Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are ... (continue)

The Civil Debate Wall—popularly known as ‘The Wall’—is a unique, innovative social media tool created by Local Projects for The Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida and funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation. The Wall creates constructive dialogue by providing a physical social media tool that connects large touch screens, a texting system, and a website. These three synchronized components create a single, seamless interactive experience for the broader University of Florida community to actively engage in local, ... (continue)

The Institute for Local Government offers the following general tips to help guide effective public engagement relating to public safety realignment as part of the 2012 Institute for Local Government Public Engagement Program. Here’s an excerpt, on “clarifying goals” when approaching public engagement: 1. Clarify Your Public Engagement Goals. Determine the intended goal(s) of your public engagement meetings or other activities. Do you want to inform the public about public safety realignment, its requirements and its impacts, answer questions, and/or ask residents or others to ... (continue)

Throughout California, most local agency efforts to involve residents occur occasionally as one-time public engagement activities that are focused on issues such as a general plan update, annual budgeting, a public works project, a public safety issue, a climate change plan, etc. Fewer cities and counties think about and “embed” a capacity to regularly consider and use public engagement tools as an ongoing part of local governance. This 2011 document from the Institute for Local Government Public Engagement Program (www.ca-ilg.org/engagement) provides several useful caveats for any ... (continue)

The Fund for Democratic Communities (F4DC), a Greensboro, North Carolina based private foundation, supports community-based initiatives and institutions that foster authentic democracy to make communities better places to live. These are some of the things F4DC does: makes grants to groups that engage in participatory democracy to further their social change objectives convenes groups and individuals committed to social and economic justice through deepening democratic practice conducts research and and produces materials to nurture the growth of authentic democracy. Learn more about F4DC’s grantmaking at http://f4dc.org/grants. ... (continue)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) is proud to launch the “Public Participation Guide“, an international public participation toolkit. It is a resource for agencies and organizations to help develop, plan for, and implement programs that engage the public in environmental decision-making. U.S.EPA has worked on developing this guide since 2009, initially for use in the Middle East and North Africa, but with potential for global application. It has now been introduced to regions and countries around the world. The guide was developed to ... (continue)

Civic Commons is an effort to assist public agencies in the adoption of open systems and collaborative technologies, and to coordinate the co-creation of these technologies among agencies to ensure interoperability and shareability. Civic Commons provides infrastructure, knowledge, and toolsets to government entities, and encourages the development of shared "civic technologies" and protocols as well as supplies optional technical infrastructure (such as data and project hosting) as needed. (continue)

PEP-NET is a European network of all stakeholders active in the field of eParticipation, including public bodies, solution providers and citizen organizations as well as researchers and scientists. We are open to all organizations willing and actively trying to advance eParticipation in Europe. (continue)

Experts in public engagement, participation and dialogue, Involve carries out research and delivers training to inspire citizens, communities and institutions to run and take part in high-quality public participation processes, consultations and community engagement. They believe passionately in a democracy where citizens are empowered to take and influence the decisions that affect their lives. Their January 2012 briefing paper, The Use of Public Engagement in Tackling Climate Change, draws from compelling results and evaluation findings of a range of public dialogues around climate change and argues ... (continue)

Pathways to Participation is a 2011 report from the UK that explores why and how people participate in their society. Tim Hughes, one of the report researchers, pointed out in an email to NCDD member Susanna Haas Lyons a critical finding for public engagement efforts: too often public consultation changes nothing for citizens but a decreased willingness to continue to be engaged. The reason for this is two-fold, he said. One, the engagement exercises are seen as tokenistic, and participants believe that nothing will really ... (continue)