Civic Renewal

This article interrogates the political metamorphosis of the American experiment from a confederation of sovereign states into a centralized, managerial regime. Synthesizing libertarian revisionism, historical evidence, and metaphysical critique, it argues that the loss of liberty in the United States occurred not through conquest but through consentengineered by elite maneuvering, ideological repurposing, and the ritualization of democratic form. Drawing on the Straussian and Voegelinian traditions, it defines regime not merely as a set of institutional structures, but as a concrete manifestation of metaphysical order.¹⁷ ¹⁸ In this light, the regime shift from a republic of states to a managerial democracy constitutes not only a political transformation, but an ontological rupture. Building on prior explorations of memory, alignment, and constraint,¹ ² ³ the article contends that cultural amnesia and institutional architecture now insulate governance from both responsibility and resistance. Genuine renewal, it concludes, depends not on electoral change but on the recovery of memory, place, and truth. To clarify the metaphysical use of the term regime, we follow Eric Voegelin in identifying political orders as manifestations of a deeper symbolic framework.¹⁷ Voegelin

Although successive generations of digital technology have become increasingly powerful in the past 20 years, digital democracy has yet to realize its potential for deliberative transformation. The undemocratic exploitation of massive social media systems continued this trend, but it only worsened an existing problem of modern democracies, which were already struggling to develop deliberative infrastructure independent of digital technologies. There have been many creative conceptions of civic tech, but implementation has lagged behind innovation. This article argues for implementing one such vision of digital democracy through the establishment of a public corporation. Modeled on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the United States, this entity would foster the creation of new digital technology by providing a stable source of funding to nonprofit technologists, interest groups, civic organizations, government, researchers, private companies, and the public. Funded entities would produce and maintain software infrastructure for public benefit. The concluding sections identify what circumstances might create and sustain such an entity. CCS Concepts: • Social and professional topics → Government technology policy; • Applied computing → Egovernment;

has grown as a scholarly international open access journal. Its aim remains to publish extended full-length research papers that have the scope to substantively address current issues in education. As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), our goal has been to disseminate high quality research. Our publisher, MDPI, takes the responsibility to enforce a rigorous doubleblind peer-review together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. an Open Access Journal by MDPI 4.0 3.0

[hereinafter AMERICA'S PROMISE] (describing the decline in social capital). For arguments at the opposite end of the spectrum, see MICHAEL SCHUDSON, THE GOOD CITIZEN: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CIVIC LIFE 294 (1998) [hereinafter GOOD CITIZEN] (concluding that citizenship in America has added new forms but has not declined); Everett C. Ladd, The Data Just Don't Show Erosion of America's "Social Capital," 7 PUB. PERSP. 1 (1996) [hereinafter Data Just Don't Show Erosion] (arguing that the level of civic participation has actually increased); James A. Morone, The Corrosive Politics of Virtue, 26 AM. PROSPECT 30, 36-37 (1996) [hereinafter The Corrosive Politics of Virtue] (arguing that we do not have a moral crisis, a divorce culture, or a crime rate higher than it was in 1970). For an overview of the literature on all sides of this issue, see Dietlind Stolle and Marc Hooghe, Emerging Repetoires of Political Action? A Review of the Debate on Participation Trends in Western Societies, April 13-18, 2004 (on file with the author). 2004] Civic RENEWAL AND THE REGULATION OF NONPROFITS 291 15 The primary economic ills discussed are poverty, child poverty, unemployment, and underemployment. Although poverty and child poverty appeared to be at historic lows in the United States in 2000, there were still more than 30 million people, many of them children, still living in poverty. The downward trend reversed after 2000, and poverty increased during the last two years. BERNADETrE D.

