On October 12, 2012, the newly launched Difficult Dialogues National Resource Center (DDNRC) issued the National Difficult Dialogues Movement Declaration. The mission of the Difficult Dialogues National Resource Center (DDNRC) is to advance innovative practices in higher education that promote respectful, transformative dialogue on controversial topics and complex social issues, thereby reflecting a commitment to pluralism and academic freedom and strengthening a democratically engaged society. (continue)

This study released on September 12, 2012 by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) shows that a strong civic foundation is directly linked to strengthening employment at the metropolitan, county, and state levels. Communities with better civic health have weathered the recent recession far better – and experienced considerably smaller increases in unemployment – than other communities that faced similar economic circumstances. The NCoC report, Civic Health and Unemployment II: The Case Builds, was produced in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, ... (continue)

Several years in the making, with the involvement of many of us in the D&D community, this 2012 book edited by Tina Nabatchi, John Gastil, G. Michael Weiksner, and Matt Leighninger is due out on November 1st but can be purchased here on Amazon.com now for under $30. The 336-page book is published by Oxford University Press. Although the field of deliberative civic engagement is growing rapidly around the world, our knowledge and understanding of its practice and impacts remain highly fragmented. Democracy in Motion represents the first ... (continue)

This important 2012 book by Carolyn Lukensmeyer (founder of AmericaSpeaks and now director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse) offers seven field-tested strategies for public managers to help them maximize citizen engagement as they implement the President’s Open Government Directive. Lukensmeyer’s first book is due out November 10, but you can pre-order your copy now here at Wiley.com or by calling 800-356-5016. Use Promo Code CL252 to save 36% on your order. The Core Strategies for Citizen Engagement discussed in the book are: Establish Links to Decision-Makers; ... (continue)

In “Slow Democracy,” community leader (and NCDD Sustaining Member) Susan Clark and democracy scholar Woden Teachout document the range of ways that citizens around the country are breathing new life into participatory democracy in their communities. (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012.) Large institutions and centralized governments, with top-down, expert-driven thinking, are no longer society’s drivers. In fact, they are often responsible for tearing communities apart. New decision-making techniques now pair with cutting-edge communication tools to make local communities—and the citizens who live there—uniquely suited to meet today’s ... (continue)

This 216-page publication (2012), edited by Robert Kingston, brings together writing by 19 leading thinkers on the contemporary challenges of democracy. These provocative essays, first published in three issues of the Kettering Review to celebrate 25 years of the National Issues Forums, challenge readers to rethink conventional notions of democracy, public deliberation, and citizenship. (continue)

The Kettering Foundation’s soon-to-be-released book, Democratizing Deliberation: A Political Theory Anthology, brings together recent and cutting-edge political theory scholarship on deliberative democracy. Edited by Derek Barker, Noelle McAfee, and David McIvor, the collection reframes deliberative democracy to be sensitive to the deep conflicts, multiple forms of communication, and aspirations for civic agency that characterize real public deliberation. In so doing, the book addresses many of the most common challenges to the theory and practice of deliberative democracy. Here’s what NCDD member Katherine Cramer Walsh (University of Wisconsin-Madison) says about the ... (continue)

This 2011 report by Tina Nabatchi and Cynthia Farrar for the Deliberative Democracy Consortium explores what elected officials know and think about public deliberation, as well as what they need to know to assess the potential value of public deliberation as a governance tool. Data from interviews with twenty-four state legislators and senior staff for federal legislators yielded some provocative results with practical implications for the field of public deliberation. Download the full report here.  Also check out the authors’ Powerpoint presentation (which you are ... (continue)

This 2011 “issue brief” published by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) explores the relationship between civic engagement and economic resilience. The report finds that five measures of civic engagement – attending meetings, helping neighbors, registering to vote, volunteering and voting – appear to help protect against unemployment and contribute to overall economic resilience. “Civic Health and Unemployment: Can Engagement Strengthen the Economy?” was released by NCoC in partnership with CIRCLE (the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), Civic Enterprises, Saguaro Seminar, ... (continue)

In his 2006 article titled “Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance” (Public Administration Review, Vol. 66: 66-75), Professor Archon Fung of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government introduced a broad typology called The Democracy Cube, in which the first axis displays the authority and power of the participants in the process, the second axis shows who participates in the process, and the third axis reveals how decisions are made. (continue)