Deliberators, not Future Citizens: Children in Democracy

Posted on January 25, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

The 24-page article, Deliberators, not Future Citizens: Children in Democracy (2017), was written by Kei Nishiyama, and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 1. The article advocates for children to be authentically included in deliberative democracy, as opposed to the position most children have, of little to no agency in democratic activities. Read an excerpt of the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

Children are “neither seen nor heard.” This is an often-used phrase when childhood scholars discuss the relationship between children and democracy (e.g. Cohen, 2005). It points out the largely ignored places and roles of children in both theory and practice of democracy. Yet, during the past several decades, we also observe a gradual improvement of recognition of children, partly as a result of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989, which enabled a number of scholars and practitioners to re-evaluate a variety of children’s participatory activities throughout the world (e.g. Lansdown, 2001; Invernizzi & Williams, 2008; Percy-Smith & Thomas, 2010). These studies invite us to reconsider the role of children in democracy.

However, the serious issue today is that children are “seen but not heard” rather than “neither seen nor heard.” Despite empirical evidence of children’s crucial democratic role in society, there still exists skepticism about their capacities, such as communication skills, which prevents scholars from taking children’s voices seriously. Furthermore, some scholars fail to take into consideration earnestly children’s various and unique ways of democratic involvement. For example, although non-participation could be interpreted as a “reasonable” political strategy for children to resist adult-centered politics (O’Toole, 2003), it is usually seen merely as evidence of their apathy or rudeness (e.g. Crick Report, 1998). The ignorance of children’s present capacities, knowledge, and/or experiences is often grounded in the current mainstream conceptualization of children – children as future citizens.

The aim of this article is to counteract this understanding of children and to contend that it is possible to reconceptualize them and their democratic agency in contemporary societies. In particular, drawing on insights gained from various contexts, this article sets a theoretical agenda for “children as effective agents of democracy.” In doing so, this article engages with several key questions: Why are children often seen as “incapable”? Is a reconceptualization of children as effective democratic agents possible? What theoretical framework/s can effectively appreciate their activities in democratic process? In responding to these questions, this article situates children in the context of deliberative democracy, particularly within the idea of the deliberative system. Although no deliberative democrats consider the case of children thus far, the systemic understanding of deliberative democracy framework adopted in this article enables a better interpretation and evaluation of children’s activities. This framework draws our attention to expanded notions of (a) actors of deliberation (deliberators), (b) spaces of deliberation, and (c) impacts of deliberation. Drawing on recent discussions of deliberative systems and using that as a theoretical framework, this article unpacks children’s various democratic engagements as “deliberators” (not future citizens).

The opening section overviews some of the dominant arguments (namely, socialization and remediation) that underpin the conceptualization of “children as future citizens,” then the next section problematizes these arguments. In so doing, it contends that children’s unique capacities can contribute to the democratization of society in a different way from adults and that they already play a powerful role in democratic processes. In reconceptualizing children as “effective agents of democracy,” the following sections argue that deliberative democracy, especially a systemic understanding of it, can provide a better theoretical framework for appreciating children’s democratic agency in more defensible ways than the existing framework suggested especially by citizenship studies (“children as citizens” framework). The final section outlines some possible contributions of children as deliberators from the deliberative system’s point of view.

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/vol13/iss1/art1/

Taking the Goals of Deliberation Seriously: A Differentiated View on Equality and Equity in Deliberative Designs and Processes

Posted on May 12, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 20-page article, Taking the Goals of Deliberation Seriously: A Differentiated View on Equality and Equity in Deliberative Designs and Processes (2016), was written by Edana Beauvais and Andre Baechtiger, and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. The article reviews the goals of healthy deliberative systems and the different designs of civic forums, including participant recruitment, nature of interaction, and decision-making. The authors reviews research which shows evidence that the design of a deliberative system affects its outcomes and goals.

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…

Deliberative theorists have long stressed that deliberation must be immunized against coercive power by a baseline of equality (Habermas, 1990). But what does the democratic pre-condition of equality mean, in practice, for organizers designing deliberative events and forums? After all, as Bernard Williams (1972) notes, equality is fundamentally about two – at times contradictory – values. On the one hand, the value of universal moral equality, which refers to the fundamental sameness of common humanity, requires abstracting from social circumstances. On the other hand, the value of equity, which refers to just distributions of power and resources, requires attending to social circumstances. Deliberative institutions vary in their capacity to promote one value over the other, or in their capacity to compromise between the two. We argue that negotiating between these twin values should be done with reference to the different goals of the deliberative process, with an eye to the trade-offs that achieving particular goals might require, and to the context within which the deliberation takes place.

In the first section of this paper, we discuss some of the central normative goals that discourse achieves in a healthy deliberative system. In the second section, we review existing empirical research on how institutional designs impact deliberation’s different goals, including the trade-offs different institutional design choices might require. While there are many examples of deliberative sites in political systems, we restrict our discussion to instances of organized, structured deliberation, or “civic forums” (Karpowitz & Raphael, 2014), because these are instances where practitioners can more easily exert direct influence over design.1 Civic forums include a wide variety of deliberating bodies, such as community policing initiatives (Fung, 2009; Karpowitz & Raphael, 2014), participatory budgeting (Avritzer, 2009), civic intergroup dialogue meetings (Walsh, 2004), and deliberative “mini-publics,” such as Deliberative Polls and citizens’ assemblies (Fung, 2003; Goodin & Dryzek, 2006; Grönlund, Bächtiger, & Setälä, 2014; Smith, 2009). We consider three important aspects of design – participant recruitment, the nature of the interaction, and decision-making – and review existing research regarding how different designs impact deliberation’s different normative goals.

We conclude by drawing out the implications of our discussion for practitioners and theorists, arguing against a totalizing view of deliberation where unitary deliberative institutions and processes achieve all of deliberation’s desired outcomes at once (see Fishkin, 2009). Instead, we show that deliberative theorists and practitioners should ultimately accept that various ideals may sometimes form trade-offs that require thinking about which designs and processes are most appropriate for realizing particular normative outcomes.