I will start with a quote from one of the most famous statements about democracy, from Pericles' 'Funeral Oration for the War Dead of Athens': We do not copy the laws and ways of other states. Actually, we are the pattern to others. Our administration places power in the hands of the many instead of the few: this is why it is called a democracy. … Class considerations are not allowed to interfere with merit. Nor does poverty bar the way-if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. In ancient Athens, citizens could serve the state by being selected by lot. They were representatives-but not elected representatives. The Australian Citizens' Parliament is a world first, but in a way it takes us back to this very old conception of democracy, which pre-dates elections. I will return to Pericles at the end, but before I begin in earnest I would like to acknowledge all the people who put so much time and energy into making it happen-close to 200 people worked on the project, along with our 150 citizen participants. First and foremost is Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, who founded and funded the New Democracy Foundation, which made the Citizens' Parliament possible. Next come my co-investigators on the Australian Research Council Grant that also provided funding: Janette Hartz-Karp, who put so much energy into organizing the process, Lyn Carson, whose idea it was to begin with (in a conversation with Luca), Simon Niemeyer, who organized a lot of the research around the project, Ron Lubensky, our webmaster, and Ian Marsh. It would take me too long to list all the others, but they know who they are. I should also point out that this lecture represents some of my personal views, which are not necessarily shared by others who worked on the project. So what is the Citizens' Parliament, and why is it a world first? The Citizens' Parliament was an assembly of 150 citizens, one from each federal electorate, selected at random from the electoral roll. Our youngest participant was 18, our oldest 90. We began by sending out letters to around 9 000 people randomly selected asking if they'd be interested in participating if they were selected. Almost 30

The project of deliberative democracy is increasingly pursued through designed mini-publics. But exactly how they are designed proves crucial in determining whether or not mini-publics can deliver on their promise. This article explores the role of appreciative inquirya version of deliberative design that is gaining ground. In this approach, participants are primed to develop an 'appreciative gaze' by focusing the discussion on what already works well in the system and imagining possibilities for building on these strengths. It is distinguished from contestatatory approaches in that argumentative, blame-seeking and deficit-oriented forms of discourse are considered counter-productive to the process. We argue against a one-sided emphasis on appreciative inquiry, which must be balanced with more contestatory forms. Focusing on appreciative approaches to deliberation at the expense of contestation obstructs the ability of a group to deliberate properly and secure crucial deliberative outcomes. Our analysis is grounded in the case of the first Australia's Citizens' Parliament.

The project of deliberative democracy is increasingly pursued through designed mini-publics. But exactly how they are designed proves crucial in determining whether or not mini-publics can deliver on their promise. This article explores the role of appreciative inquirya version of deliberative design that is gaining ground. In this approach, participants are primed to develop an 'appreciative gaze' by focusing the discussion on what already works well in the system and imagining possibilities for building on these strengths. It is distinguished from contestatatory approaches in that argumentative, blame-seeking and deficit-oriented forms of discourse are considered counter-productive to the process. We argue against a one-sided emphasis on appreciative inquiry, which must be balanced with more contestatory forms. Focusing on appreciative approaches to deliberation at the expense of contestation obstructs the ability of a group to deliberate properly and secure crucial deliberative outcomes. Our analysis is grounded in the case of the first Australia's Citizens' Parliament.

Electoral politics last June shredded Minnesota Nice. But the month also had signs of a movement for civic repair, suggesting the revival of citizen-centered democracy. Calls for partisan warfare were on stage at the DFL convention on June 2. Republicans followed suit. But Braver Angels and other groups suggest something else

Public value governance (PVG) describes a theoretical and practical approach to public administration and management emphasizing the responsiveness of managers, policies, processes, and institutions to democratically formulated goals and preferences. PVG began as an effort to identify explicitly democratic and citizen-empowering alternatives to traditional public administration (TPA), which idealizes technocratic implementation of electorally sanctioned public agendas through rational, hierarchical, and ostensibly apolitical bureaucracies; and to New Public Management (NPM), which idealizes production of public goods through market-based or cross-sectoral competitive processes aimed at harnessing private sector energy, minimizing costs, and reducing the size of the state. This forthcoming chapter explains the history of PVG thinking, and several efforts to apply PVG theory to the education sector. It closes by outlining opportunities to advance PVG's purportedly democratic aims by incorporating the richer concept and practice of politics associated with the civic renewal movement, "civic professionalism," and "public work".

The American Civic Forum includes many diverse points of view about questions such as the appropriate role of government and the market in our social and public life; we, the undersigned, do not all agree with all elements in the following stories or all the nuances of emphasis. Yet we are joined together by a common commitment to an understanding
of citizenship, politics, and public life with greater dignity and productiveness than that which now prevails.

