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Based on a year-long study I led for the Harwood Institute, this report looks at public innovators — who they are, how they do their work, and why they are one of the keys to bringing about the change we need in America's communities. Public innovators are stewards of change at the community level. They are not quite civic leaders, not quite community organizers, and not quite social entrepreneurs, but something of all three. Their work is aimed at engaging people, catalyzing conversations, articulating questions and common concerns, and aligning people, organizations, and resources to achieve real impact. The report describes ten public innovators who are making change happen in ten communities across the country — exemplary leaders who are at the forefront of a remarkable wave of innovation taking place at the grassroots level across the country. (March 2009)
While the foundation world is reluctant to openly admit it, there is a pervasive sense today that community-building projects, for all their good intentions, routinely fall short of their goals. All too often, they fail to tap into vital civic resources and energy, build effective relationships with the public, develop broad-based networks and coalitions, and sustain the commitment over the long haul. What can grantmakers and nonprofits do to address the problem? This report, based on a year-long series of dialogues convened by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change and the Kettering Foundation, looks some practical — and surprisingly effective — strategies. (An article adapted from the report, Philanthropy and Public Life: A Question of Civil Investing, appears in the Winter 2006 issue of Connections magazine.) (May 2006)
CREATING CITIZENS THROUGH PUBLIC DELIBERATION
As far afield as the townships of South Africa, the public libraries of Russia, and the town squares, parks and cafés of Argentina, people are practicing the art of deliberative dialogue to tackle difficult public issues. It's a form of dialogue aimed at working through conflicting values and finding common priorities for action. As the case studies in this report show, deliberative dialogue is proving remarkably effective in a wide variety of settings and across many cultures in engaging people, resolving conflicts, and creating common ground for action. The report is based on in-depth interviews with community leaders from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Eastern Europe and describes some of the specific ways that grassroots organizations in ten emerging democracies are using deliberative dialogue to foster civic engagement and political participation. (Summer 2004)
HIGHER EDUCATION FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD
In 2002 and 2003, over two hundred prominent academics — including many college and university presidents — joined with civic leaders, public officials, foundation executives and others at the University of Michigan. The goal was to explore practical strategies to promote civic engagement and social responsibility in American colleges and universities. This report summarizes some of the substantive conclusions of the dialogue and outlines an ambitious and comprehensive "Common Agenda" for change. Published by the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good, the report includes chapters on "Educating for the Public Good," "Building Engaged Institutions," and "Forging Strategic Alliances," among others. (April 2004)
ROUNDTABLE ON DEMOCRACY RESEARCH
In May 2001, a group of prominent civic leaders, scholars, policymakers and public intellectuals gathered in Washington D.C. to explore the promises and challenges of community-building in America. The dialogue took up the breakdown of the American community, the crisis of confidence in institutions, and the widespread anger and disaffection many Americans harbor toward the political system and what these developments mean for the future of democracy. Participants included Daniel Yankelovich, E.J. Dionne, James Fishkin, William Galston, Gail Leftwich, Christopher Gates, Margaret Simms, Suzanne Morse, Peter Levine, and Daniel Kemmis. In this report, published by the Kettering Foundation, I summarize the dialogue and discuss its potential implications for the burgeoning civic renewal movement. (Spring 2002)
HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC LIFE
Between 1998 and 2001, I served as rapporteur for the Seminar on Higher Education & Public Life, a groundbreaking series of dialogues held in Washington D.C. aimed at promoting civic engagement and social responsibility in American higher education. The gatherings explored a wide range practical questions about how to promote civic engagement in American colleges and universities. For example, what does civic engagement really involve in the most practical terms? What are the most promising examples? What can be done to support such efforts and make them a more integral part of their institutions? To what extent can they be replicated? And what are their broader implications for American higher education as a whole? Each of the four reports is available in PDF-format:
THE ACADEMY AND PUBLIC LIFE: HEALING THE RIFT
This essay, published in the Summer 1999 issue of the Higher Education Exchange, surveys the deepening divide between American higher education and the realities facing America's communities, asking whether colleges and universities be more responsive to the needs of public life? Is there a case to be made for connecting the campus to the broader community? And what are some of the practical steps that might be taken toward narrowing the gap between the public and the often cloistered world of the academy? The essay examines how a growing number of academics, civic groups, grantmakers, community activists, and others are seeking to answer these questions and heal the rift between town and gown. (Summer 1999)
ORGANIC DEMOCRACY: THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY
This paper explores the social and political thought of John Dewey, one of America's great philosophers and a thinker still very much at the center of debate among social, political, and educational theorists. Today, some fifty years after his death, John Dewey remains if not America’s premier political philosopher, then at least its greatest spokesman for civil society, community values, grass-roots liberalism, and — some would argue — even democracy itself. While his defense of participatory democracy may be hard to defend on purely practical grounds, as I argue in this piece, it represents a powerful ideal to aspire to, one which we need perhaps more than ever given the troubled state of our political culture today. (December 1998)