Achieving Different Normative Outcomes: Understanding the Trade-Offs
Deliberation can achieve a number of distinct goals or functions. One of deliberation’s central functions is to produce decisions that are perceived as legitimate by those who are bound by them. Since democratic legitimacy is predicated upon the inclusion of those affected by decisions in processes of decision-making, those affected by decisions must have equal opportunities to participate, and equal (or fair) influence over the outcomes of discourse. Clearly, these values can conflict. In practice, equal opportunity to participate is often interpreted to mean making civic forums open to anyone who wants to join. But inclusion that abstracts from social differences in this way may not produce diverse or even representative deliberating groups. By contrast, inclusion that is attentive to social differences – such as reserving seats for, or affirmatively recruiting disempowered social group members – can achieve more diverse or representative deliberating bodies, but at the cost of limiting the openness of recruitment.

In addition to legitimacy, deliberation achieves epistemic and ethical goals. Deliberation’s epistemic function refers to discourse’s capacity to encourage learning and produce opinions, preferences, and attitudes that are informed by facts, information, and the full range of relevant arguments and concerns. Conventionally, the ethical function refers to whether deliberation generates mutual respect (Mansbridge et al., 2012). We suggest that other ethical functions include promoting mutual recognition, accommodating ethno-cultural or linguistic diversity, and community-building through developing social bonds, feelings of mutual interdependence, and trust both within and across groups. As we have suggested, achieving one function may conflict with other functions in ways that are relevant for deciding how to organize a deliberative event.

Deliberative venues and forums often cannot achieve every deliberative goal simultaneously, since different functions (or different aspects of the same function) can come into conflict. This is not a problem for the overall health of the deliberative system, since different deliberative tasks are “distributed” sequentially across various component parts, which can refer to different moments in a deliberative event, or to different deliberative forums and actors across a deliberative system (Goodin, 2005). The health of the deliberative system is judged according to how well the variegated, interlocking deliberative forums and actors – informal communication networks, associations, the media, legislatures, and the courts, to name a few – achieve discourse’s various normative goals, in the aggregate (Mansbridge, 2015; Mansbridge et al., 2012). Now we will discuss how, in practice, deliberative design can impact which normative ideals are achieved and which are sacrificed in civic forums.

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/vol12/iss2/art2/

21st Century Civic Infrastructure: Under Construction

Posted on May 4, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 28-page paper, 21st Century Civic Infrastructure: Under Construction, written by Jill Blair and Malka Kopell was commissioned by The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and published in spring 2015. The paper offers 3 keystones for building an effective and more equitable civic infrastructure: engaging all sectors; enlisting all voices; and creating vertical and horizontal thoroughfares for the exchange of information and practice. Below is an excerpt of the paper, which can be found in full on The Aspen Institute’s FCS’s site here.

From the introduction…

Our existing civic infrastructure was not designed with intention; it evolved over time in an ad hoc fashion and was built, in part, as a result of investments made over time, largely by philanthropy, but also by private and public sector entities. While philanthropy has helped to populate our current civic infrastructure with nonprofit organizations, the public sector has introduced civic infrastructure policies – from public hearings to citizen budget commissions, and the private sector has contributed to civic infrastructure as well by sponsoring everything from volunteer engagement programs to corporate social responsibility efforts.

The investments and contributions have created a set of institutions, organizations, policies and practices upon which society has come to rely to facilitate public engagement in what Alexis de Tocqueville described as “associational life.” This is civic infrastructure, and it is made up of civic platforms of interplay and participation that enable us to connect with one another and to discover, express, and act on our collective community and civic interests.

We are suggesting here that given the myriad ways in which the world has changed and the persistence of the problems our civic infrastructure is intended to address, there is a need not only to revisit that infrastructure but to consciously create an infrastructure capable of meeting the challenges of our times. Our existing civic infrastructure is, in some cases, failing to take advantage of opportunities, in terms of today’s technology, communications and access to information. In other cases, our current system is failing to meet the challenges it was intended to overcome. Some remnants of 20th century civic infrastructure are ineffective and others may be damaging or undermining or compromising our potential for positive social impact.

Purpose
As leading investors in public problem solving across all content and disciplines, we see philanthropy as the primary, but not the sole, audience for this paper. As problem-solving investors, philanthropy historically has been a source of support for many of the institutions and organizations that comprise our civic infrastructure. With that said, the concepts presented here are relevant to all individuals and organizations committed to building a better world — one in which fairness, justice, economic and educational opportunity prevail and where all people are engaged as stakeholders in civic and community life. We offer this concept of intentional civic infrastructure design to provoke broad interest and to spark participation in its further development and realization.

Approach
We set out to explore the nature of and to begin to frame the principles of an intentionally designed civic infrastructure. We conducted conversations with 18 individuals1 and facilitated a number of small group discussions representing a range of philanthropic, nonprofit and private sector organizations. Many of those interviewed are quoted anonymously throughout this paper. We posed questions about designing a 21st century civic infrastructure in small groups gathered to discuss a range of issues, from democratic practice to place-based or neighborhood-based philanthropy. From these discussions and building on our original intention, we have gleaned what we believe are the keystone elements of a 21st century civic infrastructure wherein organizations and relationships are redefined according to what is both needed and possible given the times in which we live. We offer these keystones in a nascent stage, hoping to provoke deeper exploration and exposition. We are convinced that this moment calls for a close look at what is possible, and a closer look at steps we can take to get there.

Goals
It is time to conceive and construct, imagine and then create, a new civic infrastructure that enables full engagement in community and civic life. We must build it to be more robust and to achieve greater impact on the most vexing and troubling issues confronting our communities and the nation at large.

We intend this paper to be the basis for a series of organized conversations during which the keystones will be refined and made practical by examples and by trial and effort. We hope our colleagues in philanthropy and beyond will consider how to apply the keystones to their own portfolios and their ways of doing business in order to consciously cultivate better conditions for 21st century problem solving. As we apply these principles and our new expectations to practice, the nature of 21st century civic infrastructure should become clearer. We will build it as we go; we will recognize it as it manifests along the way. We know this approach may require reimagining, recreating and dismantling organizations and strategies to which we have become accustomed (and perhaps even committed), but that is the nature of building.