The Civic Declaration has been coordinated by Harry Boyte, with Benjamin Barber and Will Marshall. It benefits especially from the contributions of Carmen Sirianni, Research Director of the American Civic Forum, and from the comments of Heather Booth, David Cohen, Dorothy Cotton, William Diaz, Walter Enloe, Diane Eisenberg, Amitai Etzioni, Lew Friedland, Jeff Isaac, Nancy Kari, Joyce King, Anthony Massengale, David Mathews, Deborah Meier, Miaisha Mitchell, Bill Moyers, John Parr, Jay Rosen, William Schambra, Nan Skelton, Edward Skloot, Gerald Taylor, and Roben Woodson. The New Citizenship emerged from Reinventing Citizenship, a project of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship in association with the Walt Whitman Center, to make recommendations for strengthening citizen-government partnerships, especially at the federal level.

and I am Daniel Viehoff of the University of Sheffield. The decision we came to, in more or less democratic fashion, was that each of us would speak for about 12-15 minutes and then we'd open it up for questions, because we are all as interested in what you have to say as in what we have to say. And, for lack of any other arrangement, I think we'll just go in alphabetical order. Jack Knight: When I was asked to participate in this discussion about epistemic democracy and then told that I had to keep it to 10-12 minutes, I thought, I've never kept anything to 10-12 minutes but I will try. I'll try to do even better than that. I was trying to reflect upon these debates and a number of questions that emerged, it seems to me, are subject to disagreement. So what I wanted to do, to start my part of the discussion, was to focus on three of those and try to say what's at stake in the debate, what difference does it make what the answers to particular questions are. So the first question is, what are the actual effects that are attributed to democratic institutions in the epistemic democracy literature? What are the outcomes in the democratic decision-making process? This is a question that emerges from the advocates of epistemic democracy. The other two questions that I'm going to raise emerge more from the critics of

has been submitted for publication. Details of the journal will appear on this website once that occurs so that the fully article can be accessed and cited. A range of innovative participatory approaches have been used in Australia to discuss policy and current issues: citizens ’ juries, consensus conferences and so on. These methods can be categorised as democratic, deliberative processes (DDPs) and are distinctive because they involve unengaged citizens, those who are not aligned to interest groups or engaged in lobbying or policy making. This paper reports on data collected from an inventory of DDPs that have been convened over the past three decades in Australia (1974-2006). This brief paper reports on one early finding only—the variation in take-up of DDPs between states. BACKGROUND Western democracies are thought to be experiencing a democratic deficit with declining trust between governors and the governed (Power Inquiry 2006). Involving the public in decision making is integ...

Democratic deliberation has been shown to lead to shifts in people's preferences for particular issues. The psychological mechanisms that underpin such shifts are not well understood. Against the backdrop of a deliberative forum we examined participants' preferences for various types of political systems, how these preferences changed as deliberations proceeded and how the final preferences were associated with different levels of inclusiveness of a social identity. The results showed that at the end of the deliberations people's preferences moved in the direction of satisfaction with the political system, and that this preference was positively associated with identification with the superordinate identification but negatively associated with the subgroup identification. We discuss the implication of these results for the design of deliberative forums as well as the role of social identity in deliberative democracy. Luisa Batalha is a social psychologist working at the Australian Catholic University. Her mains research interests are intergroup relation, the psychology of climate change mitigation and collective action. Simon Niemeyer is an Associate Professor and co-founder of the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance. His research ties together the themes of political behaviour, the public sphere and observations from deliberative minipublics, such as Citizens' Juries, to develop insights into potential interventions and institutional settings that improve deliberation and governance. Johh S Dryzek is Centenary Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia. He works in both political theory and empirical social science. Dryzek is best known for his contributions in the areas of democratic theory and practice and environmental politics. One of the instigators of the 'deliberative turn' in democratic theory, he has published numerous books in this area with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Polity Press. His work in environmental politics ranges from green political philosophy to studies of environmental discourses and movements to global climate governance, and he has published five books in this area with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Basil Blackwell. John Gastil is Professor of Political Science at Penn State University. Gastil is widely credited for promoting deliberation among citizens during elections and in other political institutions. In his book By Popular Demand, he proposed creating panels of citizens, chosen randomly to ensure a cross-section of society, to deliberate on ballot initiatives and referenda.

