter the planning structure should be.

Deciding how to implement plans — doing — is better suited to hierarchical decision-making structure; that is, roles and responsibilities are stacked upon each other. There is a chain of command and accountability up and down the ladder. As a rule, the more expeditious and short-lived a decision is, the better it is to delegate it to an individual within a hierarchy.

Practical Tip: For each decision, first decide the type of decision: Is it more of a planning decision or more of an implementation-type decision? Will it have long-term, broad impact or short-term, local impact? Apply a decision-making method appropriate to the nature of the decision. Every group member need not decide small, implementation details. Long-term planning and high-level policy should not be in the hands of just a powerful few.

New Findings on Special Interests & Democracy

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Sandy recommended an important article today from Journalist’s Resource that details the results of recent empirical research on special interest groups’ influence on our democracy. The findings suggesting that interests groups contribute more to polarization than previously thought offer significant reason for us to pause and reflect as engagement practitioners. This must-read article is below in full, and you can find the original here.

Extreme voices: Interest groups and the misrepresentation of issue publics

by John Wihbey

The public’s ignorance on issues of policy and politics is frequently lamented — and little understood. On tests of civic knowledge, the results are often dismaying, although research suggests that asking about local and national issues can yield different results. Some of this ignorance may have a socio-economic basis. There are access to knowledge and media access issues that make the cost of understanding prohibitive for some. But one broader and more charitable way of interpreting this ignorance is as follows: Citizens are busy, and issues that are not salient or relevant in their daily lives are “costly” — in terms of time and effort — to comprehend. A 2013 study in Political Communication, “Self-Interest and Attention to News Among Issue Publics,” confirms that “individuals are more likely to follow news that affects their self-interest” — what academics call “selective exposure.” Why learn the tax code when you only fill out a simple return each year? What real advantage is it to know the names of all nine Supreme Court justices? Why spend precious time on development issues in South Asia when there are experts to take care of that? That’s why we have representative government, the argument goes, and advocacy groups on every conceivable issue to help figure out the details and produce policy. The people who really care about a given issue will organize a response.

That’s one political theory. For this theory to work in practice, however, there must be a basic match between some larger segment of the people and the strong, narrowly focused groups who shape the agenda. Otherwise, highly motivated groups just distort democracy, pushing agendas far more extreme than others who care about the same issue would favor. For a half-century now, political scientists have studied the behavior of what are called “issue publics,” or the groups who care about discrete issues. Think of issue publics as concentric circles of increasing interest, with the innermost circle as the actual “pressure group.” Hovering in the background, there remains a long-running debate about whether certain “special interests” corrupt the system, or whether the contending of interests in the public arena actually constitutes the very essence of democracy.

A 2013 study published in Public Opinion Quarterly, “Extreme Groups: Interest Groups and the Misrepresentation of Issue Publics,” looks to empirical evidence to help settle some of these debates, testing whether members of motivated groups are “giving voice” to wider public communities or pushing their own unrepresentative agendas. The authors — political scientists Ryan L. Claassen of Kent State University and Stephen P. Nicholson of the University of California, Merced — state that the prior “literature on issue publics has optimistically concluded that widespread political ignorance is not a problem for democracy because those affected by specific issues are well informed, involved, and represented.”

To assess this, Claassen and Nicholson analyze results from the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES) — comprising a representative sample of 36,500 people — and look at the views of 10 groups and their issues: AARP and social security privatization; unions and minimum wage; the Sierra Club and global warming; NARAL and abortion; National Right to Life and abortion; the Christian Coalition and gay marriage; the VFW and the Iraq War; the American Legion and the Iraq War; the Parent Teacher Association/Organization and education; and the NRA and gun control. By sorting among the citizens surveyed who have a “characteristic that is relevant to the interest group’s policy area,” Claassen and Nicholson attempt to compare the relative strength of views between active group members and inactive members of specific issue publics.

The study’s findings include:

  • The data furnish “consistent evidence that group members hold policy attitudes that are distinct from their counterparts in a broader issue public.” Distortion is a very real problem. In fact, the evidence suggests that a “policymaker guided by interest group representation, rather than a more comprehensive survey of issue public opinion, might actually come down on the wrong side of an issue in most cases.”
  • “Taken together, the results suggest that the policy distortion produced by interest groups may ultimately stem from those who are different, and more extreme, in their opinions, self-selecting into groups.”
  • These dynamics likely tilt the wider direction of U.S. politics: “Opinion distortion wrought by interest group representation is likely to contribute to political polarization more generally. When policymakers rely on interest groups to communicate the positions of issue publics, they perceive greater polarization than they would if they had a more accurate measure of issue public opinion.”