Is public deliberation possible in a contemporary democracy? If so, what are the conditions under which it thrives or wilts? Can a deliberative citizenry have real influence on pressing public policy issues? What would a deliberative society look like, and what steps might be taken toward achieving it? These were some of the key questions taken up at the National Issues Forums’ (NIF) Fifteenth Anniversary Colloquium in June 1997. Leading scholars, journalists, foundation leaders, public opinion researchers, civic activists and thoughtful citizens, along with NIF practitioners from across the country, came together in Washington, D.C. to assess NIF’s achievements and to examine more broadly the strengths and limitations of public deliberation in making democracy work. (July 1997)
CIVIC NETWORKS: BUILDING COMMUNITY ON THE NET
This essay looks at the role of online networks in building and strengthening community and tries to sort through some of the rhetoric — much of it overblown — about so-called virtual communities. My sense is that these networks can play a role in strengthening community if they are used to augment social networks that are already in place. In addition to their obvious benefits as text-based information systems, networks can serve as public spaces for informal citizen-to-citizen interaction, they can support rational dialogue and, in some cases, deliberation, and they can promote the social connectedness, trust, and cooperation that constitute social capital. This essay was part of a background study I conducted for the Kettering Foundation. It was later published by the Canadian Institute on Governance. It also appears in a recent book, Composing Knowledge, edited by Rolf Norgaard (Bedford/St. Martin's Press). (March 1997)
Social change is an elusive concept. It's inevitable and yet, paradoxically, it depends on the will and the actions of ordinary individuals. We embrace change, yet something in our nature fiercely resists it. We structure social movements, political campaigns and business strategies around the need for change, yet we hardly understand how it works. This paper looks at how it happens and how to make it happen. It surveys a number of change theories in the fields of history, the philosophy of science, anthropology, sociology, and management theory, citing many of my favorite thinkers and philosophers — people like Arnold Toynbee and Thomas Kuhn. It goes on to offer some strategies for promoting change in organizations and communities. The paper was originally prepared for the Pew Partnership for Civic Change. (June 1996)
In a time of widespread frustration with politics-as-usual, the principles of collaboration are seen by many organizations, communities, and civic leaders as a more effective way of working for change than forming coalitions, task forces, commissions, interest groups, and other, more traditional kinds of partnerships. This widely cited essay was part of a background study I carried out for the Pew Partnership for Civic Change in 1995. The paper is available in a French Translation by Jean-Pierre Belanger. It is also available as a print-friendly PDF version, courtesy of the leadership program Santa Fe Future. In addition, there is a companion essay, Collaboration in Action, that surveys a range of practical examples from the field. (November 1995)
TELEDEMOCRACY VS. DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY
This essay examines the differences between two models of public discourse — teledemocracy and deliberative democracy. The concept of teledemocracy has been getting a lot of play in recent years thanks in part to a vast array of new communications technologies. Its advocates believe that innovative forms of electronic discourse, such as talk radio, interactive TV, and computer networking, can remedy many of the shortcomings of representative democracy in a contemporary mass society such as the United States. In their view, new technologies not only safeguard freedom of expression but also open up new avenues for voicing public opinion and communicating with political leaders. By contrast, proponents of deliberative democracy stress the need for reasoned discussion about issues involving the common good, not as an end in itself but as a prerequisite to effective public policy. While these two models both put a premium on public discourse, they differ not only in their democratic orientation but also in their basic approach to public talk. This essay outlines these differences, surveying the literature on the subject and summarizing the fundamental pros and cons of each model. The piece first appeared in the Journal of Interpersonal Computing and Technology. (April 1995)
This long essay was part of an early research project I carried out for the Kettering Foundation. It surveys the burgeoning literature on electronic democracy — the impulse to enhance democracy using communications technologies such as interactive television and online voting. The paper tries to sort out the many theoretical implications of electronic democracy, such as the somewhat fuzzy notion — made popular by Ross Perot during the 1992 elections — of "electronic town meetings." (For a separate op-ed piece I wrote on that subject, see Electronic Town Halls Can't Beat the Real Thing.) The report also presents an overview of some of the early attempts to "electrify" the democratic process, using radio, television, and computer networks. This is undoubtedly one of the most widely read reports I've written, having logged over 100,000 page views since it was first posted online in the mid-1990s. It also includes an Annotated Bibliography. (February 1994)
HOW THE MEDIA FRAMES POLITICAL ISSUES
This review essay, still one of the most widely read papers on this site, examines how the media — particularly television news — shapes political attitudes and behavior. It takes up the difference between "episodic" versus "thematic" framing, the media's role as political "agenda setter," the question of "establishment bias," the so-called objectivity ethic, the public's waning confidence in the news media, the political consequences of news, and a handful of other questions that all of us — professional journalists and news consumers alike — need to think about and come to terms with in our media-saturated culture. The essay was written when I worked as a researcher at the Kettering Foundation. (January 1993)