Recentering Democracy Around Citizens
Last February the McCormick Foundation’s Cantigny Conference Center near Chicago hosted a national workshop of forty plus public managers, academic researchers, practitioners, and funders to discuss changes in citizenship and local governance, and to discuss the potential for expanded collaboration in strengthening democracy. The workshop included leaders from the following national organizations that represent and work with local government and community leaders:
- National League of Cities
- International City/County Management Association
- American Planning Association
- US League of Women Voters
- National School Public Relations Association
- United Way
- Grassroots Grantmakers
- National Physicians Alliance
- United Neighborhood Centers of America
Workshop reports and discussions underscored the growing importance of (1) the contributions of ordinary people to public problem-solving, and (2) the direct connection of the quality of community civic engagement to the economic vitality of that community.
Workshop participants identified ten recommended actions to recenter democracy around citizens:
- Connect the national associations – Create more opportunities for discussion and collaboration on issues of democracy among the national associations that represent and convene local leaders;
- Support innovative work in 5-10 communities – Convene pilot discussions in 5-10 communities to improve engagement practices and catalyze the development of comprehensive citizen-centered democracy strategies;
- Strengthen civic skills and community connections – Develop model training programs to build civic problem solving skills for citizens and leaders in ways that build connections among public, private, and non-profit sectors in communities;
- Develop better language – Find better ways of telling the story of local democratic innovation;
- Hold more effective official meetings – Develop new formats for public meetings that reflect proven engagement principles and incorporate utilize online technologies as well as face-to-face techniques;
- Change the pre-professional programs – Strengthen the teaching of democratic principles and strategies within the graduate programs that produce public managers and planners;
- Help develop “Participation 3.0” – Develop a sequence, or menu, of engagement strategies that fully integrate online and face-to-face tools and techniques;
- Develop a political analysis of this work – Describe how the growth of small ‘p’ political engagement interacts with the big ‘P’ Politics of partisanship, and develop an analysis that helps communities and leaders deal with these tensions;
- Understand the necessary cultural shifts within institutions – Describe the cultural shifts that need to take place within various kinds of local groups and institutions in order to facilitate and support democratic worr;
- Influence the federal advocacy agenda of the national associations – Develop a set of recommendations about how federal policy can support local democracy, and encourage the lobbyists for the national associations to advocate for them in a concerted way
A more detailed multi-media report by Matt Leighninger, Executive Director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, and one of the workshop organizers is available at
http://www.deliberative-democracy.net/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=93