Suchergebnisse

The field of public engagement is experiencing a harmful identity crisis. While advocates of public participation may all agree that our work relates somehow to democracy, we have not established or articulated a common vision of what that really means. This lack of clarity has dire consequences, producing rifts between academics and practitioners, community organizers and deliberative democrats, civic technologists and dialogue practitioners, policy advocates and consensus-builders. Worst of all, the lack of clarity about democracy provides no help to people who are trying to create sustainable, participatory political systems in Egypt, Thailand, Ukraine, and many other countries. None of the participatory tactics and assets we have developed will reach their full potential if we don't admit, to ourselves and the world, their true significance: these aren't just props for conventional processes, but building blocks for new political systems.

Over the last century, the skills, ideas, and values upheld within the field of public administration (PA) have undergone several major shifts. We seem to be in the midst of another such transition, as PA schools react to new perspectives about the state of democracy and citizenship. Most of these arguments focus on the more participatory aspects of democracy, and emphasize the need for governments to work more directly and interactively with citizens. "Democratic governance" is one term used to describe this set of ideas. This article explores the relationship between PA and democratic governance through interviews with professors and other observers of the discipline. The picture that emerges is that of a field in flux, spurred both by theoretical claims and by the practical needs of administrators, being pushed from a narrow focus on management to a broader conception of governing.

What is the economic argument for public engagement? Around the world, public officials and other leaders have devised new ways to engage citizens in decision-making and problem-solving – but typically they have focused on planning, budgeting, and schools rather than poverty, inequality, or other economic issues. Meanwhile, emerging evidence from Brazil and other parts of the Global South suggests that sustained patterns of engagement builds social capital, which in turn has an impact on a range of indicators, including economic inequality and the distribution of wealth. This article summarizes several disparate areas of research on the connections between engagement and inequality, and suggest new questions and directions for innovation.

Around the world, people are asking how we can make democracy work in new and better ways. We are frustrated by political systems in which voting is the only legitimate political act, concerned that many republics don't have the strength or appeal to withstand authoritarian figures, and disillusioned by the inability of many countries to address the fundamental challenges of health, education and economic development. If we want to create democracies in which citizens have meaningful roles in shaping public decisions and solving public problems, we should be asking a number of questions about civic tech, including: • How can online tools best support new forms of democracy? • What are the examples of how this has happened? • What are some variables to consider in comparing these examples? • How can we learn from each other as we move forward? This background note has been developed to help democratic innovators explore these questions and examine how their work can provide answers. ; DFID, SIDA, USAID, Omidyar Network

The field of public engagement is experiencing a harmful identity crisis. While advocates of public participation may all agree that our work relates somehow to democracy, we have not established or articulated a common vision of what that really means. This lack of clarity has dire consequences, producing rifts between academics and practitioners, community organizers and deliberative democrats, civic technologists and dialogue practitioners, policy advocates and consensus-builders. Worst of all, the lack of clarity about democracy provides no help to people who are trying to create sustainable, participatory political systems in Egypt, Thailand, Ukraine, and many other countries. None of the participatory tactics and assets we have developed will reach their full potential if we don't admit, to ourselves and the world, their true significance: these aren't just props for conventional processes, but building blocks for new political systems.

Leighninger Podcast Episode

Over the last century, the skills, ideas, and values upheld within the field of public administration (PA) have undergone several major shifts. We seem to be in the midst of another such transition, as PA schools react to new perspectives about the state of democracy and citizenship. Most of these arguments focus on the more participatory aspects of democracy, and emphasize the need for governments to work more directly and interactively with citizens. "Democratic governance" is one term used to describe this set of ideas. This article explores the relationship between PA and democratic governance through interviews with professors and other observers of the discipline. The picture that emerges is that of a field in flux, spurred both by theoretical claims and by the practical needs of administrators, being pushed from a narrow focus on management to a broader conception of governing.