“A uniformly active issue public would ensure that the voices of those for whom the issue matters most are heard,” Claassen and Nicholson conclude. “But issue publics are not uniformly active. More problematic, those active in interest groups hold positions that are more extreme than, and often at odds with, the positions of less active members within the issue public.”

Related research: The findings line up with studies on what scholars call the phenomenon of “group polarization,” whereby like-minded individuals who affiliate tend to become more extreme in their positions over time. Recent research on political polarization, which has dramatically increased in the United States in recent years, has focused on the deep roots of the phenomenon as well as potential solutions. Further, scholars are studying whether or not the Internet is magnifying these trends more broadly.

Original article URL:  http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/polarization/extreme-voices-interest-groups-misrepresentation-issue-publics?utm_source=JR-email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=JR-email#sthash.psRnh1at.dpuf

Apply for the “Best Practices in Citizen Participation” Distinction

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We want to make sure that NCDD members and member organizations hear about an exciting award you might be eligible for – the 8th “Best Practices in Citizen Participation” Distinction. The initiative for the award comes from The International Observatory on Participatory Democracy (OIDP or IOPD for short – their interchangeable, multi-lingual acronym), an important international body that NCDD belongs to as a member.

The awarding of the “Best Practices in Citizen Participation” distinction

…is meant to provide incentive for those who wish to initiate innovative experiences at the local level and disseminate those practices that facilitate the participation and involvement of citizens in elaborating and implementing public policies.

This award is meant to recognize those innovative experiences and ideas coordinated by local governments in the field of participative democracy that can to be replicated elsewhere.

It is understood that participative processes should, by necessity, lead to higher levels of equality, a stronger sense of citizenship, a greater sense of legitimacy and confidence in public powers, and greater effectiveness in public management practice.

You can find the full eligibility criteria by clicking here, but competition is open to

…all local governments, municipal entities and extra-municipal entities that are OIDP members and have promoted an experience or idea involving citizen participation. All such experiences must have taken place within a maximum of four years preceding the convocation, and they must be in effect by the time the candidacy presentation is mailed.

The application period goes from February 3rd to March 7th, so don’t wait to get started. The award winners will be announced at the 2014 OIDP Conference this June 3rd – 5th in Canoas, Brazil. We hope that some of you NCDDers will submit your projects and initiatives for consideration!

If you haven’t heard about the OIDP yet, we highly encourage you to check out their English website at www.OIDP.net/en. You can also find them on Facebook. The OIDP describes itself this way:

The International Observatory on Participatory Democracy (IOPD) is a space open to all cities in the world and all associations, organizations and research centers interested in learning about, exchanging impressions and applying experiences of participatory democracy on a local scale with the aim of deepening the roots of democracy in municipal government.

The network was created in 2001 within the framework of the European Commission’s URB-AL programme for decentralized cooperation. It was officially constituted in November 2001 during the 1st Annual Conference of the IOPD in Barcelona, where its internal operating regulations were approved. Since 2006 the IOPD has coordinated with United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), at present the IOPD is contributing to provide local government’s innovative knowledge in the specific area of citizens’ participation.

In November 2011 the IOPD decided to recover and place emphasis on its original goal of becoming a space for the production of knowledge and the exchange of useful experiences for the towns and cities that make up the network. Therefore the IOPD assumed the challenge of serving as a reflection in matters of participatory democracy at a worldwide level, in order to innovate and to recommend specific policies to public administrations, preferably local, throughout the world and to make the exchange of experiences its main working base.

We think it would be great to see more NCDD members become part of the OIDP – not to mention that you have to be a member to enter the competition – so we encourage you to check out their How to Join page and consider applying. We know that our members are undertaking some of the most innovative and successful public participation projects around, and that we can give any of the other entrants a good run for their money.

Please do let us know if you decide to apply, and best of luck to all of those in the competition!

How Iceland Changed the Way We Think About the World

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We are pleased to highlight the post below, which came from NCDD member David Inman of Wilma’s Wish Productions. Do you have news you want to share with the NCDD network? Then you’re invited to use our Submit to Blog form to share your news post on the NCDD Blog. Click here to find out more!

