The Yarra River Values Forum was convened by Institute for Sustainable Futures as part of an investigation by the Victorian Smart Water Fund. Dr. Annie Bolitho shared this case study with NCDD... (continue)

The Coast Shire Council Citizens’ Juries on Roads Management was convened by Surf Coast Shire Council, Victoria in 2007. Dr. Annie Bolitho shared this case study with NCDD... (continue)

The Loddon Riparian Frontages Citizens Panel was convened by the Victorian Department of Primary Industries and the North Central Catchment Management Authority. Dr. Annie Bolitho shared this case study with NCDD... (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)

This paper considers citizen participation in technological decision-making through random selection deliberative mechanisms such as citizens' jury, consensus conference, televote and deliberative poll. (continue)

Innovative forms of public participation challenge the idea that activists must inevitably be caught up in consultation methods that are tokenistic or manipulative. Citizens' juries, consensus conferences, deliberative polls and televotes' these methods hold promise for enhanced representativeness and offer the added benefit of creating deliberative spaces for sound decision making. (continue)

This article proposes that "Citizen Deliberative Councils" can and should be used in a wide variety of ways to increase the potency of our democracy. Citizen Deliberative Councils can increase both the power of "We the People" and the quality of the decisions made and implemented with that power. Citizen Deliberative Councils (CDCs) are temporary, face-to-face councils of a dozen or more citizens whose diversity reflects the diversity of their community, state or country. Usually council members are selected at random, often with additional criteria to ensure gender, racial, socioeconomic and other diversity. (continue)

Below are dozens of links to dialogue and deliberation success stories and case studies that are available online. Approaches covered include Deliberative Polling, Citizens Juries, Future Search, National Issues Forums, Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue, AmericaSpeaks, Study Circles, the Public Conversations Project, and Wisdom Councils. NCDD has been compiling these resources for the D&D community for several years, but we could really use your help keeping this page updated. Email us at ncdd@thataway.org with your additions and changes. (continue)

Healthy Democracy Oregon was formed to empower the public through new democratic innovations and provide Oregonians with greater opportunities to have a voice in politics. We're working hard to ensure that every Oregonian receives trustworthy, accurate, and balanced information on every statewide ballot measure put to a vote. To do so, we're bringing a new idea to Oregon's initiative process--the Citizens' Initiative Review.... (continue)

Building on the success of citizen juries and deliberative polling, Gastil proposes improving our current process by convening randomly selected panels of citizens to deliberate for several days on ballot measures and candidates. Voters would learn about the judgments of these citizen panels through voting guides and possibly information printed on official ballots. The result would be a more representative government and a less cynical public. (continue)