This is an excerpt of the paper, which you can find in full here.

About the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions
The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solution’s mission is to support community collaboration – including collective impact – that enables communities to effectively address their most pressing challenges. The Forum works to accomplish this mission by pursuing four complementary strategies including: 1) building awareness by documenting and lifting up impactful strategies and stories of success; 2) mobilizing stakeholders through knowledge and network development; 3) removing barriers by advocating for effective policy; and 4) catalyzing investment by encouraging funder partnerships.

Follow on Twitter: @AspenFCS

Resource Link: http://aspencommunitysolutions.org/21st-century-civic-infastucture-under-construction/

More Than a Seat at the Table: A Resource for Authentic and Equitable Youth Engagement

Posted on April 28, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The article, More Than a Seat at the Table: A Resource for Authentic and Equitable Youth Engagement (2016), was written by Rebecca Reyes and Malana Rogers-Bursen, and published on Everyday Democracy. This article explores several challenges when it comes to youth engagement and offers solutions to more effectively engage young people. It is important to engage young people in meaningful ways and for them to be a part of the key decision-making processes. Use this article as a way to gauge if your processes are inclusive of young people and how to improve those processes to better engage youth. Below is an excerpt of the article from Everyday Democracy, and can find the full article with all the examples of the specific challenges and solutions here.

From Everyday Democracy…

If you’re working on creating change in your community, it’s important to include all kinds of people in decision-making, including young people. The insight and talents of young people can bring value to any community change effort, yet community groups led by older adults sometimes find it hard to involve younger people, or keep them engaged.

We’ve led workshops on youth engagement to help people explore challenges they may face and think about possible solutions. People of all ages and from many sectors contributed their ideas for successfully engaging young people in their efforts. We’ve compiled a number of challenges that you may have encountered in your work or that may come up in the future, along with ways to address these challenges in your group.

There are many barriers young people can face that prevent them from getting involved. The barrier may be logistical, such as a meeting time or location. Even when we get young people to the table, they might not feel like they have an equal voice or decision making power.

Whenever we bring young people onto a planning team or steering committee, we need to make sure they’re making a meaningful contribution. Think back to how you were involved as a young person. Would you have been satisfied if you were asked to join a sports team, but were never allowed to play? What about if you volunteered with a group, but weren’t given any specific task to do? Or if you didn’t see the impact you were making at your workplace, however small?

Ultimately, the goal is to create intergenerational work with equitable relationships. This means that young people not only have a seat at the table and contribute in a meaningful way, but they are also a key part of decision-making. Engagement is just the first step.

Before you bring young people onto the team, it’s good practice to have a conversation about why it’s important to include young people and how you envision them contributing. Make sure everyone is on board and understands young people’s value.

Another important step is setting ground rules. This can help make sure that people have equal voice in meetings and respect for each individual’s opinion regardless of age.

The challenges and solutions you’ll read about can come into play no matter which age range you’re targeting, but you should define as a group what you mean by “youth” or “young people.” We define “youth” as anyone who is middle school and high school age, typically between the ages of 12-18. We define “young adult” as anyone between the ages of 18-30, and “young people” as anyone under 30. It’s also important to recognize that there are many different experiences people may have, even within these age ranges.

Note that young people aren’t the only ones who might face some of the challenges listed below. When you address these barriers, you’re being inclusive of many groups of people.

This is an in-depth list that is meant to be used as a reference whenever issues arise. Feel free to scroll through the list of scenarios and solutions, or click one of the links below to jump to a specific challenge:
– Understand how young people can contribute
– Making meetings and events appealing to young people
– Young people may not be aware of unspoken norms and practices
– Experience barriers
– The norms and practices are set and communicated by adults
– Young people have limited voice in meetings
– Allowing young people to try something that didn’t work in the past
– One young person is asked to be the voice for their peers
– The same young people are always invited
– Microaggressions get in the way of building bridges between generations and cultural and racial identities
– Decisions made by planning teams don’t reflect the diversity of the community

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.

Follow on Twitter: @EvDem

Resource Link: www.everyday-democracy.org/tips/authentic-and-equitable-youth-engagement

Practicing Civic Courage in Our Time

Posted on March 20, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The article, Practicing Civic Courage in Our Time, was written Martha McCoy and published February 2017 on Everyday Democracy’s site. In the article, McCoy shares different ways in which to have more civic courage by reaching in, reaching out, and creating spaces for democratic participation. You can find the full article below, as well as, on directly from Everyday Democracy’s site here.

From Everyday Democracy…

The day after the election, we shared a piece by our board member Peter Levine, in which he called for civic courage. As division, uncertainty, and anxiety continue to grow, I find myself coming back to this important idea. When messages of fear become louder and more frequent, what does civic courage look like? How can we practice it?

At difficult times throughout our history, many people have exercised civic courage. What kind of courage do we need to practice today? What will it take to advance a democracy that values the voice and participation of people of all racial and ethnic groups, economic means, creeds, ages, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, and walks of life?

Since Everyday Democracy is a national civic organization that focuses on providing ways to lift every voice, we have opportunities to work with and learn from civic practitioners and visionary leaders across the country. Here are a few lessons about civic courage we have drawn from their experiences:

Reach in: The work of strengthening democracy is ultimately collective, but it is also an “inside job.” Those whose words and actions touch us most deeply draw on their inner strength – often rooted in their faith in God and grounded in deeply held beliefs, such as a strong sense of compassion and justice. Many leaders we work with spend time apart – in quiet retreats, with others of their faith tradition, in nature, in poetry, in meditation – so that they can enter more fully into the work of strengthening voice, participation, and justice. They show us that when we take the time to listen to and nurture our own longings for wholeness and connection, we are better able to find the courage to operate from our best selves and to persist through great challenges.