Jaws dropped around the world when the Icelandic banking system collapsed in 2008. One of the biggest success stories of western industrialization, Iceland’s economy was seen as both stable and affluent. Then the three main privately owned banks crumbled, taking just about everyone in the small, 300,000 person population with them. Tears fell to the ground and hands flew to the air as a vibrant indignation beat through the streets of Reykjavik in protest against the hidden, faulted government regulation of the banking system. The Prime Minister was forced to resign, a new government stepped in, and the entire population was at risk of losing hope.

Shortly thereafter, something incredible happened.

The population surged and moved mountains. Dialogue facilitated the propagation of a constitutional assembly. Dialogue between laymen, professionals, farmers, businessmen, theologians, truck drivers. Dialogue spanning the entire swath of societal positions. Conversations at home, in small groups, abroad, in loudly populated meeting halls. Dialogue.

With a population half the size of Seattle alone, Iceland’s dialogue probably doesn’t seem such a huge feat. Yet considering the range and application, the grandeur of what was happening became an astoundingly unique phenomenon. Together, Iceland’s population organized an assembly to draft a new constitution for their country. The old constitution, an adaptation of the Danish one that once governed Iceland as a colony, was adopted in the late 1940′s and proved incapable of adapting to the issues of current day society. With the banking collapse and the opaque operations of the old government, a new document which truly reflected the needs and cares of the people urgently weighed on the minds and hearts of all. Though facing skepticism and doubt, the assembly formed.

The documentary Blueberry Soup explains the feasibility of Iceland’s project a bit more. In a country where one in ten people are published authors, public arts and education is a passionate value, and in which the term “community” is in every sense of the word sincere, the incorporation of the population’s input was a natural step. But obstacles persisted. Disillusionment. Hopelessness. Frustration. Political opposition. Even anger over the attempt to fix anything fearfully based in concern that the assembly would add salt to the wound and make the population more dejected. Alongside these problems lay the entrenched reluctance of national news sources to report upon the assembly. Indeed, many members of the population didn’t even know what was happening until it was nearly done and over with.

Through dogmatic effort and constant reassurance from interested people around the world the assembly beat on and finished their draft within four and a half months. Tireless days spent hashing out ideas, examining comments from all over the country, and bringing diverse perspectives together in dialogue saw them to the end of the project. The only thing left to do in order for it to be ratified was pass it in a vote. Both the majority of the population as well as the parliament had to vote yes in order to institutionalize the new constitution. Tension was high. The population of Iceland voted ‘yes.’ The parliament voted ‘no.’ Never before seen by the world, the first binding social contract propagated through outreach, social media, and crowd sourcing failed to pass. And yet it was not a failure, not quite.

What astounded me upon watching the documentary for the first time and then later interviewing Eileen Jerrett, the director of Wilma’s Wish Productions, was the fact that, realistically, there was only a victory. Legitimized by its failure, the new constitution displayed the blaring faction between the Icelandic government and the population. People weren’t being listened to, commerce replaced citizenship, and the need for inter-professional dialogue became all the more pressing.

For us, the dialogue community both here and abroad, the effort of Iceland to draft a new constitution ought not go unnoticed. Demonstrating the vast, successful potential of social media to reach a broad audience and facilitate meaningful dialogue Iceland functions as a microcosmic example of what may successfully occur in the United Sates. Albeit privileged with a much smaller population that is rudimentarily grounded in civic involvement, Iceland’s efforts are not without potential for replication. But how might such efforts be reproduced? In what way can dialogue be made accessible to more people with varying levels of compatibility?

I think we can answer these questions. I know we can. In fact, let’s challenge ourselves as a national community. Let’s find the underlying principle which pushes us all into civic engagement and break apart barriers of profession, age, opinion, and region.

You can find the trailer to Blueberry Soup here: http://vimeo.com/ondemand/blueberrysoup.

Learning from Chicago’s PB Challenges

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Participatory budgeting (“PB” for short) is an innovative form of empowered public engagement that has started proliferating in parts of Chicago, New York and California due to the leadership and hard work of one of our organizational members, the Participatory Budgeting Project.

PB is a process through which ordinary residents decide how to allocate government funds. Residents identify possible projects that could be funded, research them and develop them further, and then decide through a popular vote how to allocate the funds.

Initially developed in Brazil in the late ’80s, PB is finally picking up steam in the U.S. As part of its Second Open Government National Action Plan, the White House singled out PB as a promising practice in public participation, and has committed to work with key partners to increase awareness about PB and to support communities that are interested in launching PB processes.

