Strategies for Enhancing Public Engagement
Ensuring the Responsiveness of Elected Representatives, Promoting Collaborative Decision-making, and Resolving Public Disputes
Democratic decision-making, as we know it in the United States, is still under development. Over the past forty years, we have expanded the role of civil society by moving beyond the minimum constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right to lobby and seek redress. Now, government (at every level) invites not just experts but stakeholders of all kinds to participate in advisory groups and collaborative decision-making. We now expect multiple opportunities for deliberation, including policy dialogues, joint fact-finding, community visioning, consensus building, and mediated decision-making. These new civic engagement strategies need to be examined carefully through close reflection, comparative analysis, and purposeful experimentation. PDP is involved in just such evaluative efforts in a number of policy arenas.
At the local level, in conjunction with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, we have examined new techniques of resolving land use disputes. At the state level, with support from the Rappaport Institute at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, we have examined facility siting, housing and growth management strategies. At the national level, we have been involved in national consensus building efforts on energy policy and water policy as well as decisions about how best to respond to the impacts of climate change. At the international level, we have helped to resolve water, energy, and land use disputes in various parts of the world.
Related Links and Publications
Managing Climate Risks In Coastal Communities: Strategies for Engagement, Readiness and Adaptation, Lawrence Susskind, Patrick Field, Carri Hulet and Danya Rumore, Anthem Publishing, 2015
"The Future of Hydropower in Chile," Lawrence E Susskind, Teodoro Kausel, Jose Aylwin and Elizabeth Fierman, Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law, Volume 32, Number 4, 2014
"Water and Democracy: New Roles for Civil Society in Water Governance," Lawrence E Susskind, International Journal of Water Resoures Development, Volume 29, Number 4, Decmber 2013
Helping Costal Communities Anticipate and Manage Climate Change Risks Through Role-Play Simulations, Danya Lee Rumore, Doctoral Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015
Breaking Robert's Rules: The New Way to Run Your Meeting, Build Consensus, and Get Results, Lawrence E. Susskind, and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, Oxford University Press, 2007.
The Cure for Our Broken Political Process: How We Can Get Our Politicians to Resolve the Issues Tearing Our Country Apart, Sol Erdman and Lawrence E. Susskind, Potomac Books, 2008
11.969 Workshop on Deliberative Democracy and Dispute Resolution, Summer 2005
"Can Public Policy Dispute Resolution Meet the Demands Set by Deliberative Democracy?” Lawrence E Susskind, Dispute Resolution Magazine, Volume 12, Number 2, Winter 2006