Making Room for the Unaffiliated Citizen in a Polarized World: Local Environmental Policy and Public Forums

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The Kettering Foundation makes the case that politics is more than just the behavior of traditional institutional actors. Rather, politics is the product of the interactions that take place between a wide array of actors, including citizens, in a political ecosystem. One important interaction that takes place in this ecosystem is between citizens who gather together to publicly deliberate and make decisions about the common problems they face. Too often though, studies of public deliberation are divorced from the larger context in which political decisions take place.

In this Kettering Foundation Working Paper, Kettering program officer Alice Diebel examines the political ecology in which public deliberation on a particular issue— the cleanup of dioxin-contaminated soils along the Tittabawassee River in Michigan—took place. At issue was a highly contentious, highly polarized, environmental problem facing a community. The political ecology included business, local institutions, federal institutions, advocacy groups, and citizens, unaffiliated with any of the aforementioned groups, but concerned with the issue nonetheless. This study chronicles how, through public deliberation, these unaffiliated citizens found a way to be meaningful participants in the decision making on this issue. Through public deliberation, these unaffiliated citizens were able to develop considered judgments on the complicated issue at hand. However, what becomes of sound public judgment in a political ecosystem where institutional actors and advocacy groups see little value in a deliberative public voice?

This study provides further evidence in support of the notion that public deliberation can be a powerful and transformative experience for those who participate. Most important though, this study furthers our understanding of where public deliberation fits within the larger political ecosystem and how this ecosystem might help or hinder the cultivation of a deliberative public voice.

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