IMAGINING
THE ROBUST
DELIBERATIVE CITY:
Elevating the Conversations We Need to
Support Democracy
MARTÍN CARCASSON
Professor of Communication Studies at Colorado State University, and
founder/director of the CSU Center for Public Deliberation
A Sounder Public Judgment Working Paper
OCTOBER 2019
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The Problem of Public Judgment in a Digital and Divisive Age
2
PREFACE
The Public Judgment Working Paper Series from Public Agenda
In our age of endemic mistrust, fake news, extreme rhetoric and technology-
enhanced manipulation of public opinion, it is increasingly dicult for the
public to come to terms with issues in meaningful ways. Public Agenda's
Sounder Public Judgment Initiative brings fresh thinking to this profound
challenge facing our democracy.
The concept of “public judgment,” in contrast to raw, reactive and unstable “opinion,” derives
from the work of Public Agenda co-founder Dan Yankelovich, a pioneer of public opinion research
in America. Rather than a particular point of view or ideology, the term is meant to connote
that people have thought and felt their way forward on an issue in a reasonably well-rounded,
fair-minded way. It is a stage of public thinking at which people having moved beyond simplistic
magic answers and developed relatively responsible, stable positions that take into account the
tradeoffs inevitably embedded in thorny public problems.
The conditions that support the formation of public judgment have to change with the way
information, communications and persuasion change. They do not appear magically, they must
be created and, at times, fought for and defended. These papers, by leading thinkers and
practitioners across a variety of relevant elds, are intended to help us do precisely that. The
current paper, “Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to
Support Democracy,” offers a forceful argument that our best shot at fostering public judgment
and reinvigorating democracy today is to focus on creating strong systems of public deliberation,
engagement and participation in the towns and cities where people live their lives and learn to
become citizens.
Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
Acknowledgments
The Sounder Public Judgment Working Papers Series was made possible by a lead grant from the
Ford Foundation, and additional funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and
Rita Allen Foundation. Public Agenda is grateful for their support and partnership.
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
IMAGINING THE ROBUST
DELIBERATIVE CITY:
Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
At this point in the ongoing democratic experiments in the United States and around the world,
two things have become exceedingly clear: democracy requires high-quality communication,
and we do not get close to the necessary quality naturally. We must be able to have tough
conversations across perspectives that recognize and engage the inherent tensions and tradeoffs
of difcult issues, and we must get beyond the unfortunate limitations of human nature that
work against those sorts of conversations. Developing research in brain science and social
psychology, as well as a growing understanding of how the Internet, political parties and the
media exacerbate many of our worst impulses, has helped us understand better the crippling
polarization and hyperpartisanship that is undermining our political conversations and further
eroding already precarious trust in the institutions on which democracies rely, such as the free
press, civic culture, legislative bodies, experts and fellow citizens.
1
The question we face is, how
do we rethink democracy based on this developing knowledge?
In this essay, I argue that our best shot at reinvigorating democracy will be to focus on our cities
and counties, particularly because we have genuine opportunities at the local level to develop
viable deliberative systems that can support the necessary quality of communication and
engagement. This argument is motivated both by pessimism about our national democracy—the
adversarial and expensive two-party system is, unfortunately, signicantly engrained and clearly
brings out the worst in us, constantly undermining the conversations that need to occur and
rewarding those we should avoid—as well as substantial optimism about the potential of local
democracy, based both on research and experience. The essay will proceed in three sections. I
rst explain why the quality of communication is so essential to democratic functioning and lay
out the ideal of healthy deliberative conversation. Second, to gain an understanding of why most
of our political conversations are so problematic and counterproductive, I briey summarize the
relevant psychological research and explain how our national system triggers the worst in us.
Third, I make a case for why cities and counties are well situated to become exemplars of the kind
of democratic engagement we need and lay out some steps they can take to build that capacity.
The bottom line here is that we know better ways to think about, talk about and engage with
difcult problems. We do it well in many different contexts. When these tried and true practices
are applied, diverse groups can be inclusive and work together in highly productive ways. The
problem is that few, if any, of these theories and practices are regularly used within our political
systems, especially at the national level. Our political systems use a completely different set of
theories and practices that bring out the worst in us as human beings and distract from the vital
tasks of working together to address shared problems. The good news is it does not have to be
this way.