Reach out: It requires courage to connect with and seek to understand others, especially those who have experiences and beliefs different from our own. As our politics become more prone to personal attack, overgeneralization, and stereotyping (“all conservatives believe this, all progressives believe that”), it is becoming even more difficult to open our hearts and minds. But it is possible. In our work, we have heard thousands of people tell their own stories, speak from their own values and experiences, listen deeply to others’ stories and concerns, and find human and civic connection.

The willingness to speak honestly and listen to others creates the empathy that is essential to democracy. Empathy helps us put ourselves in another’s shoes, understand the meaning of justice, and form relationships across difference. It enables us to be hard on ideas but not on people. It helps us make conflict productive. It prevents the “us vs. them” that is at the root of violence. It provides the foundation for working together, even when some disagreement (inevitably) remains. It makes it possible to stand for our convictions, even while we make room for others to stand for theirs.

Stand up: It takes courage to use our voices to stand against anti-democratic behaviors and practices and to stand for more democratic ways of governing ourselves. Speaking out against racism is one of the most powerful examples of “standing up.”

People are learning that racism goes well beyond bigotry. Racism is a web of attitudes, practices, and policies that treats people of color as inferior and creates unfair disadvantages. It has been a primary impediment to democratic practice since our very founding. And it has laid the foundation for other forms of disadvantage and inequity – such as those based on income level, education, gender, age, religion, ability, language, immigration status, and sexual orientation.

The more people understand the true nature of racism, the more they understand that it affects all of us – people of all colors, ethnicities, and income levels. Since our society provides very few ways to learn about this, it can be difficult for many to recognize those times when racism is being used to divide us from each other.

Today, growing numbers of people of all backgrounds are demonstrating civic courage by standing up to name the effects of structural racism and call for racial justice. People of color and white people are showing that it is possible to use a clearer understanding of racial justice to strengthen their advocacy for all kinds of justice and their efforts to bring all kinds of people into dialogue and public problem solving. And growing numbers of white people are showing the power of “standing with.”

Create spaces for democratic participation: We work with hundreds of leaders who bring people together across all kinds of divides for honest, sometimes difficult, conversations that are organized to lead to action and change. Such conversations allow people of all backgrounds and views to build trust and create solutions to public problems.

It takes civic courage and skill to build a welcoming public space where people of all backgrounds and views can share honestly and listen deeply, especially in the face of so much division. It takes courage to take part in dialogue, to sit down with others, especially when messages of distrust and fear bombard us daily. And it takes courage for elected leaders at all levels to sit down with everyday people and commit to listening to them.

Yet, all of this is possible. Diverse coalitions of community groups, grass-roots leaders, and public officials are creating opportunities for all kinds of people to:

speak honestly and listen deeply to each other
find their own voices and leadership potential
dispel stereotypes
build relationships of trust that can nourish and sustain civic courage
deepen their understanding of the nature of public problems and the roots of inequities
explore each other’s views and find shared concerns
consider a range of possible public solutions
make recommendations to policymakers
and develop action priorities and plans they can carry out together.

We and many of our partners are working toward a society in which these opportunities and practices become routine – in the ways we relate to each other, strengthen community, solve public problems, and make public decisions.

In fact, that is what “everyday democracy” would look like.

Cultivate hope: The late civil rights leader Vincent Harding once famously asked: “Is America possible?” He wondered whether it was possible to create a multi-racial democracy that works for all people. His answer: “Yes, but only as we make it so.” Harding practiced civic courage in his own life, and then he shared his stories and lessons with many young people. He understood that advancing democracy was a multi-generational journey for the long haul, and that each of us can (and must) contribute.

At Everyday Democracy, we are committed to making America possible, to creating an authentic democracy that works for all. We stand against fear and for hope. We stand against demonizing others and for encouraging the voices and participation of all. We stand against implicit and explicit bias in ourselves and others; we stand for understanding and attending to the ways that structural racism has shaped our relationships with each other and how we govern ourselves.

There is great power in sharing stories of courage and hope and of how you are using these principles and values in your communities and in your work. It is possible for all of us to embrace civic courage by working to create positive change – in ourselves, our relationships, our institutions, and our systems.

Please share your stories and thoughts with us:

What does civic courage mean to you in this time?
What does it look like?
What are you doing to exercise it?
What are you struggling with?
What resources are you calling on?
What are you learning?

Please send your stories, thoughts, and photos to us at naflalo@everyday-democracy.org, and check back for updates from around the country. We stand with you as you take this important work forward. In this challenging time, your commitment and work are vital. Together we will make America possible.

Follow on Twitter: @EvDem

Resource Link: www.everyday-democracy.org/news/practicing-civic-courage-age-civic-anxiety

Equity in School Forums: An Interview with John Landesman

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 14-page article, Equity in School Forums: An Interview with John Landesman (2016), was written by Carolyne Abdullah, Christopher Karpowitz, and Chad Raphael, and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. In the article, the authors interview Landesman of Everyday Democracy to share his experience working to address the barriers within the Montgomery County Study Circles Program, which he helped to coordinate. Landesman clarifies the importance between equality and equity; and how these play out when designing a process to effective address the power dynamics that arise within school spaces between admin, faculty, parents, and students.

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…

For adults and youth, American public schools are a major entryway to public engagement. Not only are public schools charged with preparing students for civic life, but they are the custodians of parents’ educational and economic aspirations for their children, often the largest recipients of taxpayer funding in a community, neighborhood hubs that host public meetings and events, and institutions that are formally accountable to the community through school boards, parent teacher associations, and other public forums. Schools need active support from their communities to approve school bonds, attract donations, enlist mentors and volunteers, approve (or at least accept) curriculum reforms, engage parents in supporting their children’s learning, and address social problems such as academic achievement gaps among students of different racial and income backgrounds, bullying, and gangs. Yet, like other institutions of democracy, public school governance is often dominated by the voices of politicians and policy makers, professionals (administrators and teachers), and privileged citizens (parents of higher socio-economic status) (Nabatchi & Leighninger, 2015).

