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 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)

This article, available for sale at Cambridge Journals Online, is compromised of the text from a Presidential Address delivered before the APSA in Seattle, September 2011, by Carole Pateman of the University of California, Los Angeles and is based in part on her book, Participation and Democratic Theory.  Some of the ideas and arguments in this address were also presented in 2011 at the UK Political Studies Association meeting, in London, and at the Canadian Political Science Association meeting, in Waterloo. From the abstract: Over the past two decades we ... (continue)

This 2011 book by Sara Greco Morasso concerns a novel approach to the analysis of the importance of communication in dispute mediation and focuses on how conflicting parties are helped by the mediator become reasonable discussant, able to tackle their problem and possibly find a solution. A fine argumentative and linguistic analysis of real mediation cases is presented, alongside a detailed overview of current studies in dispute resolution. As of February 2012, the book is listed as $143 for hardbound and e-book versions. Resource Link:  www.benjamins.nl/#catalog/books/aic.3 (preview) (continue)

This resource was submitted via the Add-A-Resource form by NCDD member Joe Raelin, author of the article and Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education professor at Northeastern University’s Center for Work and Learning.  His work can also be found at www.leaderful.org. The first purpose of this article is to make the case that democratic leadership, referred to as “leaderful” practice, should be the fundamental form of leadership that characterizes participatory organizational change. The article appeared in the Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol 25, No. 1, 2012. I wrote the ... (continue)

This 2008 book by Olav Eikeland discusses the concepts of dialogue and deliberation as they emerged in the writings of Aristotle (especially) almost 2500 years ago, but with a clear link to modern action research. The full title of the book is "The Ways of Aristotle – Aristotelian Phrónêsis, Aristotelian Philosophy of Dialogue, and Action Research." Bern: Peter Lang Publishers (2008). (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 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)

Sherry Arnstein, writing in 1969 about citizen involvement in planning processes in the United States, described a “ladder of citizen participation.” The ladder of citizen participation ranges from high citizen power to low (as pictured). See Sherry R. Arnstein’s “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 35, No. 4, July 1969, pp. 216-224. Available online here. This article is about power structures in society and how they interact. Specifically it is a guide to seeing who has power when important ... (continue)

New Social Inquiry is an academic journal that publishes social research essays and relative works that are accessible to a wide audience, engaging and relevant for non-specialists, yet sophisticated and complex enough to push scholarship forward. Their first publication will focus on public dialogue. Here’s an excerpt from the guidelines for submission: Is there such a thing as public dialogue, now or in the past? If so, who participates, who leads, and what forms does it take? If not, how can it realistically be realized? ... (continue)