A brief aside before I continue: the focus of this essay is primarily on the broader public
conversations about the issues that affect us, in which all of us participate to varying degrees. I
recognize the U.S. political system is largely a representative democracy, and some may argue
the public should not be expected to deliberate and make decisions, since that is the role of
1
Lee Rainie, Scott Keeter and Andrew Perrin, Trust and Distrust in America, Pew Research Center, July 2019,
https://www.people-press.org/2019/07/22/trust-and-distrust-in-america/
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
our elected ofcials. I cannot dive deeply into this issue here, but I would like to provide a brief
response to situate my thinking. In some ways, things have oddly ipped from the early days of
our republic. While the authors of the Federalist Papers were pessimistic about the public’s ability
to deliberate, particularly because they were sure factions would form, they were more optimistic
that communities had the potential to elect their best and brightest to represent them. The
authors hoped that—with the many checks and balances they put in place—the institutions they
developed would serve as high-quality deliberative bodies. Fast forward to 2019, and few would
describe Congress or any part of our government as a high-functioning “deliberative body.”
Indeed, I would argue that the general public is actually more likely than most of our elected
ofcials to deliberate well, for reasons I will explore in part 2 below. That being said, the ideal
I lay out for the conversations we need for democracy to thrive should be considered relevant
both for engagement within government institutions (Congress, state houses, city councils, school
boards, and so forth) and the broader public.
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
PART 1: THE CONVERSATIONS WE
SHOULD BE STRIVING FOR
In this rst section, I make an argument regarding the kind of conversations we need for
democracy to ourish (or at least muddle through adequately). My answer is inuenced by work
and interdisciplinary theories connected to “wicked problems,” deliberative democracy, public
participation, public policy and argumentation, facilitation, conict management, collaboration,
systems thinking and social psychology. Over the past twenty years, these theories have led
me to an overall viewpoint that centralizes the importance of a particular way of thinking
called a wicked problems mindset and a particular form of communication called deliberative
engagement. The task ahead of us is taking the knowledge of practitioners about how to design
productive small group discussions and collaborative processes and applying it to the broader
community. The shift from the deliberative forum to a deliberative system is a necessary one and,
although difcult, is feasible.
To begin, “wicked problems” are best understood as problems primarily dened by competing
underlying values or tensions that cannot be resolved by science. They have no clear solutions,
because actions that support certain values tend inherently to work against others. Consider, for
example, the inherent tensions among key American values, such as freedom, equality, justice
and security, as well as the tensions among alternative denitions and applications of each value
on its own. Those who adopt a wicked problems mindset tend to see most problems through a
lens that places into the foreground the underlying values and the natural tensions among them.
Addressing wicked problems calls for difcult conversations centered on the quintessential civic
question of “what should we do?” (with an emphasis on the “we”). High-quality deliberative
engagement requires a broad and inclusive range of stakeholders who work to identify the
underlying values clearly, work through the tough choices, and ultimately strive for public
judgment regarding collaborative actions.
2
Such conversations may result in prioritizing certain
values, seeking a productive balance among them or, ideally, nding innovative ways to transcend
the tensions and create win-wins.
Because of the inherent tensions among the many values we hold dear and our inability to
solve these dilemmas, the best we can ask for is a robust, ongoing conversation that helps
communities manage the tensions as best they can. Such an ongoing conversation would involve
a constant process of identifying underlying values and tensions and putting them on the table
to work through them, often making tweaks and shifts as conditions change and certain values
are found to be over- or underemphasized. Overall, deliberative engagement represents a
process of inquiry and learning that harkens back to John Dewey’s argument that democracy is
“primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.”
3
This process is
also connected to Peter Senge’s argument in Fifth Discipline, though Senge’s work was more
on the organizational level. He argued that the quality of organizations is often a direct function
of the quality of the ongoing conversation they support. Organizations—and communities—
cannot simply focus on solving individual technical problems one by one, particularly because
such problem solving often works by narrowing the discussion to specic values and avoiding
the tensions. Solutions to one problem often simply lead to new problems. Senge argued
2
See Daniel Yankelovich and Will Friedman, Toward Wiser Public Judgment (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2010), and Martín Carcasson
and Leah Sprain, “Beyond Problem Solving: Re-conceptualizing the Work of Public Deliberation as Deliberative Inquiry,” Communication Theory 26
(2016): 41–63.
3
John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Free Press, 1916), 87.
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
that organizations must, therefore, function as learning organizations by being open to new
information and constantly communicating within themselves and adapting. We should look at
our communities similarly: as learning communities that are constantly in process. And since the
quality of the ongoing conversation is so essential, communities must invest in building capacity
to support that conversation.