The project of deliberative democracy is increasingly pursued through designed mini-publics. But exactly how they are designed proves crucial in determining whether or not mini-publics can deliver on their promise. This article explores the role of appreciative inquirya version of deliberative design that is gaining ground. In this approach, participants are primed to develop an 'appreciative gaze' by focusing the discussion on what already works well in the system and imagining possibilities for building on these strengths. It is distinguished from contestatatory approaches in that argumentative, blame-seeking and deficit-oriented forms of discourse are considered counter-productive to the process. We argue against a one-sided emphasis on appreciative inquiry, which must be balanced with more contestatory forms. Focusing on appreciative approaches to deliberation at the expense of contestation obstructs the ability of a group to deliberate properly and secure crucial deliberative outcomes. Our analysis is grounded in the case of the first Australia's Citizens' Parliament.

This paper examines the role of collective identity and collective voice in political life. We argue that persons have an underlying predisposition to use collective dimensions, such as common identities and a public voice, in thinking and expressing themselves politically. This collective orientation, however, can be either fostered or weakened by citizens' political experiences. Although the collective level is an important dimension in contemporary politics, conventional democratic practices do not foster it. Deliberative democracy is suggested as an environment that might allow more ground for citizens to express themselves not only in individual but also in collective terms. We examine this theoretical perspective through a case study of the Australian Citizens' Parliament, in which transcripts are analyzed to determine the extent to which collective identities and common voice surfaced in actual discourse. We analyze the dynamics involved in the advent of collective dimensions in the deliberative process and highlight the factors-deliberation, nature of the discussion, and exceptional opportunity-that potentially facilitated the rise of group identities and common voice. In spite of the strong individualistic character of the Australian cultural identity, we nonetheless found evidence of both collective identity and voice at the Citizens' Parliament, expressed in terms of national, state, and community levels. In the conclusion, we discuss the implications of those findings for future research and practice of public deliberation.

This article develops a sociological perspective on the rhetorical conditions for good public deliberation, a topic of longstanding interest to scholars of the public sphere. The authors argue that the capacity of reason-giving, storytelling, and other rhetorical genres to foster deliberation depends on social conventions of the genre's use and popular beliefs about its credibility relative to other genres. Such beliefs are structured but contingently so: concerns about the generalizability of personal stories or the abstraction of logical arguments come into play on some occasions and not others. The authors appraise this argument by way of a systematic comparison of personal storytelling and reason-giving in public deliberation, the first such empirical study. Drawing upon an analysis of 1,415 claims made by 263 people in 12 discussion groups, the authors show that ordinary conventions of storytelling helped deliberators to identify their own preferences, demonstrate their app...

and I am Daniel Viehoff of the University of Sheffield. The decision we came to, in more or less democratic fashion, was that each of us would speak for about 12-15 minutes and then we'd open it up for questions, because we are all as interested in what you have to say as in what we have to say. And, for lack of any other arrangement, I think we'll just go in alphabetical order. Jack Knight: When I was asked to participate in this discussion about epistemic democracy and then told that I had to keep it to 10-12 minutes, I thought, I've never kept anything to 10-12 minutes but I will try. I'll try to do even better than that. I was trying to reflect upon these debates and a number of questions that emerged, it seems to me, are subject to disagreement. So what I wanted to do, to start my part of the discussion, was to focus on three of those and try to say what's at stake in the debate, what difference does it make what the answers to particular questions are. So the first question is, what are the actual effects that are attributed to democratic institutions in the epistemic democracy literature? What are the outcomes in the democratic decision-making process? This is a question that emerges from the advocates of epistemic democracy. The other two questions that I'm going to raise emerge more from the critics of