In Maryland, the Montgomery County Public School system offers a hopeful example of how public dialogue can improve school governance. John Landesman, a Senior Associate at Everyday Democracy, coordinates the Montgomery County Public Schools Study Circles Program. The program engages parents, students, staff, and administrators in dialogue to address racial and ethnic barriers to parent involvement and student achievement in this multilingual, multi-ethnic school district. These dialogues have helped to build trust and collaboration, and increased involvement by parents of color, as well diminishing differences in achievement among students from more and less advantaged backgrounds (Childress, Doyle, and Thomas, 2009; Orland, 2007; Fagotto & Fung, 2009).

In this interview, Landesman explains how Everyday Democracy thinks about equity and equality, and how the organization integrated equity considerations throughout the process of organizing study-circle dialogues in Montgomery County, including recruiting and retaining diverse participants, forming agendas, facilitation, small group discussions in affinity groups of less-powerful participants as well as mixed groups, evaluation, and implementation of plans. The techniques discussed here can be adopted or adapted to forums on schooling and many other issues.

Equity and Equality
Abdullah, Karpowitz, and Raphael (AKR): Some people working in dialogue and deliberation have argued that instead of practicing equality by treating people 1 Abdullah et al.: Equity in School Forums: An Interview with John Landesman similarly, we should strive for equity by treating participants differently in order to create conditions that achieve fair discussion and decisions. Do you see this distinction between equal and equitable treatment as useful to our field and in your own work?

Landesman: I do see a distinction. There’s a picture that we often use in our presentations of three boys trying to look over a fence at a baseball game (see Figure 1). In the first panel, which shows equal treatment, each boy is standing on a box that is the same height. The tall boy can see the game over the fence, the middle boy can barely see, and the shortest boy can’t see at all. In the next panel, which shows equity, the tall boy’s box has been given to the little boy, so now all three of them can see the game. The idea is that everyone needs something different to participate in whatever they’re doing. But to me, this feels like the wrong question. The question should be, “What is the goal of the dialogue, and who needs to be in the room to make the dialogue effective?” If the goal is to have a variety of perspectives deliberating together, then organizers need to think about how to recruit for those different perspectives. If there are people who need something different to be part of it, but having their voice will make the deliberation more effective, then organizers have to use different strategies to get them there.

Think of successful companies like Coca-Cola. Their goal is to sell more of their products. They don’t just develop their product and then say, “OK everyone, come get it.” They spend a lot of time and resources thinking about how to get different kinds of people to buy their products. If the goal of deliberation is to have a richer understanding of an issue based on all the different perspectives that are in the community, than we need to spend time thinking about how to ensure that we get all those perspectives in the room.

In my experience, organizing for diverse perspectives is often an afterthought. Organizers plan the way they always have, and then say, “How do we get Latino participants or low-income folks, or people who have different political perspectives?” That never works, because all we’re doing is adding an extra strategy to what’s already been put in place. Successful organizing starts by asking, “What is the goal of the dialogue, and who needs to be in the room to reach that goal?” Then every piece of the organizing—whether it’s the outreach, the facilitation, the setup once you get there, where it’s located—all of those things are driven by who you want in the room and what perspectives you need to hear to make your dialogue effective. That’s a very different way of looking at it than saying, “We’re going to do it the way we’ve always done it, and now we’re going to develop a strategy to get to these so-called marginalized people.”

This is an excerpt of the article, which can be downloaded in full 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/vol12/iss2/art12/

End of Life: What Should We Do for Those Who Are Dying? (NIFI Issue Guide)

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 23-page issue guide, End of Life: What Should We Do for Those Who Are Dying?, written by National Issues Forums Institute and published on their site on November 2016. This issue guide provides three options for deliberation for participants to explore end-of-life decisions, as people are able to live longer and options for “right to die” become possibilities; what is best for those who are dying? In addition to the issue guide, there is a moderator’s guide and a post-forum questionnaire, all available to download on NIFI’s site here.

From NIFI…

What ought to be done at the end of life is both a personal and public decision. As our population ages, it is becoming a matter of great concern for the entire nation. Diseases that would have been death sentences a few decades ago are now often treatable.

This guide explores end-of-life decisions and examines options and trade-offs inherent in this sensitive and universal issue. Medical advances make it more likely that we will care for relatives in their final days, facing decisions regarding their illnesses or death—as well as our own. Even those who never face such choices will pay for them through tax dollars and the cost of insurance premiums. And as more states consider passing “right-to-die” laws similar to the one that took effect in Oregon in 1997, this debate may become a local one.

Under most circumstances, end-of-life decisions remain difficult and uncomfortable. A Consumer Reports survey found that 86 percent of those polled wanted to die at home. But fewer than half of the respondents over age 65 had living wills detailing their dying wishes, leaving them at the mercy of hospitals and stressed-out families forced to decide on their behalf. In 1990, the US Supreme Court affirmed an individual’s “right to die.” Later, in 1997, the court upheld New York and Washington state laws banning physician-assisted death, leaving it for individual states to decide their legality. These rulings established legal precedence for a national conversation.

This issue guide asks: What should society allow, and support, at the end of life? It presents three different ways of looking at the problem and suggests possible actions appropriate to each.

Option One: “Maintain Quality of Life”
That means when continued efforts to keep terminally ill patients alive a few more days or weeks result in needless pain and suffering, life-support treatment should be discontinued. At that point, caregiving efforts should be devoted to keeping patients comfortable and pain free.

Option Two: “Preserve Life at All Costs”
Do everything we can to prevent death. This means sparing no expense to extend the lives of those who are sick. It should be difficult for doctors to give up on patients, and the end must not be brought about by deliberate medical neglect or intervention. Right-to-die laws must be repealed.

Option Three: “My Right, My Choice”
The freedoms we value so highly in choosing how we live should not be taken away from us at the end of our lives. People should have the right to end their own lives and to enlist their doctors in helping them to die when a terminal illness leaves nothing to look forward to but higher levels of pain and suffering.

Preview the trailer for this issue guide’s starter video above and buy the video and full issue guide on NIFI’s site here.

