Research Spotlight

Deliberative Dialogue

A process dating back to the ancient Greeks, “deliberative dialogue” forums bring a diverse group of citizens together to explore a problem from several vantage points. The point isn’t necessarily to solve the problem, but rather to give citizens a better sense of the problem itself—not to mention a deeper perspective on potential solutions. In the age-old words of Aristotle, “We deliberate not about ends, but about the means to attain ends.”

After 20 years of conducting participatory research, Barbara Brown has become an expert on deliberative dialogue and its central role in community building. As the South Carolina CYFAR project director and co-director of the Laboratory for Deliberative Dialogue at Clemson University, Brown has organized and moderated discussions on youth violence, drug abuse, terrorism and many other complex issues. Using the methods promoted by the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI), she’s helped the highest-need communities in South Carolina to find common ground and to take action in a democratic way.

CYFERnet recently caught up with Brown to get the inside scoop. Brown not only offered a great overview of the topic, but also shared some tips and success stories for other CYFAR professionals who want to use deliberative dialogue in their own programs.


Deliberative dialogue forums work best when citizens of all
ages and backgrounds get involved.

What does “deliberative dialogue” mean to you? First of all, you have a wicked problem, which is often a difficult problem that cannot be solved without community collaboration and a major changing of behaviors or opinions. The idea is to get an intergenerational group of citizens together to discuss that problem. When you discuss it using the NIFI model, you will always have, at minimum, three potential approaches to the problem.

Why three? Because it adds to the likelihood of deliberation. So, as a group, you would not only discuss, but you would try to get to the bottom of what you like or dislike about the different choices. What are the pros and cons in the community if I choose this approach? Quite often, when the group is deliberating, they will like pieces of each of the choices and will build a fourth choice by blending the others together.

Does a group ever lean toward just one choice? Yes, depending on the issue. You don’t always know what the variables are that cause one group of citizens to go one way and another group to go another way. It could be a cultural perspective. Or maybe someone in the group has a lot of knowledge to share, and that helps people make a decision. But the goal is for citizens to find some common ground. What can or can’t we live with?

Do the participants ever vote on the issues? No, but ideally, they do dig deep into what they value about a particular choice for action. If deliberative dialogue really works well, you not only have a sense of what the citizens thought about the issue, but also a group who practices democracy by deliberating, making a decision, and then taking action.

What are some of the “wicked problems” you’ve used deliberative dialogue to address in South Carolina CYFAR programs? We do about 10 forums a year and we’ve integrated most of those into our youth and families at-risk programs. We’ve used many of the NIFI discussion guides, like “Violent Kids,” “Terrorism,” “Democracy’s Challenge” and “Contested Values: [Tug-of-War in the School Yard].” We’ve also used the guides on immigration, alcohol abuse and illegal drugs.

The “Democracy’s Challenge” forum was a large-scale effort, right? Yes. Last fall, we conducted a Public Policy Institute training session on the topic and several communities got involved, including one of the new CYFAR community sites and some youth that CYFAR sponsored statewide. We held one of the democracy forums with the Fort Jackson army youth. With that forum, the different choices we looked at were rebuilding democratic values, reinventing citizenship, and bringing the public back into politics.

What did the participants learn from those forums? The third choice was especially interesting for CYFAR communities. We recognized that the real problem is that citizens need to communicate better with elected officials and vice versa. The youth talked about how they couldn’t relate to communicating with elected officials, but they could relate to having to report to certain people like teachers and youth leaders. In every single forum we held, they said they did not feel that adults really listen to them. The Fort Jackson youth compared it to the different civil rights movements in America. And they were moved to action. They started talking about how they could make a difference in promoting youth rights. I remember one 16-year-old girl said, “Adults don’t think that we’re capable of as much as we are. What we need to do is decide what we can do to make our communities better, do those things in a coordinated way, and then people will see the value of youth.”

What makes deliberative dialogue more effective than other forms of public discourse, such as brainstorming or debate? The process allows people to tell personal stories that apply to the issue and the choices they’re talking about. With a lot of forms of discussion, there’s not the opportunity for people to tell real stories. But in deliberative dialogue, people can get to the root of why they believe the things they do.