In all kinds of political action, citizens are confronted with the performances of other citizens. An important guide to political behaviour is therefore likely to be the assumptions people make concerning how others can be expected to behave. This paper explores common-sense ideas about other citizens as potential political participants, drawing on a series of group interviews conducted with taxi-drivers in Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic. I argue the expectations voiced of other citizens tend to be pessimistic in nature, casting them as ignorant, apathetic, passive and/or selfish, notwithstanding the appearance of a more optimistic view which holds they can be expected to follow the lead of those who 'take a stand'. These empirical observations lead to a discussion of the theoretical issues they raise, notably where to locate the origins of such views, and how to appraise their implications for democracy. All forms of political participation depend ultimately for their outcome on the actions of other members of the political community. 1 From the formation of social movements to the organisation of boycotts, collective action is rewarding to the extent that other citizens can be encouraged to participate. Likewise voting choices vary in their impact according to the choices of others or their decisions to abstain. Citizenship, one may say, is marked by the fact of interdependence. More importantly, this is anything but a revelatory insight. It is something that most citizens themselves are likely to acknowledge, following even the most basic form of political socialisation. The implication is that there are therefore good reasons to explore the assumptions commonly made of other citizens, since what these 'others' can be expected to do is likely to be an influence both on individual acts of engagement and the health of democratic politics more generally. The potential significance of such views has been noted by a number of scholars. In political psychology and communications, W. Phillips Davison developed the notion of the 'third-person effect' to describe common expectations regarding the susceptibility of others to the negative influence of the mass media (Davison 1983). His suggestion was that people generally overestimate the susceptibility of others to media persuasion while underestimating their own, a phenomenon liable to boost the popularity of censorship and other encroachments on free speech. In the eyes of each, 'I' am immune to such influence, 'you' need to be careful, and 'they' need to be protected from exposure. Popular expectations of others have also been

This thesis is an inquiry into the practice of imagining of organisational futures. The aims of this research are to promote understanding of imagining as relational, discursive and dialogical practice in organisations, to develop opportunities for imagining in organisations drawing on systemic and social constructionist theories and practices, and to develop propositions informing systemic constructionist practice. It is a reflexive, qualitative, case and practice based research, informed by ethnographic sensibility, using Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) theory and discourse analysis as research methods. The focus of this research is not to solve problems but to make sense and create connections. This research promotes an understanding of imagining as relational, discursive practice and a critical appreciation of imagining in organisational theory and systemic constructionist practice with organisations, in particular the relevance of imagining in organisational opportunity, alignment and coordination, organisational decision making, and organisation development. Reflections on imagining practice are articulated as concepts of games of imagining expressing archetypical discursive forms of imagining, discursive reflexivity, a practice of reflexive evaluating of the unfolding talk for the emergent possibilities in it, and game changing, an expanding of possibilities for imagining from within a conversational situation. Drawing on reflections from theory and practice this research promotes the relevance of relational, discursive imagining for organisational task attainment and makes a case for advancing imagining practices through developing the participation in imagining processes and by foregrounding and institutionalising imagining in organisations. It argues that such developments can be of a transformational nature and positions systemic constructionist practice as a resource for such a development. This research contributes to systemic constructionist practice research by developing practice based frameworks that serve to orientate practitioners in the living moment of practising. It builds on established frameworks of systemic constructionist theory and practice, expands their relevance, and also invites critical and appreciative sensibilities in relation to systemic constructionist practice. This research contributes to a small body of empirical case research into organisational imagining informed by social constructionist positions and ethnographic sensibility.

A range of innovative participatory approaches have been used in Australia to discuss policy and current issues: citizens' juries, consensus conferences and so on. These methods can be categorised as democratic, deliberative processes (DDPs) and are distinctive because they involve unengaged citizens, those who are not aligned to interest groups or engaged in lobbying or policy making. This paper reports on data collected from an inventory of DDPs that have been convened over the past three decades in Australia (1974- 2006). This brief paper reports on one early finding only—the variation in take-up of DDPs between states. BACKGROUND

The market has conventionally been all that deliberative democracy is not. It encourages the competition of self interested individuals and aggregates their preferences. Deliberative democracy in contrast promotes the idea that public judgments should be based on forum type interaction where participants come together to consider arguments in view of the common good. Though democratic theorists present the market and deliberative democracy as worlds apart, policy practice suggests otherwise. Since the late 1990s the label 'deliberative democracy' has been applied in an expanding consultancy market bearing various brand names. Drawing on empirical insights, this paper explores what the commercialisation of deliberative ideals might mean for the future of deliberative democracy. It presents two different scenarios of what this future could look like. The first is a positive scenario where the market helps to spread deliberative practice, making it more accessible, viable and familiar. The second scenario paints a more pessimistic picture where market forces encourage the proliferation of processes that have limited deliberative capacity, legitimacy or impact. Under this scenario consultants compete for a market advantage and cut procedural corners. Rather than predict the future, this paper identifies some of the opportunities and challenges for deliberative practice as its ideals become commodities to be bought and sold. Given the inevitability of a commercialised deliberative democracy, the paper suggests understanding deliberative goods and services as "commons'' that require stewards to ensure quality deliberation and democratic outcomes.