So what does a robust deliberative system require? Many factors are important, but I focus
on three here: support from leadership, high-quality interactions and high-quality information
management. When community leaders adopt a wicked problems mindset and work in more of a
deliberative capacity, they can make a huge impact on the overall political culture, shifting it from
adversarial toward collaborative. By “leaders,” I mean both governmental leaders—executives,
elected ofcials and bureaucrats—and community leaders from the private and civic sectors.
Generally, deliberative leaders must see at least part of their role as elevating the conversation
rather than simply having a strong opinion and working to convince people of and mobilize them
around their point of view.
4
Senge called this type of leader a “systems leader.”
5
Systems leaders
help provide and sustain a critical sense of nuance to tough issues. When they adopt such a
mindset, they are also more likely to recognize the importance of necessary infrastructure and
skillsets to support the ongoing conversation.
The second and third factors focus on the fact that high-quality conversations about tough issues
often need help. Deliberative facilitators in particular work to address two typical deciencies in
such conversations: the quality of the interactions and how information and decision making are
managed. John Gastil captured these concerns in terms of the social and analytical processes
embedded within deliberative discussions.
6
The social processes involve things such as who is
speaking and whether people are listening to and understanding each other, treating each other
with respect and considering each other’s ideas and experiences. The analytical processes involve
the information base, how people engage with facts and values and consider alternatives and,
ultimately, what decisions are made and how.
Deliberative conversations have been occurring for years in organizations and local communities,
and, in most cases, they do rely on impartial or third-party organizers, process designers and/
or facilitators utilizing expertise from the many elds I noted earlier. In earlier essays, I have
discussed the essential resource of “passionate impartiality.”
7
The concept is purposefully an
oxymoron and points to the necessary but rare ingredient of people or organizations who are
passionate about the community, passionate about democracy and its commitments to equality
and inclusion and passionate about high-quality information and properly utilized expertise, but
they nonetheless primarily choose to take impartial, process-focused roles in the community.
4
Indeed, I would argue that perhaps the most signicantly negative aspect of our national system is that the ofce of the president is always occupied
by a partisan, the leader of one of our two adversarial political parties. This almost guarantees a low-quality national discussion. Even if the
president attempted to work as a facilitative leader, the opposing party would still likely respond in an adversarial manner.
5
Peter Senge, Hal Hamilton and John Kania, “The Dawn of System Leadership,” Stanford Social Innovation Review (Winter 2015),
https://ssir.org/pdf/Winter_2015_The_Dawn_of_System_Leadership.pdf.
6
John Gastil, Political Communication and Deliberation (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008).
7
Passionate impartiality was originally explored in Leah Sprain and Martín Carcasson, “Democratic Engagement through the Ethic of Passionate
Impartiality,” Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry 11, no. 4 (2013): 13–26, and then further developed in Martín Carcasson, “Engaging
Students in Our Democracy: Lessons from the CSU Center for Public Deliberation and Its Student Associate Program,” in Beyond Politics as Usual:
Paths for Engaging College Students in Politics, ed. Ileana Marin and Ray Minor (Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation, 2017).
“
When community leaders adopt a wicked problems mindset and work
in more of a deliberative capacity, they can make a huge impact on the
overall political culture, shifting it from adversarial toward collaborative.
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
They help frame issues in more nuanced ways, work to involve a broad range of voices
(particularly those that have historically been excluded or marginalized), support high-quality
engagement processes and, ultimately, help inspire and support collaborative actions to address
community issues better. They focus, in other words, on elevating the conversation rather than
winning the argument. The Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation plays this
role in northern Colorado, but we have found we need more individuals and institutions taking it
on, as well. The more key people and organizations in the community that do, the stronger the
community conversation will be.
At the most concrete level of actual political discussions, facilitators are often vital precisely
because these conversations are difcult and, in many ways, unnatural. Our brains are simply
not wired for wicked problems. Deliberative processes are thus designed to avoid typical pitfalls
of engagement and accentuate the potential for positive interaction. Deliberative engagement
relies on ground rules, high-quality issue framings and processes and active facilitation to guide
groups through these social and analytical tasks. As people involved with facilitation will attest,
groups do not perform these functions well on their own.
The importance of high-quality information management warrants further discussion. One of
the most problematic aspects of our hyperpartisanship is its inherent assault on information.