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: www.nifi.org/en/issue-guide/end-life

Ideals of Inclusion in Deliberation

Posted on February 13, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 23-page article, Ideals of Inclusion in Deliberation, was written by Christopher Karpowitz and Chad Raphael, and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. In the article, Karpowitz and Raphael, build off of previous research they performed regarding inclusivity within democratic deliberation.

They propose four ideals of inclusion summarized in the abstract, “These principles of inclusion depend not only on the goals of a deliberation, but also on its level of empowerment in the political system, and its openness to all who want to participate. Holistic and open deliberations can most legitimately incorporate and decide for the people as a whole if they are open to all who want to participate and affirmatively recruit perspectives that would be underrepresented otherwise. Chicago Community Policing beat meetings offer an example. Holistic and restricted forums (such as the latter stages of some participatory budgeting processes) should recruit stratified random samples of the demos, but must also ensure that problems of tokenism are overcome by including a critical mass of the least powerful perspectives, so that their views can be aired and heard more fully and effectively. Forums that aim to improve relations between social sectors and peoples should provide open access for all who are affected by the issues (relational and open), if possible, or recruit a stratified random sample of all affected, when necessary (relational and restricted). In either case, proportional representation of the least advantaged perspectives is necessary. However, when deliberation focuses on relations between a disempowered group and the rest of society, or between unequal peoples, it is often most legitimate to over-sample the least powerful and even to create opportunities for the disempowered to deliberate among themselves so that their perspectives can be adequately represented in small and large group discussions. We illustrate this discussion with examples of atypical Deliberative Polls on Australia’s reconciliation with its indigenous community and the Roma ethnic minority in Europe.”

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…

Tensions between equality and equity occur at every stage of public deliberation in civic forums, but perhaps nowhere more than with respect to the question of inclusion. Given that deliberative theory is premised on the idea of free and equal citizens exchanging reasons and making decisions together, an abiding concern from both critics and champions of deliberative approaches has centered around whether background inequalities harm disadvantaged groups at various points in the deliberative process (Young, 2000). Such harm may occur prior to any reasons being exchanged at all when inequalities shape who is able to show up to deliberate in the first place. As Gutmann and Thompson put it, “When power is distributed unequally and when money substantially affects who has access to the deliberative forum, the results of deliberation in practice are likely to reflect these inequalities, and therefore lead, in many cases, to unjust outcomes” (2004, p. 48).

A common response to such concerns has been to focus on the representativeness of the deliberating group, making sure that forums are a microcosm of some larger population, whether international, national, or local. One strategy for maximizing inclusion is to open the forum to all who want to participate, while making special efforts to recruit a critical mass of people who would likely be under-represented otherwise (Leighninger, 2012). A second approach, which some deliberative theorists prefer, involves using random sampling to create a deliberating body that looks like the larger group being sampled in as many ways as possible, while giving each member of a population an equal probability of being invited to participate (Barber, 1984; Carson & Martin, 1999; Fishkin, 2009; Gastil, 2008).

Either approach prompts a critical question: who or what exactly needs to be represented inclusively? Many theorists of deliberation have argued that all who are affected by a decision should be represented in discussions (e.g., Cohen, 1989; Dryzek, 2000; Habermas, 1996), while recognizing that in an increasingly interconnected world, it is difficult to draw boundaries around those who are and are not touched in some way by an issue or a decision about it (Fung, 2013; Goodin, 2008). Thus, a deliberation’s legitimacy depends, first, on the justifications for defining who is affected by the issues on the agenda (Karpowitz & Raphael, 2014). Assuming that one has defined those boundaries appropriately, it makes sense to think of the population of all affected by a decision as a collection of perspective bearers most relevant to the issue under deliberation.

What are perspectives and why should we focus on representing them inclusively? In deliberation, participants should be open to reconsidering their beliefs, values, interests, and policy preferences, none of which can be assumed to be simple expressions of their ascriptive characteristics (such as ethnicity, sex, income, or sexual orientation). A perspective involves a structural location in society, which can, of course, be closely connected to social identities of various kinds, but in emphasizing perspectives, we seek to avoid essentializing those identities. Perspectives exist prior to deliberation and enrich discussion as they endure during deliberation. Iris Marion Young (2000) defines perspectives as the accumulated “experience, history, and social knowledge” derived from individuals’ locations in social groups (p. 136). However, as Young makes clear, perspectives do not determine the content of any individual’s beliefs, interests, or opinions. One’s perspective consists, instead, “in a set of questions, kinds of experience, and assumptions with which reasoning begins, rather than the conclusion drawn” (p. 137). In this sense, African-Americans can be said to share a perspective on public life that stems from their common experience of being perceived as black in America. Public forums about racism, income, policing, and many other issues would obviously want to be inclusive and representative of African-Americans without assuming that all black participants will agree on a set of shared interests or values, much less public policies. Similarly, a forum on free speech in schools should aim to include and represent students, who share a similar structural location with respect to the issue, even though they will not necessarily agree with each other about the specific rules, boundaries, and policies that might be proposed in a given school (for further discussion of perspectives, see Karpowitz & Raphael, 2014).

Perspectives are critical to the question of inclusion because a given perspective cannot be easily adopted by someone whose life experiences have occurred in a different social location than that occupied by the holder of that perspective or who has not shared the same set of experiences, history, and social knowledge. Mansbridge argues, for example, that the “vicarious portrayal of the experience of others by those who have not themselves had those experiences is often not enough to promote effective deliberation” (1999, p. 635). Of course, empathy is an important potential outcome of deliberative exchange, but such empathy is less likely if those with a given set of life experiences and perspectives are not present in the discussion. For example, a deliberative forum about contemporary immigration policy would likely be incomplete if it did not include the perspectives of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States from countries like Mexico or children born in the United States to parents who are undocumented. Asking that those immigrant perspectives be fully captured by, say, individuals who immigrated legally from Europe as adults is likely asking for an imaginative and empathetic leap that will be too much for even the best-intentioned deliberator.