This thesis is an inquiry into the practice of imagining of organisational futures. The aims of this research are to promote understanding of imagining as relational, discursive and dialogical practice in organisations, to develop opportunities for imagining in organisations drawing on systemic and social constructionist theories and practices, and to develop propositions informing systemic constructionist practice. It is a reflexive, qualitative, case and practice based research, informed by ethnographic sensibility, using Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) theory and discourse analysis as research methods. The focus of this research is not to solve problems but to make sense and create connections. This research promotes an understanding of imagining as relational, discursive practice and a critical appreciation of imagining in organisational theory and systemic constructionist practice with organisations, in particular the relevance of imagining in organisational opportunity, alignment and coordination, organisational decision making, and organisation development. Reflections on imagining practice are articulated as concepts of games of imagining expressing archetypical discursive forms of imagining, discursive reflexivity, a practice of reflexive evaluating of the unfolding talk for the emergent possibilities in it, and game changing, an expanding of possibilities for imagining from within a conversational situation. Drawing on reflections from theory and practice this research promotes the relevance of relational, discursive imagining for organisational task attainment and makes a case for advancing imagining practices through developing the participation in imagining processes and by foregrounding and institutionalising imagining in organisations. It argues that such developments can be of a transformational nature and positions systemic constructionist practice as a resource for such a development. This research contributes to systemic constructionist practice research by developing practice based frameworks that serve to orientate practitioners in the living moment of practising. It builds on established frameworks of systemic constructionist theory and practice, expands their relevance, and also invites critical and appreciative sensibilities in relation to systemic constructionist practice. This research contributes to a small body of empirical case research into organisational imagining informed by social constructionist positions and ethnographic sensibility.

Outside of formal politics a robust movement is beginning to renew civic engagement in America. After an examination of civic work and current examples that are strengthening and unifying the entire field, the author argues that civic work should matter to academic philosophers and vice-versa.

A practically implementable model of participatory governance is proposed, combining normative qualities of universal suffrage with epistemic qualities of presumably elitist open deliberation. I call it "Direct Deliberative Democracy" (abbr. "D3"), or, alternatively, "Direct Deliberative Participatory Governance". This multidisciplinary research is based on a number of concepts at different levels of advancement; some of them are first introduced here. The model defines direct public participation in governance, esp. in policy-, law-and decision-making, as a multi-stage process comprising the stage of open public online deliberation on a given issue, designed in a way as to satisfy the basic requirements of fairness, productiveness, self-regulation, and time-and effort-efficiency. A special IT system (still awaiting its software implementation) manages the whole process by "orchestrating" a number of "house-keeping" activities collaboratively performed by the participants. The stage of large deliberation is followed by a stage of collaborative editing of a number of competing proposals, and then by the final stage of their aggregation into one "optimal" solution. A number of AI-and NLP-based techniques, in particular the so-called Computer-Assisted Argumentation, will help participants all along the process. To take into account non-participants' preferences, a special method is proposed, derived from the VAA (Voting Advice Applications) concept.

In this paper, we introduce and discuss a new model of governance, in which epistemic qualities of intrinsically elitist open deliberation are combined with normative qualities of aggregative democracy based on universal suffrage. In our model, these two approaches, typically considered as opposite to each other, are combined in a quite natural way. Namely, the process of deliberative policy-making in a community is open to every its member who is willing to participate (the "active" ones); while all others (the "lazy" ones) are provided with the possibility of either to cast their informed vote, or, at the end, to delegate their voting right to the whole community, through an IT system enforcing appropriate procedures and performing appropriate algorithms. Practical implementation of our model will be made possible through a combined use of (1) a procedural framework for Mass common Online Deliberation (MOD), which had been described in detail in our past papers; (2) an appropriately designed Computer-Assisted Argumentation (CAA) system; and (3) a system for collecting and taking into account individual preferences of every "lazy" citizen, in a way similar to the well-known Voting Advice Application (VAA) systems.