The RAND Corporation captured this phenomenon well in its report, Truth Decay: An Initial
Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life. When we shift
from adversarial to collaborative processes—a key goal of deliberative engagement—we also
tend to manage information much better. Collaborative groups seek out high-quality information
to help them make decisions, while recognizing that information is never quite clear enough
to make any tough decision self-evident. Overall, the point here is that tough conversations
become less tough and decision-making processes clearly improve when supported by high-
quality information. Ideally, people work to nd the right balance between relying too much
or too little on facts and expertise, or between being overwhelmed by data or avoiding them.
Because wicked problems are inherently value laden, no technical solutions are to be discovered
and applied. We cannot simply defer to experts to decide for us. That being said, high-quality
information used well can certainly help us make better decisions. Finding productive ways to
incorporate experts and high-quality information into political discussions is difcult but essential
work that, unfortunately, the Internet has made exceedingly more problematic. Deliberative
practitioners often work to develop the reputation and skills to serve as honest brokers of
information so they may play the critical role of managing these tensions well.
When these components are in place, our political conversations look very different. They do not
merely involve elites engaging each other in adversarial contexts, at times either seeking “input”
from constituents or working to mobilize them to their point of view. Public engagement shifts
to a learning process, an ongoing collaborative conversation focused on what sort of community
people want to build together.
To address one likely concern before we move on: I recognize this is an ideal picture that seems
overly optimistic, if not Pollyannaish. The goal of a deliberative community is an ideal—we are
Deliberative engagement relies on ground rules, high-quality issue
framings and processes and active facilitation to guide groups through
these social and analytical tasks. As people involved with facilitation
will attest, groups do not perform these functions well on their own. "
“
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
working toward a “more perfect” union, recognizing we will never reach perfection. It remains,
nonetheless, an ideal worth striving for. The closer communities come to this ideal, the stronger
they will be. The important move here is redening the ideal and inspiring communities and their
institutions to experiment in pursuing it.
PART 2: THE CURRENT REALITY
Whereas in part 1 I laid out the ideal form we need our political conversations to take, in part
2 I examine the sober reality of our actual political conversations. As much has already been
written about the current state of our politics, this review will focus on the extremely low quality
of communication and conversation the system supports. My overall argument is that our current
political system motivates very poor conversations, basically by rewarding bad arguments and
manipulative tactics and often punishing good arguments. As a result, our conversations are not
focused on addressing shared problems together, but rather on some alternative goal, such as
winning elections, defending our identities and our teams, mobilizing likeminded choirs, gaining
or protecting power or appeasing donors. At times, addressing problems happens to line up with
these goals, but not nearly often enough.
That the goals of much political communication are not focused on addressing shared problems
is simply the catalyst that unfortunately leads us into a negative cycle of dysfunction, polarization
and hyperpartisanship. Simply put, the types of communication strategies that succeed politically
have majorly problematic side effects.
To set the stage for my analysis, I will briey review insights from brain science and social
psychology.
8
That research highlights how human nature has both positive and negative aspects
that public processes can spark and tap into, with, unfortunately, the negative aspects being
much more basic and easier to trigger.
FIVE KEY THEMES CAPTURE THE NEGATIVE QUIRKS OF HUMAN NATURE
THAT BAD PROCESS CAN BRING OUT:
• We crave certainty and consistency.
• We are suckers for the good versus evil narrative.
• We strongly prefer to gather with the likeminded.
• We lter and cherry pick evidence to support our views.
• We avoid values dilemmas, tensions and tough choices.
Regrettably, our dominant political conversations almost seem designed in many ways to take
these natural quirks and unleash them on our communities.
The trouble begins simply with a two-party system and winner-take-all elections. Having this
8
In this I draw on Martín Carcasson, “Process Matters: Human Nature, Democracy, and a Call for Rediscovering Wisdom,” a research report prepared
for the Kettering Foundation, completed in July 2016. A brief summary is available as “Why Process Matters: Democracy and Human Nature,”
Kettering Review (2017): 6–22,
https://www.kettering.org/sites/default/les/periodical-article/Carcasson%20KFReview_Fall_2017.pdf.
