Sustaining Public Engagement: Embedded Deliberation in Local Communities

Describes nine communities using organized deliberation to consider public issues over several years and their accomplishments and analyzes how public deliberation addresses deficits in local democratic governance. Includes benchmarks and strategies

Government By and For Millenial America: A Blueprint for 21st Century Government

Using this generation's unique ethos and commitment to pragmatic problem-solving, Millennials across the country have collaborated to design their vision for a 21st century democracy and reject the idea that our system is too broken, too stagnant, and too outdated. They have identified the parts of the system that need to be fixed while articulating what a true democracy should look like. Government By and For Millennial America, the third installment of our blueprint series, tackles some of the most fundamental, divisive, and difficult questions on the purpose of government in furthering our country's progress: how can we hear from more voices? How can we be more transparent? How can government be more egalitarian? How can we both support individual communities and the common good of every American? Most importantly, this pursuit is grounded in one fundamental idea that defines America's distinctive pursuit of self-governance: in the words of our namesake, Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country. - President Franklin D. Roosevelt We set out to craft a blueprint, and discovered, in conversations with over a thousand young people across the country, that the Millennial generation is not yet ready to give up on America's ever evolving experiment in a government by and for the people

Insurgent participation: consensus and contestation in planning the redevelopment of Berlin-Tempelhof airport

Despite decades of debate, participatory planning continues to be contested. More recently, research has revealed a relationship between participation and neoliberalism, in which participation works as a post-political tool—a means to depoliticize planning and legitimize neoliberal policy-making. This article argues that such accounts lack attention to the opportunities for opposing neoliberal planning that may be inherent within participatory processes. In order to further an understanding of the workings of resistance within planning, it suggests the notion of insurgent participation—a mode of contentious intervention in participatory approaches. It develops this concept through the analysis of various participatory approaches launched to regenerate the former airport Berlin-Tempelhof. A critical reading of participation in Tempelhof reveals a contradictory process. Although participatory methods worked to mobilize support for predefined agendas, their insurgent participation also allowed participants to criticize and shape the possibilities of engagement, challenge planning approaches and envision alternatives to capitalist imperatives

Beyond the Win: Pathways for Policy Implementation

When it comes to policy, a lot of attention is given to "the win." Whether it is something new and big like the Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation in a large federal omnibus bill, or inclusion of critical language in a state policy, seeing the fruits of advocacy efforts put into law makes advocates and champions feel that their hard work, often many years in the making, has paid off.However, in reality, "the win" is just the beginning -- a necessary first step in a much longer and equally as fraught process of policy implementation. Once a policy is created, there are numerous factors that shape and determine how that policy is implemented -- and ultimately, the impact it will have -- regardless of how well the policy is formulated. Some of these factors include rulemaking, funding, capacity of local implementing agencies, and fights to repeal or modify wins, among many others.And, just as in the case of "the win," advocacy plays an important role in shaping implementation whether in advocating across these factors or participating in ongoing monitoring over time. Interestingly, while the role of advocacy in agenda setting, policy formulation, and policy adoption has been widely explored in theory and practice, the role of advocacy in the policy implementation process has received less attention in the literature.To learn more about the role of advocacy at the policy implementation stage, ORS Impact spoke with organizations that engage in, or provide funding for, advocacy efforts at the state and/or federal level. We focused on the following questions:When had advocates played a positive role in policy implementation?When had implementation not gone as well as expected, and what did advocates take away from that?Our conversations yielded important learnings about the unique characteristics of, and range of approaches to, advocacy efforts during the implementation phase. The two following scenarios illustrate some of the different types and levels of advocacy intervention, as well as the results they produce, to demonstrate the ways advocacy can play out when shifting from policymaking to implementation

‘Sharing the Same Roof’?: A Consociational Approach to the Compatibility of Cultural Identity Schools with Liberal Democratic Values

This study critically examines the congruence of liberal democratic values with a conceptual framework for a national system of state-funded cultural identity schools. The study argues that the Modernist-Enlightenment response of difference-blind neutrality to the fact of social pluralism implicitly sanctions dominant socioeconomic structures. For this reason, the claim is made that the equal rights of citizenship justify cultural identity schools under a stance of difference-sensitivity. It is conceptualized that the existence of these schools benefit the liberal democratic state in two major ways. First, they incorporate non-Western immigrants into increasingly polyethnic societies as free and equal citizens. Second, in an era where deliberative democracy is threatened by global market forces, these schools serve as engines of healthy civil society by reinvigorating local voluntary associations. The study looks to the state educational system of the Netherlands to empirically ground theoretical formulations. For almost a century, the government there has funded and regulated a diverse array of schools with considerable autonomy in pedagogical content and practices. In terms of group rights, the educational structure reflects the historical experience of pillarization, a form of legal pluralism which proportionately distributed resources and political representation to national subgroups. The thesis proposes educational pillarization has utility to the current problem of disaffected immigrant groups in Western democratic states. Especially with regard to pleas for state-funded Islamic schooling, the study modifies consociational theory to reconcile imperatives for religo-cultural development and rights with those for liberal democratic principles. The study concludes that the consensus-making processes at the heart of legal pluralism encourage intercultural competence and reconfigure the meaning of citizenship to reflect the exigencies of the present day. Though many people see freedom from their childhood/received cultures as enriching, cultural attachments, provide the psychological terrain for evaluating the meaning of choice. However, a delicate balance exists. The study argues that cultural identity schools should not close students off from alternate life pathways since the right to exit or modify one’s culture is firmly embedded in liberalism

