The issue guide, Making Ends Meet: How Should We Spread Prosperity and Improve Opportunity?, from National Issues Forums Institute and Kettering Foundation, was published December 2015. This guide will provide the framework for deliberation that will happen in 2016 between January and May. The results from the deliberation will be given to U.S. policy makers and elected officials in May 2016. Below is an excerpt from the guide and a short video about the guide. Download a free copy of the PDF on NIFI’s site here. From […] (continue)

The 72-page book, Democratic Rules of Order: Easy-to-use rules for meetings of any size (2010), by Fred Francis and Peg Francis, gives straight-forward rules of order for running meetings. Democratic Rules of Order demonstrate that efficient, democratic decision-making is a simple and natural process. Meetings that are governed by straightforward rules enable the Chair and the participants to focus on issues without being preoccupied with the rules. Within the simple meeting structure prescribed, members reach agreements more quickly and easily and ultimately, make better decisions. This book […] (continue)

The 13-page issue guide from National Issues Forums, Mental Illness in America: How Do We Address a Growing Problem?, was published November 2014. The issue guide gives three options for discussion on how mental illness can better be addressed in the US. Below is an excerpt from the guide and it can be downloaded from NIFI’s site here. From the guide… Many Americans share a sense that something is wrong when it comes to treatment of mental illness. More and more of us are taking medications for […] (continue)

The National Issues Forums Institute published the 12-page Issue Guide, What Should Go on the Internet: Privacy, Freedom and Security Online (2013) and is an update to an earlier guide about the Internet. This guide is designed to help facilitate balanced deliberation about what should go on the internet. From the guide… The same Internet that has given us new ways to socialize, learn, and engage in civic life has also given criminals new avenues to steal from us and scam us, often using information […] (continue)

The short video, The Creation of Politics (2014), was created by Kettering Foundation, in collaboration with Momentum Inc., Danijel Zezelj, and Main Sail Productions. The video tells the story of villagers who came together to address the dangers they faced as a community and how this led to the creation of politics. Below is the blog post from Kettering describing the video in more detail and find the link to the video here. From Kettering Those of you who have participated in Kettering’s annual summer Deliberative Democracy Exchange […] (continue)

The National Issues Forums Institute published the 13-page Issue Guide, The Future of Work: How Should We Prepare for the New Economy?, in February 2015. This guide is designed to help facilitate balanced deliberation about how we should prepare for the future economic reality of work. From the guide… The nature of the work we do has changed in ways that few Americans a generation ago could have imagined, and it will undoubtedly be dramatically different in yet another generation. These changes will bring both opportunities […] (continue)

This 27-page case study, Does Culture Matter for Deliberation? Linguistic Speech Cultures and Parliamentary Deliberation in Switzerland by Seraina Pedrini, was published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 11: Iss. 1. The study explores the effects of culture on parliamentary deliberation in Switzerland. Even though culture is seen as an important aspect of deliberation, empirical research on culture’s effects on deliberation is almost completely absent. This paper offers one of the first systematic empirical studies of cultural underpinnings on deliberation. It explores two conceptions of culture, namely ‘holistic’ vs. ‘contextual’. […] (continue)

Diverse Discourse: Analyzing the Potential of Public Affairs Magazine Online Forums to Reflect Qualities of the Public Sphere (2015), written by David Wolfgang and Joy Jenkins, was published in Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 11: Iss. 1. This study explored the quality of public discourse within public affairs magazines and how the quality of discussion varied depending on whether the magazine was moderate and directed at a broader audience, versus liberal/conservative specific magazines which also held diverse perspectives.  From the Abstract Public affairs magazines have expanded beyond their print editions to […] (continue)

The study, Deliberating While Voting: The Antecedents, Dynamics, And Consequences Of Talking While Completing Ballots In Two Vote-By-Mail States (2015), by Justin Reedy and John Gastil was published in Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 11: Iss. 1. The paper explores how the deliberative process occurs for citizens who voted by mail in Oregon and Washington, and how this influenced the way voters felt about the process itself. From the Abstract An overlooked context for citizen deliberation occurs when voters discuss their ballots with others while completing them at home. Voting […] (continue)

Written by Carolina Johnson and John Gastil, Variations of Institutional Design for Empowered Deliberation (2015) was published in Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 11: Iss. 1. The study explores the characteristics of empowered deliberation as a distinct variation of deliberative processes, then some case study examples of empowered deliberation from around the world. From the Abstract This paper lays out the practical and theoretical characteristics of formally empowered deliberation as a distinctive subset of deliberative processes. As part of a recent broad shift toward a more deliberative conception […] (continue)