An effective deliberative system should ensure that all relevant perspective holders are heard, and our specific focus is on how the least powerful perspective bearers can be included in civic forums. As Mansbridge (1999) has argued in relation to legislatures, a critical mass of more disadvantaged perspectives may be helpful for several distinct reasons. First, when disempowered perspective holders are present, their voices are more likely to be heard, and the stock of arguments, experiences, reasons, and evidence from disempowered perspectives is likely to be larger. Second, and relatedly, a critical mass may bolster the courage of the disempowered to offer minority viewpoints, and hearing those viewpoints from more than one deliberator may push others – both members of the disempowered group and those who are comparatively more empowered – to take those ideas seriously. Third, in many forums the giving and receiving of reasons occurs not only in large plenary sessions, but also (and crucially) in small break-out sessions and discussion groups, both formal and informal. A critical mass thus increases the likelihood that disempowered perspectives are heard throughout the forum. Fourth, when a greater diversity of disempowered viewpoints is present, no one deliberator is forced to be a token who represents the whole of her social group, a fact that works against an oversimplified, stereotyped, or essentialized view of who the disadvantaged are and what they want.

This is an excerpt of the article, which can be downloaded in full 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/vol12/iss2/art3/

Can Public Life Be Regenerated?

Posted on January 27, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 32-page report, Can Public Life Be Regenerated? (2016), was written by David Mathews and supported by the Cousins Research Group of the Kettering Foundation. This report is based on a presentations Mathews gave the the Independent Sector conference on issues of community, civil society, and governance. In this report, Mathews explores the possibilities to “reweave the social fabric” within society, to improve its social capital and revitalize its sense of community, and create a healthier civil society.

Below is an excerpt of the report and it can be found in full at the bottom of this page or on Kettering Foundation’s site here.

From the guide…

Foreword
This paper was written in 1996 for an Independent Sector conference. At that time, the term public life was used to distinguish political life from other kinds of collective living. This was intended to counter a tendency to conflate largely social phenomena (attending a picnic) with more political activities (building a playground to give children a safer place to play). If I were writing this paper today, I likely would title it Can Democracy Be Regenerated? The Kettering Foundation’s research has led to a distinctive understanding of democratic politics that puts citizens at the center. By citizens, we mean people who join with others to produce things that serve our common well-being. As our research evolved, we came to use “making democracy work as it should” as a central, organizing theme. We define democracy, at its most fundamental, as a system of governance in which power comes from citizens who generate their power by working together to combat common problems—beginning in their communities—and by working to shape their common future, both through what they do with one another and through their institutions. – David Mathews April 4, 2016

These days we seem willing to consider the possibility that democracies need something more than written constitutions, multiple parties, free elections, and representative governments. They also depend on a strong public life, a rich depository of social capital, a sense of community, and a healthy civil society. Now comes the obvious follow-up: Is it possible to “reweave the social fabric,” to generate social capital where it is lacking, to build a sense of community in a fragmented, polarized city, to invigorate public life at a time when many Americans are seeking security in private sanctuaries? No one knows. Maybe a democratic civil society takes centuries to develop, building layer upon layer like a coral reef. Maybe the places we admire most result more from happenstance than we would like to admit. These reservations notwithstanding, we do have cases where a civil order changed its character in a relatively short period of time. Modern Spanish democracy emerged from Franco’s fascism in only a few decades, according to Víctor Pérez Díaz. And Vaughn Grisham Jr. reports that Tupelo, Mississippi, changed its civic character in roughly the same amount of time, the result being that the poorest city in the poorest county in the poorest state of the union became a progressive community with a per capita income close to that of Atlanta.

So maybe—just maybe—it is possible for towns and cities, perhaps even counties and states, to change their politics. Maybe public life can be regenerated. I say “regenerated” because I am assuming that some vestige or memory of public life exists almost everywhere. I think modern public life is rooted in the earliest institutions and norms created for collective survival. So my instincts tell me that strengthening public life is best accomplished by following the advice of J. Herman Blake, a very effective community organizer, whose practice is to “build on what grows.” With that as a predicate, I want to go on to the question of how people might change the character of their civil order. There is some urgency surrounding this question; I sense a danger in trying to strengthen public life with only a thin concept of the public, civil, or communal to guide the way. That would create a problem akin to trying to paint a barn red without clearly distinguishing red from pink or orange. There is a tendency to take descriptions of cities with a rich reservoir of social capital and try to replicate their features. If they have a lot of festivals, why not generate public life with a pig roast? (Actually, a foundation in Europe was asked to do just that.) But are community barbecues and festivals the product of something that happens prior to the events, of some precondition that we haven’t been able to identify? Are we in danger of mistaking the symptom for the cause? If we do, our strategies for building civil society will be the equivalent of dress-for-success strategies that tell us we can get ahead in the world by wearing the right tie or dress.

Developing a Concept of Public Life
Here is what I will try to do in this paper: Drawing on what the Kettering Foundation is learning from its research and observations, and from studies others have done, I will propose a way of thinking about public life, or a paradigm.5 Kettering has been developing a hypothesis about what public life is in order to have a better idea about how to strengthen it. The way we understand the structure and function of a public suggests ways to regenerate public life. Since no one knows the answer to the question of whether such life can be renewed, surely the thing to do is to spell out our assumptions, which can be tested by experience.

The Influence of Studies of Social Capital and Community Development
We aren’t making empirical claims when we develop a hypothesis. Yet our experiences influence our imagination of what might be. For 15 years, Kettering has been observing public life in communities from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to El Paso, Texas, and from Newark, New Jersey, to Orange County, California. We have also commissioned independent research on public life. And we have been influenced by studies like Pérez-Díaz’s on Spain, Grisham’s on Tupelo, Robert Putnam’s on north central Italy, and that of the Heartland Center for Leadership Development on the difference between dying and prospering rural communities, among others. Putnam and Grisham reinforced our own impressions that the “soft side” of the social order or an intangible such as social capital is critical to public life. Social capital is said to consist of networks of civic associations, along with norms of reciprocity and social trust, that result in high levels of voluntary cooperation. This capital is generated where public life is strong, that is, where people are involved in public matters and in relationships that run horizontally (among equals) instead of vertically (between haves and have-nots). As you know, while Putnam found these characteristics in some areas in Italy, they were noticeably absent in others. People in the “uncivil” areas did not participate in either local politics or social organizations, and their relationships tended to be hierarchical, with the have-nots dependent on the haves.

