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.

Session notes and related resources from the “No Better Time” conference at the University of New Hampshire back in July are now available for download on their resources page.

Measuring and metrics was a hot topic that was discussed at the following learning exchanges:

• Embedding Deliberative Practices in Local Democracy (session notes, PDF):
  This would need some further digging into, but lots of interesting tidbits and potential starting points for assessing impact and ROI, various ways to measure “embeddedness” over time etc.
• Making the Case for this Work: Improving the Way We Collect, Report, and Explain Outcomes (session notes, PDF):
  The goals of this session were “to a) Identify where the field/participants are with regard to evaluation; b) Identify where the field/participants want to be with regard to evaluation; and c) Identify strategies to get the field/participants to that place (how are going to get there?)”
• New Frontiers for Assessment and Measurement
  No session notes available, but check out “Impacts and Outcomes of Participatory Processes in Brazil and Canada” (download, PDF)
• Renewing the Research Agenda (session notes, PDF)
  Only a brief outline here (“Assessment was the main theme. One view was that questions about what works, under what conditions, and why can be broken down into researchable parts and studied (quantitatively or qualitatively), with the gold standard being a randomized experiment.”), would be nice if someone could add some detail.
• The “Downside” of Deliberative Democracy (session notes, PDF)
  Very little detail, except “doing ‘diagnostics’ and ‘assessment’ before planning a deliberative project” was discussed, apparently.

Please leave a comment if you have additional notes or comments you can share. Thanks!

I’ll be taking the red-eye to Boston tonight on my way to what looks like a great conference: No Better Time: Promising Opportunities in Deliberative Democracy for Educators and Practitioners

The conference is hosted by The Democracy Imperative and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium.

From their website:

What are the conference’s objectives?

Deliberative democracy has reached a critical point in its development. Over the last fifteen years, shifts in citizen capacities and attitudes have led to a dramatic proliferation of citizen participation and deliberative practices, and in 2008 they helped to produce an historic presidential election. On the heels of these changes, new opportunities for educators and practitioners are emerging in communities, in government, and on campuses. The primary goal of “No Better Time” is to take stock of these developments and to consider future directions for educators and practitioners in teaching, research, and in citizen‐centered initiatives.

We know what we want to happen: colleges and universities will make democracy central to their academic, governance, and public missions; researchers, practitioners, and other leaders will learn together better in order to improve the practice of deliberative democracy on the ground; educators will ensure that all graduates understand and know their responsibilities in a just, free, equitable society; students will become skilled in the arts of dialogue, deliberation and public reason, conflict management, and collaborative decision and policy making; the gap will close between researchers and practitioners and theory and practice…

We don’t know all that needs to happen to make these aspirations a reality. And we think that by bringing together a lot of smart, dedicated, and experienced people, we can figure it out. Convening people who care about deliberative democracy, learning from each other about what works, mapping out and prioritizing activities, and providing the space for innovation and collaboration; these are the objectives of this conference.

About 250 people are attending.

Below are some of the sessions I’m looking at (many run in parallel, so sadly I won’t be able to attend them all):

• The “downside” of deliberative democracy (Alice Siu, Stanford University; Mary Jacksteit, Public Conversations Project)
• Deliberative democracy in federal agencies (Roger Bernier, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Leanne Nurse, Environmental Protection Agency)
• Embedding deliberative practices in local democracy (Terry Amsler, Collaborative Governance Initiative, League of California Cities; Will Friedman, Public Agenda; BongHwan Kim, Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, City of Los Angeles)
• Funding and fostering democracy: What have foundations learned about the field, and what do they want to know? (Stuart Comstock-Gay, Vermont Community Foundation: John Esterle, Whitman Institute; Chris Gates, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement; Dick Ober, New Hampshire Foundation)
• Renewing the research agenda (Jim Fishkin, Stanford University; Archon Fung, Harvard University; Peter Levine, CIRCLE)
• A tech-savvy citizenry: New media for public participation, policy deliberation, and social change (Joe Peters, Ascentum; Brad Rourke, blog.bradrourke.com)
• Embedding deliberative practices in national democracy (Carolyn Lukensmeyer, AmericaSpeaks; Pete Peterson, Pepperdine University and Common Sense California)
• Making the case for this work: Improving the way we collect, report, and explain outcomes (Tina Nabatchi, Syracuse University; Kristen Cambell, National Conference on Citizenship)
• Choosing, combining, and adapting deliberation models and methods (Martin Carcasson, Colorado State University; Jim Fishkin, Stanford University; Sandy Heierbacher, National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation; Joe Peters, Ascentum)
• Participatory budgeting in local government (Malka Kopell, Community Focus; Harris Sokoloff, University of Pennsylvania)

Quite the line-up, eh?

