The 20-page article, Taking the Goals of Deliberation Seriously: A Differentiated View on Equality and Equity in Deliberative Designs and Processes (2016), was written by Edana Beauvais and Andre Baechtiger, and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. The article reviews the goals of healthy deliberative systems and the different designs of civic forums, including participant recruitment, nature of interaction, and decision-making. The authors reviews research which shows evidence that the design of a deliberative system affects its outcomes and goals. Read an excerpt of the […] (continue)

Written by NCDD director Sandy Heierbacher to expand upon the text on our “What Are Dialogue & Deliberation?” page. This resource provides enough details to enable you to decide which of these leading dialogue and deliberation methods you should learn more about. In addition to looking at which methods fit your intentions, you will need to consider which methods are aligned with your resources, timeline, and the people you feel need to be involved. The text below is drawn from NCDD’s Engagement Streams Framework. AmericaSpeaks […] (continue)

This September 2, 2010 article by Joe Klein on the Time Magazine website compares Jim Fishkin's Deliberative Polling process with the kleroterion process used in ancient Athens (a citizen decision-making process that used random selection), and suggests that rather than appointing a "blue-ribbon" commission to study the federal deficit, Obama ought to have initiated a deliberative democracy program using Deliberative Polling. (continue)

All over the world, democratic reforms have brought power to the people, but under conditions where the people have little opportunity to think about the power that they exercise. In this 2009 book, NCDD member James Fishkin, creator of Deliberative Polling, combines a new theory of democracy with actual practice and shows how an idea that harks back to ancient Athens can be used to revive our modern democracies. (continue)

NCDD member Jim Fishkin was featured in a May 6, 2010 article in The Economist print edition. Jim is the Director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford and creator of the Deliberative Poll. The article, titled “Ancient Athens online: Democracy is about discussion, not just voting” can be viewed in full at this link on The Economist’s website. The full text is quoted below. (continue)

Sometimes politics gets in the way of democracy, according to the author of this paper. The author goes on to tell how "This week, CPRN released the results of a dialogue with a randomly selected group of 250 Ontario citizens on the province's budget strategy for the next four years. Because it had been commissioned by the government, it was rejected as useless in the Ontario legislature." The paper further explains deliberative democracy and how it functions in other societies in contrast to Canadian usage. (continue)

After some roadblocks, the authors finally mounted a Deliberative Poll centering on electoral choice, this in connection with the British General Election of May 1, 1997. The weekend before the election, a random sample of the British electorate was gathered to the Granada Television Studio in Manchester, given a chance to consider the some of the key economic issues in the General Election campaign then entering its final days, and, at the end, polled on voting intention. (continue)

In this paper, the authors begin by setting deliberative events in a broader context of deliberative forums or arenas. The authors distinguish three potential arenas of deliberation: the 'normal, the 'informal' and the 'staged'. They briefly describe three well-known deliberative events, citizens' juries, consensus conferences and deliberative polls. After setting out the benefits and criticisms of these three deliberative events, the authors realize that although the criticisms raise important issues, they do not justify abandoning deliberative events. (continue)

This paper explores the effects of information and deliberation on the extremity of attitudes about public policy issues. It asks whether informed individuals have extreme or moderate attitudes and how attitude extremity is affected by Deliberative Polling. Much previous research suggests that information and extremity are positively related, but other research has found a negative relationship. It appears that the relationship between information and extremity is more complex than originally thought. I find evidence that the type of information an individual holds determines whether attitudes are extreme or moderate. (continue)

This paper considers citizen participation in technological decision-making through random selection deliberative mechanisms such as citizens' jury, consensus conference, televote and deliberative poll. (continue)