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
system at the base of our political conversations provides incentive for communication either to
the likeminded choir or to so-called “wedge” voters in the middle. Just as important, it almost
completely removes incentive for messages designed to persuade or connect to the “other side”
(meaning, in addition, there is little incentive to try to listen to or understand the other side). As a
result, messages that link directly to the negative quirks of human nature—condent, simplistic,
good versus evil narratives that avoid any sense of nuance and tensions—are rewarded. One
side is lifted up as pure and correct; the other as misinformed and corrupt. As George W. Bush
captured so succinctly in his eulogy to Dallas police ofcers who were ambushed in 2016, “Too
often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best
intentions.”
9
Rather than pushing back on these natural impulses, our current system encourages
them. Such messages can easily either cherry pick evidence (that is, selectively utilizing
information that ts your narrative) or “nutpick” specic examples
10
(selectively promoting a
problematic argument from the “other side”—regardless of how minor or random a source—as a
representative illustration of that side’s deepest beliefs and motives).
This basic model of only needing to appeal to those on your side and, at times, some in the
middle also leads to discussions with very little productive interaction. This system primarily
supports the expression of individual opinions, following the simple one-way communication
model. Even our political “debates” are often simply joint press conferences, with each side
working to get its talking points expressed and perhaps score a nice, short zinger that will make
the news or go viral on social media. The panels on news shows that try to have some sense of
balance across perspectives often simply devolve into shouting matches, with arguments ying
past each other with negligible clash and, certainly, minimal learning. Those watching likely
accept the argument that ts their prior beliefs and dismiss the others, and all are further assured
of their individual brilliance.
Another key aspect undermining the quality of our political conversations is whose voices are
heard. The report Hidden Tribes, by More In Common, argued our conversations are dominated
by the far political wings, while the “exhausted majority” is often silent.
11
More and more, the
loudest and most frequently heard voices are simply pundits and partisans. These are often
professional communicators seeking to send specic, predetermined strategic messages. In other
words, they are not susceptible to persuasion or learning and will stay on message regardless
of the arc of the conversation. Such communicators treat political ideas as if they are selling
boxes of cereal or used cars. The purpose of the communication is mobilizing the likeminded,
manipulating the undecided and/or ridiculing, undermining or triggering the other side. The
result is the problems we face get harder to address.
A negative feedback loop and spiral of cynicism and partisanship typically follows. When the
messages designed to mobilize or manipulate are heard by the other side, they tend to cause
anger and frustration and, thus, help solidify negative assumptions and justify meanspirited
responses. Of course, those responses, when heard by the other side, do the same, and away
9
Quoted in Jena McGregor, “The Most Memorable Passage in George W. Bush’s Speech Rebuking Trumpism,” Washington Post, October 20, 2017.
10
Ben Sasse, Them: Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018), 106.
11
Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres and Tim Dixon, Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape, report by More in
Common, 2018,
https://hiddentribes.us/pdf/hidden_tribes_report.pdf.
12
Arthur C. Brooks, “Our Culture of Contempt,” New York Times, March 2, 2019; Sally Kohn, The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing our
Humanity (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2018); Pew Research Center, “Political Polarization in the American Public,” June 2014,
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2014/06/6-12-2014-Political-Polarization-Release.pdf.
“
Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples,
while judging ourselves by our best intentions."
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
we go. As shown by commentators as politically diverse as Arthur Brooks and Sally Kohn, as well
as survey research from the Pew Research Center, the animosity between political parties has
reached excessive levels. The conict is not merely one of political views or value differences;
contempt is growing across the aisle. Dened by Brooks as “a noxious brew of anger and
disgust,”
12
such contempt has signicant repercussions, primarily because it further reinforces
the simple narratives and narrows the thinking. Once people assume negative motives on the
part of their adversaries, the possibility of productive communication breaks down. They may see
any argument or action through those biased lenses and interpret it with ill will. In the end, they
become more and more convinced that the problem is wicked people, not wicked problems.
And, with that assumption, concerns about vanquishing the enemy far outweigh any sense of
addressing shared problems.
One prominent consequence of all this animosity and hyperpartisanship is its impact on the role
of experts and facts. We know from social psychology research that facts struggle to prevail in
the hyperpartisan environment. Facts are unlikely to change minds when people are emotionally
invested in their narratives, and in some cases we are seeing evidence that the stronger the
facts presented to show people they are wrong, the more likely the impact will backre and
they will simply dig in further.
