Blogs

One of the problems of democracy is the tendency for citizens to make hasty decisions or poor judgments.  Kettering’s long-running experiments with deliberative forums were designed, in part, in response to this challenge. Each year Kettering and NIFI commission issue guides and reports offer a frame that can support public deliberation about a specific public challenge. These reports help illuminate how the public thinks about an issue when they are confronted with tensions in making a decision about a wicked problem, such as healthcare. To better understand this process I recently sat down with John Doble to discuss the state of opinion polling and public judgment.

This Kettering Foundation Working Paper describes a project by researchers from Public Agenda and the Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation that examined the impacts of framing and experience with deliberative issue framing.

While pundits say that most Americans are unrealistic about the scope of the debt problem and unwilling to support needed changes,  Jean Johnson reports that deliberations by groups of citizens around the country suggest that, in fact, this is an issue where solutions exist and are within reach.