The 新英格兰市民生活中心 is dedicated to the teaching, practice and study 协商民主. The Center's initiatives and research are based on the premise that in order to foster strong communities, based on principles of inclusiveness and equity, individuals must engage in thoughtful and civil dialogue. 中心服务 as a resource for students, higher education professionals and community members.
The Center for Civic Life was founded in 1998 on the premise that engaged and deliberative communities are vital for a healthy democracy and for individuals to realize their goal of experiencing rich and fulfilling lives. 通过创建和实现 initiatives that uses deliberative practices-whether in the community or in the classroom-the Center creates opportunities for people to become active producers of knowledge and engaged members of their communities.
“Explicit links are made between personal experiences and local, regional, national 或者全球性问题 ... The Center's programs ask participants to think critically, listen attentively, examine assumptions, value diversity and publicly voice their ideas.”
协商 Democracy Frequently Asked Questions
Finding the answers to an ethical dilemma — a "What should we do?这类问题 — can present a significant challenge to any community. 这类问题通常是 persistent and seemingly intractable. Finding productive approaches to such an issue can be complicated by the fact that in our increasingly diverse society, people don't always share the same priorities or values.
协商 democracy is based on the idea that individuals must work 在一起 to identify issues of common concern and 在一起 develop approaches for addressing them. As people work through conflicting choices 在一起, common ground is identified. Common ground is that place where individuals see how their goals are shareable, their values overlap and their interests intersect.
协商 democracy is an approach to democracy that puts people at the center and that is more "voice-centered" than "vote-centered.“在这个民主概念中, individuals play a more robust role from the local to the global levels. 协商 democracy is animated by the idea that public deliberation is essential for better and fairer solutions to problems we face in common, for a stronger sense of legitimacy for public processes and institutions and for stronger communities.
协商 dialogue is a set of practices for communicating with others and addressing 常见问题和问题. These practices enable people to talk about difficult issues not only on the basis of knowledge, facts, and professional expertise, but also from the perspective of their deeper concerns, values and personal experience. These practices help participants speak not only as individuals, but as members of a community, not only as groups with competing interests, but also as a community with shared interests, concerns and goals.
协商 dialogues are structured conversations of varying lengths and formats with ground rules and a discussion guide that lays out a range of possible approaches to an issue-an issue book or an issue brief-that participants move through with the 训练有素的主持人的帮助. The ground rules encourage participants to listen to each other, and to get beyond debating and other adversarial ways of communicating. Discussion guides or issue books/briefs frame the issue in a way that helps participants wrestle with choices and tradeoffs 联系d with making tough public policy decisions. Moderators encourage participants to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of various approaches to an issue that are laid out in the issue book or brief, and to reach for common ground in creating general directions for acting 在一起.
This is what is called doing "choice work." 协商 dialogues are not debates, nor are they casual or superficial conversations. 它们包括思考和推理 在一起 and working through conflicting possible choices with others in an effort to reach some common understandings and decisions about how to address and take action 在一个问题上.
When citizens engage in deliberative dialogue about an issue and when a community has a habit of asking its members to make choices, the directions that are chosen often are better and they have a legitimacy that simply doesn't exist otherwise. 公民 catch the bug of being engaged and of taking ownership of problems. 他们谈论 what they can do, not what others ought to do.
协商 dialogue is a way of making a connection with others in your community that you don't usually interact with and to an issue that can often feel too big to influence or too impersonal to relate to directly. Participants in deliberative dialogue forums are able to see their personal stake in public issues because they are encouraged to draw on their own values, concerns and life experiences 也 as on pertinent facts and technical information in addressing those problems. 因为它们是 doing this in the company of others engaged in the same thing, they are able to make stronger connections to others, especially with those whom they might not otherwise 联系.
Participants in these dialogues develop a public voice, and they are transformed by 这样的经历. Someone who may seem intellectually unable or inarticulate will begin to show their thoughtfulness and develop their ability to speak with more facility 关于公共问题. The practice has a way of sensitizing people to the life experiences and interests of people that are significantly different from themselves.
So, as they become more active and powerful participants in their communities, they 也要变得更善解人意. They develop into stronger and more confident individuals while simultaneously becoming more connected to others, and often with people they have not been able to relate to before. When citizens develop these qualities and capacities, the conditions for significant social change are in place. 人 enabled to act 不同的 because they have learned to talk and listen to each other 不同的.
And often something new-some new understanding, some new insight or idea for acting 不同的 to address a problem-gets created as a result, an idea that no one individual or group of individuals had in mind fully going into the dialogue. 当这种情况发生时——as it almost always does to some degree-one realizes the truth of the idea that we are 太阳城网址在一起的时间比独处的时间多.
The kind of action that follows is a rich array of varied and collaborative efforts 它们相互加强. They spring spontaneously and unpredictably from the connections and sense of interdependence that are forged by the practice of dialogue.
Action will be imagined at many levels and from a variety of angles because deliberative dialogue allows for problems to be addressed in their full complexity and authentic 厚度.
协商 dialogue can be used to deal with a wide variety of issues including education, social security, foreign policy, health care, and the challenges of biotechnology. The particular approach used by the NECCL has been developed and refined over the last 20 years by the Kettering Foundation of Dayton, Ohio and the many people who organize and moderate National Issues Forums (NIF) across the country.
National Issues Forums are deliberative dialogues among adult citizens primarily on issues important in their communities and in the nation.
NIF论坛小册子
最新的论坛小册子包括:
- 恐怖主义:太阳城网址现在该怎么做?
- Crime and Punishment: Is Justice Being Served?
- Race and Ethnic Tensions: What Can We Do?
