Community Services

Key Aspects of the Deliberative Democracy Movement

July 31, 2010 | Martín Carcasson & Leah Sprain, Center for Public Deliberation, Colorado State University

In a growing number of communities across the globe, individuals are turning to more deliberative and collaborative processes—such as community dialogues, issue forums, stakeholder negotiation processes, and other inclusive public participation efforts—in order to address their most important problems. Deliberative democracy is an approach to politics in which citizens, not just experts or politicians, are deeply involved in public decision making and problem-solving. Often working with trained facilitators who utilize a variety of techniques, citizens representing a broad range of stakeholders come together and consider relevant facts and values from multiple points of view; listen to one another in order to think critically about the various options before them and consider the underlying tensions and tough choices inherent to most public issues; and ultimately seek to come to some conclusion for action based on a reasoned public judgment.