This is a draft of the 2019 Distinguished Humanities Lecture at Arizona State University, to be delivered March 20. It argues for a different paradigm of democracy, citizenship, and professional practice to help catalyze a new movement of civic activation across the society. Here is the lecture site https://ihr.asu.edu/distinguished-lecturer

This is the first draft of the 2019 Distinguished Humanities Lecture at Arizona State University. It argues that in addition to the sustainability science and practice, for which ASU has gained well-deserved international recognition, the university and its humanities disciplines (with others) need to take up what the Kettering Foundation calls "problems of democracy," not simply problems "in" democracy. The history of New Deals public humanities, suggesting an alternative to the top down politics of the main "Green New Deal," and concepts of citizen professional suggest a different story of democracy.

Proponents of public deliberation suggest that engaging in deliberation increases deliberators’ subsequent participation in other forms of politics. We evaluate this “deliberative participation hypothesis” using data drawn from a deliberative field experiment in which members of medically underserved communities in Michigan deliberated in small groups about the design of that state’s Medicaid program. Participants were randomly assigned to deliberate about the program in a group or to think about the decision individually, and then completed a post-survey that included measures of willingness to engage in a variety of political acts. We measured willingness to engage in common forms of political participation, as well as willingness to participate in particularistic resistance to adverse decisions by insurance bureaucracies. Contrary to the claims of much of the existing literature, we find no impact of deliberation on willingness to engage in political participation. These results suggest that the ability of public deliberation to increase broader political engagement may be limited or may only occur in particularly intensive, directly empowered forms of public deliberation.

This review essay in The Good Society (vol 25, no 2-3, 2016) treats two edited collections, Post, Ward, Long and Saltmarsh, "Publicly Engaged Scholars"; and Levinson and Fay, "Dilemmas of Educational Ethics." I argue that both have considerable strengths, showing the considerable democratic ferment in and around education (K-12 and higher education), and both neglect sustained the kind of attention to cultural change in work, workplaces, and professional identities needed to generate a large, transformative movement in education.

This lecture, the 2017 founders day speech speech at Oregon State University, makes the case for civic science as a crucial way to overcome the knowledge war and the detachment of professionals and the mediating institutions they lead from civic life.c

This speech is the Founders Day Address by Harry Boyte at Oregon State University on the 150th anniversary of the university. It argues that the deep political, social and cultural divisions in the United States are rooted in "knowledge wars," epistemological conflicts, which stymie action on complex problems and also erode public support for higher education. Civic science, as well as civic studies and public scholarship, offer important resources to move beyond the knowledge wars.

In this March 24, 2017 interview with the Civic Caucus of Minnesota, I argue that citizens--who once were central to the processes of self-government in the United States--have been marginalized and are now relegated to the role of consumers of policy rather than co-constructors of public life. I then describe the Minnesota Civic Studies Initiative, which is one of several efforts nationwide to reclaim democracy as the work of citizens with the help of a university as catalyst.

Active  citizen  participation  is  increasingly  being  recognized  as  essential  to  effective public policy making. A key challenge for public administrators is how to effectively engage constituents’ diverse viewpoints in sound deliberation that will likely result incoherent,  agreed  judgments.  This  paper  investigates  one  such  public  deliberation process, Australia’s first Citizens’ Parliament, which brought together 150 randomly sampled  Australian  citizens  charged  with the  task  of  formulating  concrete  policy proposals  to  be  considered  by  the  Federal  government.  One  unexpected  outcome  of this  initiative,  especially  given  Australian  ambivalence  about  nationalism,  was  the emergence of a shared identity among participants that appeared to bridge cultural and  geographical  divides.  We  explore  linkages  between  salient  elements  of  the deliberative  process,  the  emergence  of  a  sense  of  ‘being  Australian’,  and  the  final agreed  list  of  policy  recommendations  that  indicated  an  understanding  of  and commitment to the ‘common good’. If the emergence of a shared identity is acknowledged  as  a  key  to  the  development  of  a  coherent  public  voice,  then  further  examination of these linkages will be critical to the efficacy of future public deliberations.Moreover,  given  the  heterogeneous  nature  of  the  Australian  electorate  and  the challenges  inherent  in  the  country’s  federal  governance  structure,  the  findings  have significant  implications  for  policymakers  in  similar  constituencies,  notably  the  EU and  the  USA.