PB has enjoyed a lot of success and recognition over the past few years, but the process has also faced some interesting challenges that those in our field should be aware of.  A recent article in the Hyde Park Herald tells the story of how one Chicago ward’s PB process ran into such challenges, and unfortunately was discontinued.

As a group committed to the growth of public engagement in meaningful decisions about our communities, we want to see PB and other public engagement processes continue to expand and thrive. But while it was disappointing news to hear, we believe Chicago’s 5th Ward provides a case study from which we can draw a few key lessons. One of the first challenges to the 5th Ward’s process is presented at the beginning of the article:

Hyde Parkers met Ald. Leslie Hairston’s decision not to continue the 5th Ward’s participatory budgeting (PB) program this year with a mixed reaction.

The 5th Ward’s experiment with PB — a political process born in Brazil in the late ’80s, in which constituents decide how their district’s money is spent — was the first on the South Side. A series of meetings took place beginning in 2012 and culminated with a public vote last May on how to spend $1 million of the 5th Ward’s discretionary funds.

Although Hairston said the program will be assessed next year, she said earlier this month that it was discontinued on the heels of a monthly ward meeting last October, where some participants described the process as cumbersome.

“They said it was very time consuming, a lot of meetings, and that they thought the neighborhood groups that they had were active enough to do it without having all of the expenses that were associated with it,” Hairston said.

We added the emphasis to the last sentence because this is an important idea for us to retain: like many engagement processes, PB is a lot of work for the sponsors, organizers, and citizens involved, and they can be more successful if they tap into already-existing community organizations to help get that work done.

Maybe it’s obvious to some of us, but PB needs buy-in from many parts of a given community, and a commitment to share the work load or the costs is one of the most genuine kinds of buy-in we can get.

The decisions about which existing community organizations to involve need to be made on a case-by-case basis, but in general, we should be looking to engage such groups as early as possible about actively contributing to a PB process, and even creating plans for outreach to these kinds of groups before we get started. Substantial participation from established groups will strengthen the process and signal its credibility to local residents.

The second insight we are taking away is similarly straightforward: low turnout can kill the PB process.

A news brief dated May 8, entitled “5th Ward Participatory Budgeting Process Wins High Marks,” framed voter turnout as historic despite the fact that just over 100 people voted… But last year’s process won’t be repeated this year, because of a low voter turnout and financial cost that led Hairston to question its effectiveness…

Hyde Parkers’ reactions to the program’s end ranged from understanding to disappointment — to both. “The turnout of approximately 100 was extremely disappointing,” said Roger Huff, a co-chair on the 5th Ward’s participatory budgeting leadership committee… “I don’t really blame Alderman Hairston for what she decided to do, because when it came time to vote, the community didn’t show up.”

Clearly, numbers matter in PB. In many public participation projects, turning out large numbers of people is important, and finding effective practices for doing that is a perennial issue in our field. But a key part of what we think is important here is that sustaining those numbers matters more.

Long-term community participation and buy-in is what makes PB work, and without a plan to cultivate and continue to engage a broad base of participants, the process can start to unravel. In addition to focusing on turnout from our communities, the 5th Ward’s case also highlights the fact that we may also need to pay attention to turnout in neighboring communities.

Chicago’s 5th Ward is not the only area of town where PB has caught on:

…the [5th] ward’s approximately 100 voters were dwarfed by more than 500 in the 46th Ward and around 1,400 in the 49th Ward, where PB was also available.

In some respects, this dynamic of the 5th Ward’s story suggests that it may be possible to become victims of our own success – if PB participants from one area of town see that the participation from their neighbors in other communities is dwarfing their own, it may impact the morale of the group and, ultimately, participation levels.

We aren’t pretending to know the solution to this issue, and maybe this wasn’t actually a factor in the 5th Ward’s situation. But it strikes us as a consideration that could end up bearing fruit if it is creatively accounted for. (If you have a creative suggestion on this front, please let us know in the comments section!) Another piece of the article brings us to one of our last takeaways from the 5th Ward’s experience: flexibility with the way money can be spent is key.

Although he applauds Hairston for her decision to open up the budgeting process to others, [Hyde Parker Alon Friedman] says certain changes could have been made — such as starting the process earlier — or using part of the $1.3 million in discretionary funding on related costs.