This is an excerpt of the report, download the full guide at the bottom of this page to learn more.

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: www.kettering.org/catalog/product/can-public-life-be-regenerated

When is Deliberation Democratic?

Posted on January 25, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 14-page article, When is Deliberation Democratic?, was written by David Moscrop and Mark Warren, and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. In the article, the authors theorize on how deliberative democracy operates in relation to equality and equity. They lift up two features that are of particular importance to pre-deliberative democracy: popular participation and agenda-setting, that must be paid attention to by theorist and practitioners. Deliberative democratic processes shape and are shaped by these two features, popular participation- how people show up and express their voice, and agenda-setting- how concerns are shaped into issues. The authors offer suggestions on responding to the challenges of equality and equity to democratic deliberation.

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…

“Deliberative democracy” is a compound term. In both theory and practice, it connects deliberative influence through reason-giving, reciprocity, and publicity to a family of political systems that broadly enable popular control of the state and government through empowerments such as voting, petitioning, and contesting, as well as the electoral and judicial systems that enable them. These empowerments are democratic when they are distributed to, and usable by, those affected by collective decisions in ways that are both equal and equitable.

While deliberative influence is best protected and incentivized by democratic political systems, not all deliberation is democratic, and not all approaches to democracy are deliberative. We should distinguish and relate these terms: we need to differentiate the practice of deliberation from the contexts of democratic enablements and empowerments in which it occurs. We can then focus on the pre-deliberative conditions that will enable or limit the extent to which deliberation is democratic. Two pre-deliberative democratic features stand out as particularly important in this context: popular participation—how individuals come to have standing and voice as participants, and agenda setting—how concerns come to be defined as issues. We further argue that since deliberation typically occurs downstream from agenda-setting, and since popular participation both shapes and is shaped by this practice, theorists and practitioners of deliberative democracy should pay close attention to each feature well before deliberation begins.

To make this case, we first theorize the democratic dimensions of deliberative democracy through the concepts of equity and equality. Second, we focus on agenda-setting and popular participation as important, though not exclusive, pre-deliberative determinants of equality and equity during deliberation. Finally, we offer suggestions about how theorists and practitioners of deliberative democracy might think about responding to the challenges generated by the tension between equality and equity prior to democratic deliberation.

Equality, Equity, and Deliberative Democracy
Deliberation can be separated from democracy conceptually and practically. There can be deliberation that is not democratic and democratic practices that are not deliberative. For instance, Rawls (2001) considered the United States Supreme Court to be a pre-eminent deliberative body. But the Supreme Court has an agenda that is limited by judicial process and—though an important part of a democratic system—is remote from democratic control. There are also democratic practices that are not deliberative. These include practices such as aggregate voting and purely strategic uses of words and images in political campaigns.

At a high level of abstraction, we can conceive of the “democratic” part of deliberative democracy as comprised of equality in opportunities for participation, and equity in processes and outcomes. Within the context of democratic theory, equality almost always refers constitutionally to rights and empowerments that attach to citizenship—equal rights to vote, equal protections for speech and association, equal standing before the law, and equal supports for social precursors of participation, such as education. These equal rights and empowerments are justified by moral equality; each person is morally worthy and possessed of equal moral dignity, and assumed to be capable of self-government (Dahl, 1999). In a democracy, these rights, empowerments, and moral assumptions attach to each individual equally, simply by virtue of their citizenship. They do so regardless of actual social and economic inequalities, or inequalities of capacity. They belong to individuals whether or not they are able to make use of them. Finally, these kinds of rights and empowerments are relative to the political units through which they are organized; their effectiveness is conditioned by the control governments exercise over an issue, and by the ways political systems enable citizens to participate in the kinds of control a government might exercise, including (for example) electoral system design.

Equity is a different matter. While equality operates through distributions of rights and empowerments that attach to citizenship, equity requires that each person is given his or her due according to circumstance. Equity considerations draw attention to the highly variable ways in which individuals are situated within social relationships, and to the duties and obligations that individuals have to one another as co-dependents within collectivities. That is, equity reflects considerations of social justice (Pettit, 2012; Rawls, 2001). Thus, while equality may be said to operate on a simple principle—equal provision of formal empowerments and protections—equity is more demanding and less amenable to formalization, as it requires attentiveness to the circumstances of each individual. Ideally, equality enables equity: equal distribution of empowerments such as votes, rights, and opportunities for voice should enable citizens to press for equity, to place equity claims on the agenda, and to deliberate about what equity requires in the many different kinds of locations that comprise collectivities of interdependent equals. Equality, properly understood, ought to move a society toward equity: when equal empowerments underwrite voice, then deliberative mechanisms should enable finer-grained attentiveness to historical injustices, persistent prejudices, and highly variable starting places in life. But because these kinds of circumstances affect the ways in which citizens are able to use their equalities, questions of equity may also be pre-deliberative; precisely those who are relatively disadvantaged may need additional support, organization, or representation in order to have their voices included in deliberative processes.

Who Gets to Deliberate and about What?
When we convert these ideals into more substantive questions of deliberative democracy, two questions stand out: How are issues placed on deliberative agendas? And who gets to deliberate?

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/vol12/iss2/art4/

Civic Studies

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Category Archives: Reports & Articles

Deliberators, not Future Citizens: Children in Democracy

21st Century Civic Infrastructure: Under Construction

More Than a Seat at the Table: A Resource for Authentic and Equitable Youth Engagement

End of Life: What Should We Do for Those Who Are Dying? (NIFI Issue Guide)

Ideals of Inclusion in Deliberation

Can Public Life Be Regenerated?