Review: Beginning With the End in Mind

This is a short review of “Beginning with the End in Mind: A Call for Goal-driven Deliberative Practice” by Martín Carcasson, PhD (CAPE Occasional Paper / No 2 / 2009 — PDF)

Carcasson’s essay on deliberative practice presents, in his words, “a conceptual framework to help practitioners more systematically consider both the short-term and long-term strategies that inform and guide their efforts.” It is actually more than what this humble introduction might suggest, as it is a very carefully crafted fundamental essay on the ins and outs of deliberation, not just a check list of dos and don’ts for implementers – even though it can serve as a very good check list in that respect as well. His goal is to present a guideline for practitioners to “increase the tangible impact their events have on the communities in which they work”, but instead of giving a run-down of case studies and best practices he takes a good step back and presents a framework that outlines six goals for practitioners to target in deliberative processes in general, which he organizes in three broad groups.

The first-order goals are issue learning, improved democratic attitudes and improved democratic skills. The second-order goals are individual/community action and improved institutional decision making. The third-order goal is improved community problem solving. Each of these goals (as illustrated in his graphical representation above, taken from the article) are interrelated and somewhat build upon each other. He frames each discussion by analysing the current state of affairs and then goes into what he believes potential impacts are of “well-planned, high-quality deliberation related to each goal in order to lay out a potential path for practitioners.” This classification alone points toward a clear focus on capacity-building, for lasting impact in communities and among stakeholders. Taking action towards problems is only the following step, and even there the emphasis is on mechanisms that ensure lasting impact. Carcasson takes good inventory of the present state of affairs, and despite all problems, he sounds fairly optimistic, emphasizing the yet untapped potentials and steps already taken.

So what is his main point? Unless we carefully frame high-quality individual events and projects we will not be able to achieve broader ends. And without considering the long-term goals we want to achieve and carefully mapping out what we want to actually achieve with individual projects, all we do is “deliberation for the sake of deliberation (while likely enjoyable and perhaps moderately impacting, will not be enough to carry this movement forward).” He fears two things. One is the danger of brushing over crucial initial steps and problem-solving in “the rush to make an impact”, the other is getting caught up in the “daily grind of running individual events” or micro-management and thus not making the broad impact necessary for capacity-building and real change.

Overall this is an excellent and fundamental essay that examines the necessary elements of a deliberation process in a comprehensible way and should be required reading for practitioners (chronologically before even thinking about tenders, implementation, and so forth). The essay was published at www.publicagenda.org/publicengagement (direct link to PDF).

The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), which has a blog post on Carcasson’s article here, did a confab call last week with Martín Carcasson about his work and the paper, which is available on their website as embedded audio or download.

Related posts:

1. Intellitics at “No Better Time” Conference, University of New Hampshire, July 8-11, 2009
2. Quick Comparison: Debate and Deliberation

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