The Deliberative Democracy Consortium

The Knowledge Building (KB) Task Group has organized three Researcher and Practitioner (R&P) Workshops, in 2003, 2005, and 2007.

This Task Group of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium is led by Archon Fung (Harvard University) and Peter Levine (CIRCLE). The mission of this group is:

To increase the quantity, quality and availability of knowledge about the theory and practice of deliberative democracy through: (1) setting the scholarly research agenda, (2) conducting high-quality research and experimentation on deliberative democratic practices, and (3) collecting and distributing knowledge about theory and practice to researchers and practitioners.

Major goals identified include:

• Increase academic research and experimentation on deliberative democratic practices and shape the agenda for that research and experimentation.
• Expand discussion of such experiments in scholarly work on deliberation and democracy.
• Improve knowledge and understanding of how deliberative democratic institutions function, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of various models.
• Increase information about the outcomes of deliberative processes and highlight their value to various constituencies. Develop better assessment tools.
• Increase interaction and communication amongst researchers and practitioners and develop an ongoing network among them.