13
Humans are quite adept at tting new information into their
existing narratives rather than allowing the new information to challenge them. In a state of
hyperpartisanship, everything is interpreted through a lens that assumes corrupt motives for the
other side, easily leading to the dismissal of any strong counterarguments as manipulation or
outright lies. When facts and expertise are undermined in this way, we lose an essential basis
for problem solving, as well as valuable common ground on which to build. If facts are merely
ammunition when they t your perspective and fake news when they do not, productive political
communication is hopeless, and any solutions or actions derived from such processes are likely
highly awed.
Lastly, growing hyperpartisanship is having a clear negative impact on our institutions. From the
beginning, the Founders explicitly recognized the need for balance between unity and difference
in the United States, captured in the motto e pluribus unum (out of many, one). That tension can
never be resolved but must be an ongoing concern. It is clear there have always been centripetal
forces that bring Americans together and, as expected in a diverse nation of immigrants that
has never lived up to its lofty ideals, centrifugal forces that drive us apart.
14
Unfortunately, the
centrifugal forces seem to be strengthening as the centripetal forces weaken; or, in some cases,
traditionally centripetal forces have been transformed into centrifugal ones, further knocking us
off balance. Typically, for example, foreign affairs and particularly wars have brought Americans
together, but, since Vietnam and certainly with Mr. Trump in the White House, the notion that
politics stops at the water’s edge no longer seems to serve. The media used to be a common
source of information but now have become politicized themselves and, more often than not,
a source of partisanship and division. Our educational institutions are also more and more seen
through the lens of partisanship, both at the K–12 and higher education levels. Even down to the
local level, as Robert Putnam and Theda Skocpol have argued, the community organizations that
used to bring people from different perspectives together and build bridging social capital have
withered, while national organizations focused on particular viewpoints have grown—another shift
from forces that bring us together to those that divide us. All this division further undermines the
conversations that need to occur.
In summary, as seen through the lens of considering the quality of our political conversations and
13
See B. Nyhan and J. Reier, “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions,” Political Behavior 32, no. 2 (2010): 303–30.
14
Jonathan Haidt, “The Age of Outrage,” speech delivered at the Manhattan Institute, December 17, 2017,
https://www.city-journal.org/html/age-outrage-15608.html
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
the sort of engagement our political systems spark, the outlook is dreary. Returning to the keys
to a high-quality conversation denoted in part 1, our current model fails every test. Our leaders
and dominant voices are often the most partisan; there is no clear presence of passionately
impartial facilitators focused on elevating the conversation; and the information management
is exceedingly poor. If my task were the opposite of what it is right now, and my goal were to
design processes to ensure horrible, unproductive conversations that keep us from addressing
shared problems well, I would essentially design our national system. A two-party system with
winner-take-all elections and politicized media that constantly broadcast and reward the loudest
and most partisan voices is guaranteed to undermine any robust efforts at genuine engagement.
The bad news is I do not foresee a clear path to change at the national level. The good news,
however, is that as more and more people shift to focusing on the local level, opportunities will
clearly arise. I turn to that argument now.
PART 3: THE HOPE OF THE LOCAL
DELIBERATIVE SYSTEM
When we shift our focus from our national system to local communities, we can nd some hope.
Indeed, I would argue our best long-term hope of improving our national system is having more
and more local communities build up robust and productive deliberative systems, to the point
that people see the viability and positive impacts of the deliberative alternative, build up their
skills to engage each other and reestablish their trust in each other and key institutions. Ideally,
a new generation of leaders will develop in these deliberative communities and then champion
deliberative engagement as they move up to the state and national levels.
Looking at the local level, thankfully, we see numerous ways to shift away from, or simply avoid,
the dysfunction at the national level and work toward building a robust deliberative system.
Earlier, I reviewed the negative aspects of human nature uncovered by my social psychology
research and argued that our dominant political systems overwhelmingly trigger them. That
research also revealed some positive aspects of human nature that, although harder to tap
into, provide signicant potential for improved engagement. The task, therefore, is to nd ways
to avoid triggering the bad stuff and get more of the good stuff. While doing just that at the
national level is unlikely, the local level does hold some promise.
AMONG THE KEY POSITIVE ASPECTS OF HUMAN NATURE ARE THESE:
• We are inherently social and seek purpose and community.
• We are inherently empathetic.
• We are inherently pragmatic and creative.
• We can overcome our bad tendencies and build better habits.
A thoughtful local deliberative system can tap into these features to transform and elevate our
conversations. Numerous aspects of local community already either inherently work to elevate our
conversations or have an underlying potential that could be realized.