- A Nice Place to Live: Building Communities and Fighting Sprawl
- 钱 & 政治:谁拥有民主?
- Violent Kids: Can We Change the Trend?
- Public Schools: Are They Making the Grade?
- Our Nation's Kids: Is Something Wrong?
- 酒精:控制有毒物质泄漏
- 网上都有什么?
- The Boundaries of Free Speech Environmental Protection: A Challenge Bigger Than All 在户外
- How Can We Be Fair: The Future of Affirmative Action
- Mission Uncertain: Reassessing America's Global Role
- Contested Values: Tug-of-War in the School Yard
- Jobs: Preparing the Workforce for the Twenty-first Century
- Welfare to Work: Who Should We Help and Why?
- The Environment at Risk: Responding to Growing Dangers
- Governing America: Our Choices, Our Challenge
- The 健康 Care Cost Explosion At Death's Door: What are the Choices?
- Pocketbook Pressures: Who Benefits from Economic Growth?
地方性问题
Some examples of 地方性问题 include:
- Improving Race and Ethnic Relations on Campus
- 性别:有什么区别?
- Sex: Making Public Policy for Private Passions
- Time for Life: Balancing Work, Love and Leisure A World in Common: Talking About What 无国界世界中的问题
- Pathways to Prosperity: Choosing a Future for Your Community
- Land Use: When City and Country Clash
- Women's 健康: What are the Problems, What Should We Do?
- 女性的出路在哪里?
- Politics for the Twenty-first Century: What Should Be Done on Campus?
- Preparing for the Future: What Kind of Education Do We Need After High School?
协商 dialogues often use a certain kind of discussion guide to help facilitate public deliberation-the making of choices 在一起. Public issues and community problems often present us with a variety of choices for understanding and acting on a problem.
We find that polarization is avoided and productive dialogue and deliberation are encouraged when issues are presented with more than two sides, which is the way citizens 实际上往往与问题有关. Issue books or issue briefs frame an issue in terms of three and sometimes four approaches or choices. (Issue briefs are shorter, at-a-glance versions of the choices for deliberation.) Less than three seems to promote debate and more than four gets too unwieldy for group discussion.
These various approaches often conflict with each other and have tension between and within them mirroring the conflicts and tensions that are among and within the participants 也. The issue book or brief provides a brief overview of the problem and presents three or four "choices" or approaches one at a time. 每个选项都包含一个general statement of the problem from the perspective of supporters of that choice, a few of the best arguments for the position, and a list of a few possible actions that could be taken and the likely tradeoffs 联系d with them.
As participants deliberate on each of the very different and conflicting choices, they try to discover what they value most about each approach, what costs and consequences they think they can live with and what future actions they would more or less support 在一起.
Framing issues and developing issue books or briefs is one thing we do to help along 审议的过程. It is a difficult and time-consuming process that requires some training and experience, but it has many rewards. 当太阳城网址很好地构建了一个问题, we capture the most fundamental concerns that are behind the ways people see a problem. The goal is to make sure everyone can see themselves in the choices or approaches 他们被要求考虑. When this is accomplished it can encourage citizen participation.
Framing an issue well-for public deliberation-requires "working through" the following steps, ideally with a group which represents the diverse views in a community:
- 识别人们的关注点
- Grouping like concerns and perspectives
- 使问题成为焦点
- 认识到紧张关系
- Outlining the benefits and drawbacks of each approach
- 列出操作和权衡
- 测试框架
Having the choices framed ahead of time by others helps participants in the deliberative dialogue forum get quickly into the meat of an issue and forces them to come to grips with the major tensions and trade-offs 联系d with it. 这些选择并不是有意的 to be exhaustive and participants are encouraged to bring up ideas that they feel 不包含在框架中. But a well-developed issue framework should provide the building blocks for the group's work of co-creating a general sense of direction for where they want to go 在一个问题上. The objective in a deliberative dialogue is not to take a vote at the end on which choice individuals prefer.
Rather, the goal is to arrive at a better common understanding of the issue through a thorough examination of the major choices we have in relation to it. 最终, participants are trying to discover and create some sense of common ground among them upon which future action might be taken, creating their own approach which may involve parts of some or all of the choices in the framework of the issue book.
Discovering and creating common ground for action is the goal of deliberative dialogue. It is often created out of a discovery of shared concerns and interests among participants, or at least a better understanding and acceptance of why people hold valuable the 他们做的事情. Common ground is more than a compromise, where parties agree to disagree and split the difference, and less than consensus, where the objective is to arrive 在一个问题上有相同的想法.
Common ground, on the other hand, is that place (or those places) where participants can see how their goals are shareable, their values overlap and their interests intersect 和其他人一起. It is the basis for win/win solutions to problems, where all parties in the dialogue have had their concerns and interests heard and accommodated 在某种程度上影响了太阳城网址的决策.
Common ground for action describes the relationship we have when we must take action 在一起, even when we do not fully agree about our convictions. 当你想到 it, much of our daily decision making is in the area between agreement and disagreement. We usually don't fully agree with or fully disagree with others. 太阳城网址不经常给予 把太阳城网址的信念告诉别人. But we do find ways to work with others-sometimes even if we don't particularly like them. That is the reality that common ground for 行动尝试解决.
协商 dialogue is that form of talking that helps us to address differences 的信念. If we differ in conviction, we can't have consensus and we are very 不太可能妥协. What we do is find over-lapping self-interests that enable 太阳城网址必须共同采取行动. That behavior is common ground for action.
新英格兰市民生活中心
詹姆斯(杰德)多尼兰
项目协调人
donelanj@haianib.com