“Where is Democracy Headed?” (2008) is a report published by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) which summarizes more than four years of the DDC’s learnings about deliberation, decision-making, and problem-solving. The publication was drafted by Peter Levine (Tufts University) and Lars Hasselbad Torres (Global Peace Tiles Project), then revised by DDC members through a wiki. Its findings were gathered from interviews, face-to-face discussions, and the wiki. The report was published with the support of the Kettering Foundation and has two major sections. The first part ... (continue)

Matt Leighninger, Executive Director of The Deliberative Democracy Consortium (an NCDD organizational member), wrote the report Creating Spaces for Change: Working Toward a “Story of Now” in Civic Engagement. Creating Spaces for Change draws heavily on the views and experiences of the people who participated in the Kellogg Foundation’s Civic Engagement Learning Year and the conference convened by DDC and The Democracy Imperative called “No Better Time: Promising Opportunities in Deliberative Democracy for Educators and Practitioners.” (continue)

This article from Penn State Live, at http://live.psu.edu/story/34749/nw7, describes Steve Pyser‘s work at Penn State-Abington. Steve is an active NCDD member; he coordinated (with Janet Fiero) and moderated the Reflective Panel at the 2008 NCDD conference in Austin. (continue)

Who Wants to Deliberate – and Why? is an article published as part of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Faculty Research Working Paper Series, co-authored by Michael Neblo, Kevin Esterling, Ryan Kennedy, David Lazer, and Anand Sokhey. It was published in the American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 3 (August 2010). This research suggests that willingness to participate in deliberative forms of political engagement is less tied to predictors like race, gender and income than willingness to participate in electoral politics. In the words of the ... (continue)

Sociologists (and NCDD members) Caroline Lee and Francesca Polletta have created a website at http://sites.lafayette.edu/ddps to display the results of the 2009 Dialogue and Deliberation Practitioners Survey. You can also download the full survey results here. The survey was conducted online last Fall for the purpose of academic research on the deliberation field by the researchers. Francesca and Caroline felt that the field of public dialogue and deliberation has been growing so dramatically that no one fully knows what the field looks like. They sought ... (continue)

This NCDD project report to the Kettering Foundation was written by Sandy Heierbacher, NCDD's Director (2009). Before the October 2008 conference, NCDD embarked on a research project with the Kettering Foundation to learn about how attendees at the 2008 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation see themselves playing a role in democratic governance. Kettering was also especially interested in two of the five challenge areas taken on at the conference (the Systems Challenge and the Action & Change Challenge). (continue)

This article by NCDD Director Sandy Heierbacher was published in the September 2009 edition of the International Journal of Public Participation (IJP2). You can download the full article here from the IJP2 site. The article outlines NCDD's learnings in two of the five challenges we focused on at the 2008 NCDD conference in Austin: the "Systems Challenge" and the "Framing Challenge." (continue)

In July 2009, more than 250 campus and community leaders (including many members of NCDD) came together at the University of New Hampshire to talk about the “deliberative democracy” field, the tide of civic change on campuses and in communities, and what those changes mean for the practice and teaching of democracy. “No Better Time: Promising Opportunities in Deliberative Democracy for Educators and Practitioners” was hosted by two NCDD organizational members, the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) and The Democracy Imperative (TDI). TDI and the DDC ... (continue)

At the 2008 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, we focused in on 5 of the most pressing and challenging issues our field is facing – issues that past conference participants agreed are vital for us to address if we are to have the impact we’d like to have in our communities. One of the five challenges we focused on was the “Framing Challenge” — framing this work in an accessible way. Our leader for the Framing Challenge was Jacob Hess. Six months before the ... (continue)

At the 2008 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, we focused in on 5 of the most pressing and challenging issues our field is facing – issues that past conference participants agreed are vital for us to address if we are to have the impact we’d like to have in our communities. One of the five challenges we focused on was the “Systems Challenge” — embedding D&D in our public and private systems. Our co-leaders for the Systems Challenge were Matt Leighninger, Executive Director of ... (continue)