With this report, the Office of Environmental Policy Innovation (OEPI) has taken a fresh look at Agency efforts to involve the public by reviewing formal evaluations and informal summaries from across the Agency that identify, describe, and/or evaluate Agency stakeholder involvement and public participation activities. Based upon their review, OEPI identifies key crosscutting lessons learned, pinpoint unique barriers and ways to overcome them, and highlight innovative approaches to stakeholder involvement and public participation. (continue)

For six years, Boston leaders on both sides of the abortion debate met in secret in an attempt to better understand each other through dialogue facilitated by the Public Conversations Project. This Boston Globe article enabled the group, which met together privately for over 150 hours, to publicly disclose their meetings and the impact those meetings had on them for the first time. (continue)

The subtitle of Orland's 76-page thesis is "How One Dialogue and Action Program Helped Teachers Integrate the Competencies of an Effective Multicultural Educator." Study Circles, a dialogue and action process, brings together teachers, parents and students from diverse racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds to talk about the racial achievement gap. This study asks "How does the experience of participating in Study Circles bring teachers closer to integrating the competencies of the effective multicultural educator?" (continue)

In this paper, the authors begin by setting deliberative events in a broader context of deliberative forums or arenas. The authors distinguish three potential arenas of deliberation: the 'normal, the 'informal' and the 'staged'. They briefly describe three well-known deliberative events, citizens' juries, consensus conferences and deliberative polls. After setting out the benefits and criticisms of these three deliberative events, the authors realize that although the criticisms raise important issues, they do not justify abandoning deliberative events. (continue)

The Bangalore, India based conflict resolution consultancy, Meta-Culture, has released a paper titled The Importance of Language in Conflict Resolution in response to the Delhi Policy Group and Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue’s July publication Conflict Resolution: Learning Lessons from Dialogue Processes in India (pdf version & more publications), to draw lessons from current conflict resolution efforts that are relevant to policymakers and practitioners. The paper highlights the need for clear terminology and an appreciation of distinct conflict resolution modalities. They look forward to your feedback, which you can ... (continue)

Between November 2005 and June 2007, a team from The Keystone Center helped organize and implement a multiparty negotiation process aimed at increased redress for people affected by river contamination from the Ok Tedi Mine in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Ok Tedi is often cited as one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in the world. It is also a true sustainability dilemma. The mine produces 20% of PNG's gross domestic product but it has also disrupted the traditional food webs and lives of more than 50,000 people by putting 90,000 tons of rock waste and tailings per day into the Fly River system. Download the 34-page report directly from the NCDD website. (continue)

Experts in public engagement, participation and dialogue, Involve carries out research and delivers training to inspire citizens, communities and institutions to run and take part in high-quality public participation processes, consultations and community engagement. They believe passionately in a democracy where citizens are empowered to take and influence the decisions that affect their lives. Their January 2012 briefing paper, The Use of Public Engagement in Tackling Climate Change, draws from compelling results and evaluation findings of a range of public dialogues around climate change and argues ... (continue)

The focus on the normative potential of deliberation has to a large extent neglected deliberation's many pitfalls and contradictions. At least three paradoxes in Deliberative Democracy can be identified: the equality paradox, the publicity paradox and the outcome-driven paradox. Evidence from the Danish national Deliberative Poll supports the three paradoxes of deliberation, which call for a revision of deliberative democracy theory. If future initiatives for public involvement in decision making should be an institutional part of the contemporary democracy system, such a theoretical revision should include aspects of democracy legitimacy in order for the theory to enhance basic claims of democratic legitimacy and deliberation. (continue)

This report presents the results from the series of town hall meetings and information sessions on Toronto's New Official Plan. Residents, nongovernmental organizations, business and ratepayer associations were invited to four public meetings in June, 2002, held in the Council Chambers of Metro Hall, the Etobicoke Civic Centre, the North York Civic Centre and the Scarborough Civic Centre. Part of the ongoing public consultation concerning the OP, the meetings were attended by over 500 Toronto residents. (continue)

In June 2004, Let's Talk America and the Democracy In America Project, two dialogue initiatives aimed at healing the left-right divide, co-hosted two dozen thought leaders from across the political spectrum at the Seasons Conference Center at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to explore the potential to bridge their political differences through dialogue. It worked better than anyone dared hope. Shared concerns and perspectives bubbled up in the space of dialogue that never show their faces in debates. On Sunday, June 13, 2004, after two and a half days of powerful dialogue, the group decided to sign a declaration. (continue)