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)

This 2006 CPRN (Canadian Policy Research Networks) report by Lori Turnbull and Peter Aucoin looks at the structural, cultural and practical barriers to making citizen engagement a natural and permanent part of our policy processes. To document the benefits of citizen involvement in the policy process, and for accountability, we need accurate and comparable data. Despite progress in Canada and elsewhere on evaluation frameworks, a commonly accepted set of evaluation criteria has yet to be established. Abelson and Gauvin make suggestions for refining evaluation (evaluating ... (continue)

Three resources to help you get a sense of the kinds of legislation that can and do support citizen engagement in governance and decision-making, an NCDD listserv compilation, an amazing article by Lisa Bingham, and a 2003 global compilation by LogoLink. (continue)

Written by NCDD director Sandy Heierbacher to expand upon the text on our “What Are Dialogue & Deliberation?” page. Several strategies can ensure that the benefits of a dialogue or deliberation program are retained. Sustain the Dialogue While a single group may meet five or six times and agree to act together, the opportunity for many more groups to experience the process amplifies its effect. Even if hundreds of people participate in a single dialogue and deliberation process addressing racism in their community and transitioning ... (continue)

Created by NCDD director Sandy Heierbacher in collaboration with Martin Carcasson, Will Friedman and Alison Kadlec (and based on Carcasson's paper Beginning With the End in Mind), the Goals of Dialogue & Deliberation graphic pictured here outlines 3 types of goals for public problem-solving work. In a nutshell, the three tiers of goals are individual and knowledge-based goals, immediate group/community outcomes, and longer-term capacity building and community change. Click on the image to view a larger version of the graphic. (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)

Everyday Democracy and the Kettering Foundation published a must-read research report (October 2009) that provides insights on how public engagement activities can grow into a diverse, ongoing practice in communities. The report, Sustaining Public Engagement: Embedded Deliberation in Local Communities, was written by Harvard University researchers Archon Fung and Elena Fagotto. (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)

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)