This is currently impossible, however, according to project coordinator [and NCDD member] Maria Hadden, of the New York City-based Participatory Budgeting Project, a nonprofit which has worked as a project lead for Chicago’s wards and similar processes nationwide.

She says Chicago wards’ discretionary funds can only be spent on fixed assets, not services. “The menu money is bond money, and it cannot be used for anything other than infrastructure,” Hadden said.

This kind of problem – older laws on the books undercutting newer attempts at public engagement – is hugely frustrating for our field in general, and it’s why NCDD supports the recommendations of the Making Public Participation Legal report around revising our legal statutes to remove barriers to effective public engagement processes. (Learn more about the report and our involvement here.)

It seems clear that the Chicago PB processes only being allowed to spend money on projects that are legally considered “infrastructure” limits the participants’ creativity and the possibilities for how PB money can be spent – something that can hurt morale and possibly thwart a community’s willingness to engage in such an involved process altogether. Altering the laws the govern such decisions may or may not be a simple thing to do, but as in many situations like this, it could unlock a lot of the potential for the kind of transformative change that real public engagement can bring.

The last thing we are taking away from this article – mentioned multiple times in the article – is advice that we all sometimes have trouble following: start early.

“We should reconsider and maybe try it again next year, much, much earlier,” he added, perhaps in the summer. “I think that if we do that we have a good chance to succeed and get many more people in voting for the projects.”

“The early bird gets the worm,” as they say, and though it’s an annoying cliche, it remains true: the more time we have to plan and generate buy-in, the more effective our engagement processes will be. Our project schedules are constantly pushed and pulled by funding limitations, busy schedules, and lots of variables we often can’t control, but as much as we can, we should always be trying to get working as early as possible.

So while it is disappointing to see the 5th Ward’s PB process discontinued, we think it is a good learning opportunity for the rest of us that could make our efforts stronger in the end. But we also remain optimistic that PB can make a comeback in the 5th Ward eventually, and that it could come back stronger than ever.

We wish everyone involved the best of luck, and we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on Chicago’s public engagement processes as it continues to pioneer new practices and provide new lessons.

You can find and read the original Hyde Park Herald article here: www.hpherald.com/2014/01/15/low-turnout-blamed-for-participatory-budgeting-ending. Also see NCDD supporting member Janice Thomson‘s insightful blog post on how and why Occupy Roger’s Park members have protested PB in Chicago.

Group Decision Tip: My part

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In principle, there are at least two pieces to every puzzle, at least two parts to every solution. No solution to a problem is entirely in the hands of just one person.

Group Decision Tips IconFor example, people at the back of a room might have a hard time hearing the speaker at the front. When this happens someone is apt to suggest to the speaker: “Speak up.” But another solution is in the hands of the listeners: “Move closer.”

If I have a problem with someone’s behavior, one solution is for them to change. Another solution is for me to change. I can change how I interact with them or I can change my attitude toward them.

When I assume my problem is entirely because of someone else, I am hiding an important part of the solution. When I deny my part, I am in the way of the group moving forward.

We can spend a lot of time and energy wishing our group was different, complaining about our group, questioning other group members about their ways. But there is only one question that leads to real change: “What am I going to do about it?”

Practical Tip: With every problem remember that there are multiple parts to the solution. Ask, “What’s my part?” If you want the problem solved, act in ways that will help solve the problem rather than talk about how others should solve it.

Be the change that you want for your group, for your world.

Deliberative Forums on Thailand’s Future

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We wanted to share an interesting post from out friends at the National Issues Forums Institute that showed that, even amid the recent political turmoil that has gripped Thailand over the last few months, there have been encouraging steps taken toward fostering deliberation about the country’s future. You can read more about the project below, or find the original post (with more pictures) by clicking here.

NIF-logoKing Prajadhipok’s Institute (KPI) has organized Public Deliberative Forums on Thailand Future in many provinces all over Thailand since 2011. The objectives are to help strengthening the public participation in being consulted on the ways out from Thailand political conflicts and establishing an atmosphere of hearing from others who think differently, in understanding and peace.

Before organizing the forums, Issues book, facilitators’ guide book and manual on deliberative democracy are prepared. There are 2 groups of participants; the first group consists of 80 people who are the eligible voters (over 18 years old). Their names are from probability systematic sampling form the vote list.  The second group (20 people) is from representatives from the specific groups such as the youths, civil societies, NGOs, local government politicians, political support groups (extreme activists), religion leaders, and people with disability. All of them are invited and informed of the activities at least 1 month before the meetings.

