Toward Wiser Public Judgment (2011) revisits and expands upon Yankelovich's seminal 1991 book, Coming to Public Judgment, which argued that people advance through several distinct stages to form politically meaningful judgments about public issues. In particular, citizens must "work through" the temptation to opt for easy answers or engage in wishful thinking, reconcile conflicting values, and come to terms with tough tradeoffs, before they can truly support a new course of action. (continue)

The Red Lodge Clearinghouse (RLCH) website, at www.rlch.org, makes participation in natural resources decision-making easier than ever before. The RLCH website — originally founded in 2001 by renowned fashion designer and philanthropist, the late Liz Claiborne and her husband, Art Ortenberg — has served the needs of individuals and organizations engaged in collaborative natural resources management for nearly a decade. The Natural Resources Law Center took over the project in 2007 and, with continued funding from the Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation, recently resolved to broaden the mission of the project to support a wider variety of problem-solving methods and to break down the barriers impeding citizen engagement. (continue)

This post includes details on a new National Issues Forums documentary film on how schools can use deliberation to uncover the best ways for them to address the achievement gap. The film will be aired on PBS stations around the country in 2011, and you can (1) request a free copy of the film and (2) help make sure your local PBS station airs the film. (continue)

Led by the Danish Board of Technology, World Wide Views on Global Warming (2009) is considered the first in-depth global citizen consultancy on climate change. WWViews established a model for the future inclusion of the world’s citizens in global policymaking. The novel and practical project design made it potentially possible for all nations on the planet to take part and to produce comparable results that can be clearly communicated to policymakers. World Wide Views on Global Warming involved roughly 4,000 citizens in 38 countries spanning ... (continue)

This 2008 essay by John Gastil (professor in the Department of Communication, University of Washington) provides a definition of citizen deliberation and suggests broad categories for evaluation, including design integrity, sound deliberation and judgment, influential conclusions/actions, and other secondary benefits (e.g., positive changes to individual participants’ civic attitudes and improvement in local political practices). Evaluation methods are identified for measuring each of these evaluation criteria, and summary recommendations consider how to conduct a thorough, integrated project assessment with a small or larger evaluation budget. Download ... (continue)

This great little list of tips by Laura Chasin, founder of The Public Conversations Project, appeared here on the Christian Science Monitor website around January 14, 2011 in response to the shooting in Tucson, Arizona. This article is part of a series of articles on civility at www.csmonitor.com/Topics/civility. Four ways to kick the polarized partisan habit President Obama, at the Jan. 12 memorial for victims of the mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz, urged the nation to move beyond finger-pointing to healing, constructive conversation. How do ... (continue)

The Institute for Local Government’s Public Engagement and Collaborative Governance program developed the following ten principles to serve as helpful indicators of effective and ethical public engagement practice by local governments. These principles may also help guide city, county and other local officials in the design of public engagement processes and strategies. (continue)

This 72-page article by John Gaventa and Gregory Barrett was published in 2010 by the Institute for Development Studies. Over the last two decades, the idea that citizen engagement and participation can contribute to improved governance and development outcomes has been mainstreamed in development policy and discourse. Yet despite the normative beliefs that underpin this approach, the impact of participation on improved democratic and developmental outcomes has proved difficult to assess. Where previous research studies have attempted to demonstrate impact, they tend to be limited ... (continue)

NCDD’s October 2010 Resource Guide on Public Engagement is packed with tools and stories to help you tackle contentious problems in your community. Download the Resource Guide at: www.ncdd.org/files/NCDD2010_Resource_Guide.pdf The Resource Guide showcases the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation’s best collaboratively-created products (like the Core Principles for Public Engagement and the Engagement Streams Framework), as well as recognizing and directing you to a lot of the great work on public engagement that has been done by others in our field. Created for our 2010 ... (continue)

PRIA's founders believed in two principles of development: Participatory Research, which believes in the intrinsic value of people's knowledge as basis for their own empowerment, and Participatory Development, a process which empowers people to create and implement their own development plans. In the process of its work at the grassroots, PRIA pioneered a vast range of methodologies and tools for the empowerment of the marginalized, including Participatory Training, Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation, Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue, and Community Based Monitoring. (continue)