In contemporary Western democracies, the role of ci tizens is confined largely to that of voting for elected public officials, and even th at role is on the wane. In Australia, where voting is compulsory, growing numbers of young Australians are seeking to avoid mandatory voter registration. Some accounts of the 'democratic deficit' hypothesis hold that democracy's institutions are o ut of touch with its norms, and that greater alignment between the two could be ach ieved if there were more oppor- tunities for the public to participate in policy-de velopment and decision-making. In our hierarchical, technocratic systems of govern ance, however, the space that exists for people outside government tends to be oc cupied by organised interests. In large measure, this circumscribed role for citizens stems from the widely-held view that, in a representative democracy, directly influ encing the policy-making process ought to be the bailiwick of technocratic experts, organised i...

Writers on the practice of deliberation usually take their cues about what deliberation ought to be from the theoretical literature, sometimes adding elements from their own experience. Until recently, that theoretical literature deductively derived its ideal conception of deliberation from the abstract principles of rationality, liberty, and equality. Then critics of the early stream of theorizing drew from experience and past work on the position of minorities and oppressed groups to fault the early theorists for proposing ideals that, when put into practice, were likely to exclude or marginalize members of disadvantaged groups. More recently, in response to these critiques, contemporary deliberative theorists have broadened and reframed some of these principles. Deliberative theory, however, remains relatively unleavened by the direct experience of deliberation practitioners. To address this problem, we have adopted the explicitly inductive method of mining the observations of facilitators of small-group deliberation on public issues for explicit and implicit deliberative norms. The results differ in several ways from the results of theory derived from abstract principles or the generalized experiences of marginalized groups.

This paper examines the role of collective identity and collective voice in political life. We argue that persons
have an underlying predisposition to use collective dimensions, such as common identities and a public voice,
in thinking and expressing themselves politically. This collective orientation, however, can be either fostered
or weakened by citizens’ political experiences. Although the collective level is an important dimension in
contemporary politics, conventional democratic practices do not foster it. Deliberative democracy is
suggested as an environment that might allow more ground for citizens to express themselves not only in
individual but also in collective terms. We examine this theoretical perspective through a case study of the
Australian Citizens’ Parliament, in which transcripts are analyzed to determine the extent to which collective
identities and common voice surfaced in actual discourse. We analyze the dynamics involved in the advent of
collective dimensions in the deliberative process and highlight the factors—deliberation, nature of the
discussion, and exceptional opportunity—that potentially facilitated the rise of group identities and common
voice. In spite of the strong individualistic character of the Australian cultural identity, we nonetheless found
evidence of both collective identity and voice at the Citizens’ Parliament, expressed in terms of national, state,
and community levels. In the conclusion, we discuss the implications of those findings for future research and
practice of public deliberation.

This article argues for the assessment of deliberative mini-publics as a dynamic part of a wider deliberative system. The approach draws primarily on Dryzek’s (2009) deliberative capacity building framework, which describes the democratic process as ideally involving authentic deliberation, inclusiveness in the deliberative process, and consequentiality or deliberation’s influence on decisions as well as positive impact on the system. This approach is illustrated using the comparative assessment of two mini-public case studies: the Australian Citizens’ Parliament and Italy’s Iniziativa di Revisione Civica (Civic Revision Initiative). The application of deliberative capacity as a standard for evaluating mini-publics in systemic terms reveals differences between the cases. The deliberative capacity of both cases overlap, but they do so for different reasons that stem from the interconnections between their specific designs and other components of the deliberative system.

We interviewed 20 key organizational leaders about strategies to expand civic engagement in the United States. Interviewees agreed that the nation faces polarization, corruption, and weakened civic capacity. Most thought that citizens would have to play a major role in reversing these declines. Some organizations included in this study are large, some are ideologically diverse, some have a coherent and focused agenda, and some are deep (engaging their members in learning, growth, leadership, and voice). But no organization has managed to be large, deep, diverse, and focused.