The deliberative forums take one and a half days, starting from introduction on the deliberative democracy and public deliberation process, ground rules, and then continuing with the consensus building and relationship establishment. The deliberative forums are conducted afterwards. The common ground on Thailand future is what they would like to see and how to achieve it as well as who has to do it. In addition, they also mention what they have to do to help the country in moving forward to what they have imagined. Moreover, the pre and post questionnaires are distributed to check the people’s opinion on the deliberative process and the concept of Thailand future.

 KPI also introduces this deliberative democracy concept and techniques for organizing deliberative forums to the Thai government and various policy makers as well as the parliamentarians so that they understand the new ways of public participation and conflict management.

More deliberative forums on Thailand Future will be organized in many provinces in the near future.

Liquid vs. Direct vs. Representative Democracy

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Demsoc-LogoWhen we say “democracy”, it can evoke many different meanings and ideas for the average person – even some that contradict each other.  But that is because there are many different ways to imagine and configure democratic infrastructures, all of which have their own pros and cons.

That is why we were intrigued by a short post we found from a great U.K.-based organization called Democracy Society that offered a delineation of three different kinds of democratic process – direct democracy, representative democracy, and “liquid democracy”:

Direct democracy is when every citizen can vote on each issue directly, this allows people an equal voice, independent of whom they are. Direct democracy has a number of drawbacks. Firstly many people don’t have the time or energy to continuously vote on single policy issues, also many people don’t feel informed enough to take the decisions, meaning they may not vote, this means that voting can become a privilege of those with free-time and confidence in their knowledge. The Second problem is that where direct democracy and popular assemblies, can work well in smaller and less complex communities, such as in ancient Athens, modern nation states are incredibly complex.

Representative Democracy has been the answer to the problems of direct democracy. People relinquish their vote to specific individuals through elections who represent them on the national stage. There are many problems with a representative democracy, as we can see here in the UK, those politicians who act as chosen representatives won’t necessarily vote with their constituents on specific [and even more general] issues, they certainly are unlikely to be able to vote with each individual constituent as large scale consensus is near enough impossible. What’s more, politicians can become bogged down in partisan politics, corrupted by power and divided and detached from the people they are representing. Additionally, this can lead to apathy on the part of the electorate.

Liquid Democracy is a combination of both.  In a liquid democracy people can vote on specific issues [direct democracy] as well as delegating their vote to an individual that represents them [representative democracy]. In a liquid democracy, politicians [optional] would also be able to delegate their vote to others, perhaps based on expertise levels. This is an issue by issue choice that individuals can make, so they do not need to vote directly on every issue simply because on one issue they felt they did not want to delegate their vote. Liquid democracy also involves a much richer system of communication and feedback between politicians and citizens, encouraging dialogue and trust. There are a number of possible issues with liquid democracy, a few; being the increased complexity of voting system that would need to be fairly technology reliant; limited engagement from the electorate on specific issues, which might limit any increase in real democracy; and also that it has never been tried on a large scale, so many issues remain unforeseen and unforeseeable.

The  liquid democracy concept, also known as delegative democracy, has been around for a while now in the discourse of democratic theory, but it is still quite a new idea to many citizens. We are all pretty familiar with representative democracy, and direct democracy is fairly straightforward to understand. But I remember that when I initially found the idea fascinating, but didn’t quite get how it worked.

So I thought I would tack on the video below by the talented Jakob Jochmann, which explains liquid democracy quite clearly. Fittingly enough, Jochmann originally made the video for a political science course in democratic theory.

If you have experience working in groups or organizations that use direct or liquid democracy, we would love to hear your about your experiences and reflections on how the processes compare to other kinds of democratic arrangements. We encourage you to share them in the comments section below, or submit your story for the NCDD blog using our Dialogue Storytelling Tool to share not only the story, but the lessons you learned with the whole community.

Find the original Democracy Society post here: www.demsoc.org/2013/12/12/what-is-liquid-democracy

Sad news to share from AmericaSpeaks

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AmericaSpeaks’ executive director, Steve Brigham, added a heartbreaking announcement to the organization’s website this afternoon.