Can you provide any specific examples? One community in South Sumter used the NIFI forum to discuss violent kids. At first, the group said one of the biggest problems is the young people who loiter on the curbs, and that we need to work with law enforcement to remove them.

I was facilitating that forum and decided to share a story with them about a recent incident: I had gone to one of the recreation facilities at one of the CYFAR sites and there were 10 big burly guys standing around in a circle on the front curb. It looked odd, so I asked them what they were doing. And there was this dog on the street at their feet. They said the dog had just been hit by a car and they were waiting for it to die and they were going to take it away and bury it. They had a truck there and a little box or kennel. And they were saying a few words over the dog.

So I told this story to the adults and teens in the forum and they said, “Wait a minute. They were concerned about this dog? Well, they must have some compassion in their hearts if they’re concerned about an animal. And you said they were praying? Their mom had to teach them to pray.” And the next thing out of their mouths was, “Maybe there’s some way we can reach them. And if we can just reach them, maybe we could direct their lives in the right way.”


CYFAR/4-H and military youth offer their points of view during
a democracy forum at an Operation Military Kids camp.

Clearly, deliberative dialogue is a powerful way to change perspectives about community issues. What about more tangible benefits? Well, in the case of those Sumter citizens, from the moment their perspective changed about violent kids, they got involved in doing outreach to help people with really high needs. They got a drug-free community grant [from the Office of National Drug Control Policy]. They got commitments from businesses to interview the high-needs people. They helped put people in public housing, to get them out of violent situations, and to get them accepted into rehab problems. It wasn’t just the deliberative dialogue forums, but the forums definitely helped the citizens to decide on their focus, articulate their vision, and come up with ideas of what they as a community could do to help.

What’s the ideal number of people for a forum? I’ve held forums with six people around the kitchen table, and then I’ve had forums with about 140 people. Ideally, you want anywhere from 10 to 30 people. Beyond that, you really can’t have a good deliberation.

For CYFAR professionals who want to use the dialogue in their own programs, what are the first steps? Go to the NIFI Web site [see link below]. You can request a free issue book and can download materials that will explain what deliberation is. Even if you order the issue books, they aren’t that expensive. Search under the different issue discussion categories like “Children and Family,” “Civil Rights,” and “Economic Issues.” In most cases, you can download the Moderator’s Guide and that will give you the breakdown of the three different choices. Under “Calendar,” there’s a list of workshops, special events and forums, so you can see if there’s one near you. And under “Network Contacts,” there will be contacts listed for many states. So you can usually contact that person and they can help you, too.

What are the best ways to get the community involved? You can pass out flyers or work with the paper or send out letters, but in most cases, the best way is word of mouth. Sometimes it’s hard to get young people involved, but we always try to have young people there. So you might need more of a targeted effort when it comes to youth. But it’s so important to focus on inclusiveness. You want to have representatives from the entire community. Not only youth and adults, but also different ethnic populations. And, depending on the issue, there are certain people you definitely want to have at the forum. That 140-person forum was on contested values, so I worked hard to market the issue with every faith base in the community. For the immigration forum, we had a commitment from some of the Hispanic people we had already worked with.

Are there any other key lessons you’ve learned over the years? The most successful deliberative dialogue forums I’ve done have been collaborative from the start. To plan the forum, the people in the community should work together, so it’s not just the county extension agent working with one person. It’s done with a partnership-type approach.

What have you learned about the forum moderator’s role? Individual moderators get results in their own style. As a moderator, I become very engaged in listening to the participants as they talk. I often tie comments from one person back to another person and ask the participants to think deeper about the subject. I recognize that a person may feel strongly about something and I encourage them to explain why. The group may not come to a consensus, but when people begin to consider other points of view, you’re making real progress.

LINKS
NIFI home page: www.nifi.org

The Kettering Foundation: www.kettering.org

Clemson Laboratory for Deliberative Dialogue: http://www.clemson.edu/sandhill/page.htm?pageId=945

Select the 2006 New Communities Project Overview for South Carolina at:
http://www.cyfernet.org/databases/cyfarreporting/Public/narratives/statesearch.asp

NIFI issue books Barbara Brown has contributed to:

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