Public Agenda’s Center for Advances in Public Engagement

The Center for Advances in Public Engagement (CAPE), the academic arm of the public engagement group of Public Agenda, is at the forefront of efforts to research, develop and disseminate new insights and best practices that help improve the quality of American public life by building the field of public engagement and citizen-centered politics.

CAPE has three main areas of study:

• The Public Engagement Research Project, to better understand the dynamics and impacts of public engagement
• The Digital Engagement Research Project, to explore the potentials of the Internet as a vehicle of engagement
• The Theory-Building Research Project, to decisively push forward the theory that underlies the field’s efforts

Latest publications:

Promising Practices in Online Engagement

by Scott Bittle, Chris Haller, Alison Kadlec (Summer 2009)

The Internet’s revolutionary impact on information-sharing and network-building is having an increasingly powerful impact on public life. So far, the deliberative democratic potential of the medium has been less fully explored than has its application to electoral and interest group politics. This report highlights multiple approaches to how the Internet can help build capacity and momentum for inclusive, collaborative and boundary-crossing problem-solving, both locally and at the national level.

Beyond Debate: Impacts of Deliberative Issue Framing on Group Dialogue and Problem-Solving

by Alison Kadlec and Will Friedman (Summer 2009)

A follow-up to 2008′s Reframing Framing, this report summarizes research on the impact framing has on the ability and willingness of citizens to productively discuss issues and agree on solutions. When issues are framed for deliberation instead of persuasion, discussions tend to be more analytic and less ideological, less circular and redundant and more focused on seeking solutions, with more time asking questions about the problem and less time spent venting, and a willingness to consider hard choices.

Beginning with the End in Mind: A Call for Goal-Driven Deliberative Practice

by Martin Carcasson of the Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State University (Summer 2009)

What do we hope to accomplish by giving “ordinary” citizens a greater voice and role in public life? This essay explores how a clearer understanding of the goals and purposes we are trying to achieve through public engagement can sharpen our methods and increase our impacts. It offers a practical framework to help practitioners of public engagement think through critical questions about their work: before, during and after public deliberation.

Democracy, Growing Up: The Shifts that Reshaped Local Politics and Foreshadowed the 2008 Presidential Election

by Matt Leighninger of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (Summer 2009)

In “The Next Form of Democracy: How Expert Rule is Giving Way to Shared Governance—And How Politics Will Never Be the Same” (2006), Matt Leighninger analyzed the quiet revolution in democratic governance that has been occurring in hundreds of communities. In this report, Matt updates his main argument that a shift in citizen attitudes and capacities has caused new tensions between citizens and government, produced new public actors and problem-solvers, and inspired a new generation of civic experiments.