AMERICASPEAKS – IN HONOR OF OUR 19 YEAR LEGACY

AmericaSpeaks has an unparalleled record of organizing more than 100 major citizen deliberations in all 50 states.  Because of this remarkable history that we’ve had, it makes me very sad to share today that after 19 years of working as an independent, national, nonprofit organization–sustained exclusively by grants and contracts–AmericaSpeaks will close its doors today.

AmericaSpeaks has operated without an endowment or a large institutional home and has always been able to raise funds, conduct projects, and sustain our infrastructure, even during some challenging times.  Unfortunately, we have experienced a series of annual deficits due to a dramatic contraction in grant and contract revenue during the Great Recession. These circumstances ultimately forced us to make a very difficult decision to close our doors and cease operations.

Notably, one of AmericaSpeaks’ final projects as a 501(c)3 has been its contribution to a national deliberation on mental health this year that has been a collaboration with the National Institute for Civil Discourse, the National Issues Forums, Everyday Democracy, the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. This has been a watershed moment of cooperation and growth for the field of public deliberation….

Read the rest of the post at http://americaspeaks.org/blog/americaspeaks-%E2%80%93-in-honor-of-our-19-year-legacy/ — and definitely take some time to look over the legacy document they’ve created at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6405436/AmericaSpeaks_Legacy.pdf

I spoke to Carolyn Lukensmeyer yesterday (founder of AmericaSpeaks), and she emphasized that though the 501c3 business model is dissolving, a core group of AmericaSpeaks senior associates plan to keep the brand, the 21st Century Town Meeting model, and the network alive and accessible.  The associates (along with the AmericaSpeaks facilitator network) do have the capacity to deliver 21st Century Town Meetings when needed, and are working on developing the structures and securing an institutional home needed to make that work.

Those of you who have worked with AmericaSpeaks or served as table facilitators (many of us – including me!) are encouraged to email your written memories or photos to americaspeakslegacy@gmail.com . Your email’s body and attachments will be directly posted without edits to http://americaspeakslegacy.tumblr.com — where there’s already quite the collection of remembrances being shared.

AmericaSpeaks has been a key trailblazer in public engagement for the past two decades.  They’ve provided valuable leadership in deliberative democracy in many ways, serving as a thought leader in the field, a facilitator of many collaborative efforts over the years, a leader in the use of technology to enable participatory methods to scale up, and so much more.

They were one of NCDD’s 50 founding organizational members, helped us plan the first National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation in 2002, and have sponsored our conferences and contributed to our work in many, many ways over the years.  I want to thank Carolyn Lukensmeyer, Steve Brigham, Daniel Clark, and all of the AmericaSpeaks associates, facilitators, and former staff members we’ve had the pleasure and privilege of working with over the years.  I know we’ll continue to work together despite this transition.

Applied Dialogue Workshops

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We are pleased to highlight the post below, which came from NCDD Supporting Member Peter Nixon of Potential Dialogue via our great Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have news you want to share with the NCDD network? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

Nixon

As Dialogue Leaders we need to sustain our enthusiasm for improved outcomes through dialogue. Being a member of NCDD and connecting to experienced practitioners is a big part of remaining at the cutting edge.

After repeated requests from experienced trainers, coaches and consultants I launched our first public Certification training for our Dialogue Suite of four workshops in Hong Kong in November:

Our Dialogue Suite includes:

  • The Star Negotiator Workshop – covered in my book Negotiation: Mastering Business in Asia
  • Dialogue & Decision Making – covered in my bestseller Dialogue Gap
  • Conflict & Emotional Dialogues – subject of next book entitled Dare to Dialogue
  • Business Development for Professionals

All Dialogue Suite workshops build upon our 5 categories / 50 behaviors of effective dialogue: Presence, Respect, Expression, Suspending, Absorbing.

Certified consultants become part of our Dialogue Network – an emerging international network of dialogue leaders, consultants, and supporters dedicated to building communities of practice in major markets and organizations around the world which enable people to share, learn and inspire each other towards optimal outcomes through dialogue.

Highlights of our work in 2013 dialogues included: Brazil FDI, Iran/USA Negotiations, Government negotiations in South East Asia, China Investment, Commercial/Environmental issues in USA, Entrepreneurship in Canada/Silicon Valley, Student mentorship, Talent management, Succession, family business issues in Asia and the Middle East, healthcare, university & school governance etc.

NCDD members interested in accessing our Dialogue Suite are welcome to contact me at Peter.Nixon@PotentialDialogue.com. Find out more at www.PotentialDialogue.com.