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Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
Perhaps the most important distinction between the national and local levels is that our two-
party system is typically less powerful at the latter. Many local elections ofcially do not allow
party labels, and while people still may know the afliations unofcially, the lack of direct party
participation does lessen the simplistic narrative. Without the polarization-ready R or D, other
narratives have a chance. Whereas at the national level political involvement inherently gets
shoehorned into the red or blue tribe, at the local level, alternative tribes can arise. Rather
than tapping directly into the prepackaged need for certainty and a simplistic good versus evil
narrative, local narratives can form that are more unifying and based on the sense of place. The
tribe may be Fort Collins, or Dayton, or Harris County, and thus may tap into the positive energy
of people being inherently social and wanting community and connection.
Local leaders also tend to be more inherently pragmatic than many of our national leaders. This
likely is also connected to the lack of party inuence, but—primarily, I believe—it is simply tied
to the reality that local leaders have to get things done and so must typically work with a broad
coalition of people. The many previously mentioned alternative goals that people pursue at the
national level instead of addressing shared problems are not nearly as powerful at the local level.
Local leaders cannot play the political game and get reelected by their bases in the way national
leaders often can. While our national elections tend strongly to favor partisans, our local elections
can often favor pragmatic, facilitative leaders who know how to bring people together.
A key advantage to the development of a local deliberative system is the simple fact that people
interact more face to face and often know each other, or at least they engage in multiple ways.
Many have lamented that changes in how congresspeople interact have been a signicant cause
of the increased polarization in Washington. When people do not know each other in roles other
than as political adversaries, hyperpartisanship can easily take root. Face to face interaction also
taps into natural human empathy. When you hear each other’s stories and can see facial reactions,
it is much more difcult to support simple narratives and assume evil motives. High-quality face
to face communication—facilitated and designed to address conict well—can be particularly
rehumanizing, and our politics needs several healthy doses of rehumanization.
A rather specic but important manifestation of local government I have come to see as
particularly valuable is the council-manager form, which is pretty typical for small and medium-
sized cities and counties. It was initially developed during the Progressive Era, partly as a
response to the too powerful machine politics that had arisen in many cities. City managers are
experts trained to run cities. The combination of the city manager with a popularly elected city
council—which actually has most of the broad decision-making power, with the city manager
working with city staff to accomplish what the city council asks them to do—provides a potentially
strong structure for managing information and negotiating the inherent tension between
democracy and expertise. When informed by a wicked problems mindset and utilized well, I
believe the council-manager form of government could be one of the most important factors in
developing a robust local deliberative system. An ongoing collaboration among the Kettering
Foundation, the International City/County Managers Association, the National Association of
Counties, the National Civic League, and the International Association of Public Participation
is actively exploring this issue, focusing on equipping city managers with the skills to elevate
conversations in their communities.
“
High-quality face to face communication—facilitated and designed
to address conict well—can be particularly rehumanizing, and our
politics needs several healthy doses of rehumanization."
13
Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
Another attribute of local communities that provides a huge advantage over state or national
politics is that the scale allows institutions to function much more productively, especially when
a system is in place to build their capacity and support their collaborative efforts. When a
community sees itself as a deliberative system, it can better survey and support its current assets,
as well as work to develop new organizations to ll necessary gaps. David Mathews, president
of the Kettering Foundation, relies on the metaphor of the ecology of democracy to lay out
what a robust deliberative system should look like. Although a local government that supports
deliberative engagement is certainly essential, it is clearly not sufcient. Addressing wicked
problems well requires a broad range of actors across public, private and nåonprot lines, in
addition to the necessary supports and resources for them to work together well.
Many local actors favor collaboration and community engagement in theory, but few realize
the difculty of doing those well without resources and expertise. For communities to thrive,
they not only need mediating institutions that bring people together across perspectives and
generate bridging social capital; they also need passionately impartial resources, or “backbone
organizations,” to use the term developed within the so-called world of collective impact.
15
Such organizations provide the logistics and process support to spark and sustain ongoing and
productive public conversations. Developing and sustaining them locally is possible, and more and
more communities are providing workable examples of such institutions.
16
For the past decade, I
have worked with the Kettering Foundation’s Centers for Public Life program to help launch such
organizations, primarily tied to colleges and universities. Many currently have very little capacity
or support, but as we learn more about the importance of building deliberative systems, I believe
they will become key elements of their communities and earn much greater support. As we
continue to learn from each other and build vibrant communities of practice, the bar for additional
cities to recognize the importance of such an infrastructure will be lower and lower.