Liberal Individualist, Communitarian, or Deliberative? Analyzing Political Discussion on Facebook Based on Three Notions of Democracy

This study explores the democratic value of political discussion on Facebook using theory triangulation and operationalizing three models of democracy. It aims to determine which democratic model offers the best account of the benefits of Facebook discussions and to explore whether this varies according to the ideology and history of the political party hosting them. An analysis of 2,800 comments published on the Facebook websites of four Spanish political parties reveals that the discussions generally serve communitarian and deliberative purposes and, to a much smaller extent, liberal individualist goals. Results highlight significant differences related to the parties' ideology and history. Discussions on right-wing websites lean more liberal individualist, whereas those on left-wing parties' sites favor a more communitarian dynamic. Moreover, conversations hosted by new political parties are more communitarian and civil in tone than those hosted by traditional parties

Cultural Discourses of Public Engagement: Insights for Energy System Transformation

Our case study explores the public’s roles in energy transition by examining public participation processes and their meanings in Boulder’s Energy Future. Drawing on Cultural Discourse Analysis (Carbaugh, 2007b) as an analytical framework, we investigate discourses of public participation active in city council meetings as resources for generating insights about how to design more meaningful engagement practices. Our analysis traces meanings attached to attending and speaking at city council meetings, emailing council, outreach and education efforts, task force service, and voting. These practices and meanings provide insights for designing future public participation as well as theorizing public participation in energy governance

Constructing Digital Democracies: Facebook, Arendt, and the Politics of Design

Deliberative democracy requires both equality and difference, with structures that organize a cohesive public while still accommodating the unique perspectives of each participant. While institutions like laws and norms can help to provide this balance, the built environment also plays a role supporting democratic politics—both on- and off-line. In this article, I use the work of Hannah Arendt to articulate two characteristics the built environment needs to support democratic politics: it must (1) serves as a common world, drawing users together and emphasizing their common interests and must also (2) preserve spaces of appearance, accommodating diverse perspectives and inviting disagreement. I, then, turn to the example of Facebook to show how these characteristics can be used as criteria for evaluating how well a particular digital platform supports democratic politics and providing alternative mechanisms these sites might use to fulfill their role as a public realm

Environmental Stewardship in the Private Sector: Arriving at a Green Hands Theory

Views on the intent and outcomes of corporate social responsibility (CSR) range from laudatory to skeptical. Regardless of the mixed reception and questions raised about the meaning of CSR, it is clear that the private sector's increasing power in the 21st century requires a correspondingly well-defined range of responsibilities. This dissertation investigates why and how firms choose to engage in CSR. It does so through three essays that explore the private sector's approach to environmental stewardship CSR (ESCSR) with particular emphasis on the role of employees in ESCSR. The first essay engages in an empirical study that asks broad questions about private sector employees' opinions towards CSR. It asks how employees understand CSR; how they prioritize environmental goals under the CSR umbrella; and whether or not their CSR- and ESCSR-related activities impact their feelings of personal well-being and career fulfillment. The results of this essay's original survey suggest that the private sector's approach to ESCSR should leverage employees' interest in and enthusiasm for CSR and ESCSR to achieve environmental stewardship and CSR goals. The second essay investigates the actual extent to which private sector leadership engages with employees on matters related to CSR and ESCSR through both a statistical and case study. The statistical study asks what variables make firms more likely to afford employees a substantial role in CSR activities, resulting in the discovery that a more diverse and larger leadership body is a significant indicator of a firm's willingness to engage employees. The case study then pushes the statistical findings into more detail by illuminating three firms' rationales behind their ESCSR approaches. The final, ethics-focused essay builds on the findings of the first and second essays to propose an original theory that builds on the legal theory of clean hands to arrive at `green hands.' This green hands theory outlines a specific and normatively robust framework firms can adopt to achieve goals related both to employee and environmental stewardship. I conclude by discussing implications for policy recommendations and areas for future research