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)

Who says you can’t quantify public deliberation? It is true that quantitative measurement hasn’t been a strong suit of the field. It is also true that some of the most significant impacts, such as policy changes, are inherently difficult to quantify. But at this point, enough scholarly research and evaluative work has been done that is possible to pull together a concise statistical glimpse of the kinds of things these projects accomplish. Matt Leighninger, executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (an NCDD organizational member) has done ... (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)

In December 2012, Alberta Climate Dialogue released a series of short videos exploring the benefits of deliberative democracy, featuring well known practitioners such as Matt Leighninger (DDC), Janette Hartz-Karp (Curtin University), Edward Andersson (Involve UK) and others. These insightful snapshots of public engagement knowledge and case studies are a valuable resource for communicating deliberative democracy ideas to others. (continue)

This 2011 Issue Brief from the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) explores the relationship between civic engagement and economic resilience. It 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. Note: An update to this research was released in September 2012. “Civic Health and Unemployment II: The Case Builds” is available at www.ncoc.net/unemployment2. (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 this economic climate, the value of public engagement needs to be articulated in economic terms. Involve’s toolkit demonstrates that you don’t need specialist skills or knowledge to make the business case for engagement. Download the July 2011 toolkit from Involve and Consumer Focus, Making the Case for Public Engagement: How to demonstrate the value of consumer input. Toolkit authors are Edward Andersson, Emily Fennell and Thea Shahrokh. There is a substantial amount of anecdotal evidence in support of public engagement and some case study ... (continue)

The Pathways through Participation looks at participation in a very broad way, and covers a wide range of participatory activities that are often viewed in isolation. This broad approach to participation has informed our literature review. (continue)

This short thread is an archive of a discussion on the NCDD forum started on July 9, 2004 by Matt Leighninger. (continue)

The following comments were made over the NCDD Discussion list a few years ago when Leah Lamb posed this question: “I have been pondering about how we can actively make the D&D lexicon more familiar to the greater public? I am curious to learn about how those of you on the listserv approach describing the fields of D&D, and more specifically, how you address the complexity of the wide range of definitions and practice.” (continue)