A lot of pre-conference reading material is publicly available on the conference wiki.

For those wanting to follow the conference from a distance, the tag for this conference is nbt09 (or #nbt09 on Twitter).

In their FAQ, The Deliberative Democracy Consortium defines deliberation and deliberative democracy as follows:

What is “deliberation”?

Deliberation is an approach to decision-making in which citizens consider relevant facts from multiple points of view, converse with one another to think critically about options before them and enlarge their perspectives, opinions, and understandings.

What is “deliberative democracy”?

Deliberative democracy strengthens citizen voices in governance by including people of all races, classes, ages and geographies in deliberations that directly affect public decisions. As a result, citizens influence–and can see the result of their influence on–the policy and resource decisions that impact their daily lives and their future.

See also these previous posts:

• Dialogue and Deliberation
• Quick Comparison: Debate and Deliberation

NCDD’s Learning Exchange lists a few more definitions and notes that deliberation “can be used to solve problems, make decisions, produce recommendations, identify choices, and develop action plans.”

Sandra S. Hodge, Ph.D. and Program Director Discovering Common Ground: Missouri Communities Deliberate at University of Missouri has a nice comparison chart that looks at the differences between debate and deliberation: Deliberation and Your Community: How to Convene and Moderate Local Public Forums Using Deliberative Decision-Making (training manual) (PDF, 1.1MB). The training manual is part of a resource kit for deliberative decision-making projects.

Debate vs. Deliberation

In debate, you search for weaknesses in another position	In deliberation, you search for strength in another position.
In debate, you search for glaring differences.	Deliberation involves concern for others.
Debate involves countering the other’s position at the expense of the relationship.	Deliberation assumes that many people have pieces of an answer to a workable solution.
Debate calls for investing wholeheartedly in your beliefs.	In deliberation, you temporarily suspend your judgment of other’s beliefs.
Debate is oppositional and seeks to prove the other wrong.	Deliberation is collaborative and seeks common understanding.
The goal of debate is winning – often only for a short-term advantage.	The goal of deliberation is common ground for action, which is the basis for consistent policy.
In debate, you listen to find flaws and counter-arguments.	In deliberation, you listen to understand and find meaning in agreement.
Debate defends assumptions as truth.	Deliberation reveals assumptions for reevaluation.
Debate defends original solutions.	Deliberation opens the possibility of better solutions.
In debate, you submit your best thinking and defend its rightness.	In deliberation, you submit your best thinking in order to improve it.

Interestingly enough, while there have recently been quite a few initiatives that focus on building better tools for online debate the same cannot be said for online deliberation (at least as far as I am aware of).

One reason for that, in my view, is the fact that both dialogue and deliberation require very good listening skills on the part of the participants. And as difficult as listening may seem in real life, it is generally that much harder to do online.

The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) provides a good definition of dialogue and deliberation, and describes how the two relate to each other:

So what are dialogue and deliberation anyway?

Dialogue is a process that allows people, usually in small groups, to share their perspectives and experiences with one another about difficult issues we tend to just debate about or avoid entirely. Issues like racial disparities, youth violence and gay marriage.

Dialogue is not about judging, weighing or making decisions, but about understanding and learning. Dialogue dispels stereotypes, builds trust and enables people to be open to perspectives that are very different from their own. Dialogue can, and often does, lead to both personal and collaborative action.

Deliberation is a closely related process with a different emphasis. Deliberation emphasizes the use of logic and reasoning to make better decisions. Decisions about important public issues like health care and immigration are too often made through the use of power or coercion rather than a sound decision-making process that involves all parties and explores all options.

Dialogue and deliberation processes tend to use skilled facilitators and carefully constructed ground rules or agreements to ensure that all participants are heard and are treated as equals. For groups that want to move from talk to a decision or action, NCDD recommends starting with dialogue and encouraging deliberation after people have had the chance to tell their personal story (in relation to the issue at hand) in a respectful environment.

Dialogue lays the groundwork for the vital work of deliberation. The trust, mutual understanding and relationships that are built during dialogue allow for participants to deliberate more effectively, and to make better decisions.

Dialogue and deliberation are used for a variety of reasons: to resolve conflicts and bridge divides; to build understanding about complex issues; to foster innovative solutions to problems and launch action; and to reach agreement on or recommendations about policy decisions.

At Intellitics, our goal is online dialogue and deliberation.