Two institutions particularly important to a robust deliberative system, especially in terms of
information management, are the media and educational institutions. When they also adopt
a deliberative mindset and focus on elevating the conversation, they can signicantly increase
the capacity of a community. Both work not only to educate the community over the long term,
potentially instilling the mindsets and skillsets essential to deliberative engagement;
17
they
can also be active participants in and vital supports to ongoing conversations about particular
issues. In many ways, both should inherently be passionately impartial. When they engage well,
they can complicate simple narratives in a positive way, help uncover underlying values across
perspectives, highlight key tensions that need to be worked through, assist in managing the role
of information and support the creation and sustainability of ongoing collaborative actions. They
can serve as catalysts, hosts, facilitators, analysts and reporters that elevate and bring attention
to good conversations. They can be critical to ensuring the conversation is broad and inclusive,
particularly engaging audiences that have not traditionally been involved and heard.
18
Ultimately, the media and our schools are essential to equipping citizens as deliberative
resources. When citizens are ideally developed as collaborative problem solvers (rather than
1 5
See John Kania and Mark Kramer, “Collective Impact,” Stanford Social Innovation Review (Winter 2011),
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/collective_impact#
16
Martín Carcasson, “The Critical Role of Local Centers and Institutes in Advancing Deliberative Democracy,” Journal of Public Deliberation 10, no. 1
(2014): 1–4,
http://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol10/iss1/art11.
17
Martín Carcasson, “Deliberative Pedagogy as Critical Connective: Building Democratic Mindsets and Skillsets for Addressing Wicked Problems,” in
Deliberative Pedagogy and Democratic Engagement, ed. Timothy Shaffer, Nicholas Longo, Idit Manosevitch and Maxine S. Thomas (East Lansing,
MI: Michigan State University Press, 2017).
18
In a broader argument for another essay, I would maintain that our media and educational institutions are struggling in many ways, and adopting a
wicked problems mindset and serving as deliberative resources could revitalize them in a way that is particularly needed in our hyperpartisan
times. See Martín Carcasson, “From Crisis to Opportunity: Rethinking the Civic Role of Universities in the Face of Wicked Problems, Hyper-
Partisanship, and Truth Decay,” in Democracy, Civic Engagement and Citizenship in Higher Education (Lanham, MA: Lexington Books, 2019).
14
Imagining the Robust Deliberative City: Elevating the Conversations We Need to Support Democracy
merely advocates, partisans, customers, taxpayers or voters), the community’s deliberative
capacity skyrockets. Collaborative problem solvers are not necessarily neutral or impartial—they
can clearly have their own values and opinions and hold them strongly—but their mindset is to
engage others collaboratively, knowing that the best path to supporting their interests is to work
together with their neighbors, considering their interests and holding a healthy sense of the
common good.
The most exciting aspect of the work to build a robust local deliberative system is, as the
research and the experience in many communities show, that a positive feedback loop develops.
Particularly in comparison to the negative feedback loop exhibited by our national political
system, the long-term implications are immense. As I argued earlier, deliberative democracy is
an ideal that is exceedingly difcult to reach, but it is clear that once a community commits to
elevating its conversations, numerous aspects begin to build upon each other. Once a signicant
cadre of citizens adopts the mindset and begins building the skillsets, transforming conversations
and taking additional residents onboard becomes easier and easier. Relationships and trust
form across perspectives, closing the gaps that undermine genuine conversations. Capacity is
developed for a particular project and then remains for the next project to build upon. With less
and less hyperpartisanship and more authentic engagement, the incentives shift. Weak arguments
based on simplistic good versus evil narratives are dismissed, and nuance is rewarded. Public
processes are not dominated by those who already hold strong opinions, as they are now, but
rather by people eager to engage others, learn and co-create collaborative actions to improve
their communities. And, most importantly for the health of our communities, rather than tapping
into the worst in human nature, we begin to tap into the best.
Public Agenda is a national, nonpartisan, nonprot research and public engagement organization
dedicated to strengthening democracy and expanding opportunity for all Americans. We believe that
a strong democracy requires informed citizens, engaged communities, productive public conversation,
and policies that reect the public’s concerns and values. We work to make these essentials a reality
while fostering progress on the issues people care about most.
Learn more at PublicAgenda.org
“
The most exciting aspect of the work to build a robust local
deliberative system is, as the research and the experience in many
communities show, that a positive feedback loop develops."
