Whistler Forum On Civic Engagement: Focus on the Pacific Region

This week the Whistler Forum's annual "summit" on citizen engagement is taking place in British Columbia, in the mountains outside of Vancouver. Its a great focus, which is the prospects for CE and deliberation in the Asia-Pacific region.

A few initiatives that have captured my attention so far:
- The way the Vancouver Olympics Host Committee is building upon lessons learned from past Olympiads around the world, both in the bidding process as well as the development and planning that began once the bid was won.
- Vancouver Agreement, an East Vancouver revitalization effort with a significant collaborative element.
- A deliberative poll that took place in China this year, with a focus on budgeting in an urban context.
- The efforts of ASEAN members to create a "People's Assembly" associated with the governance of the formal body.
- Frasier Basin Watershed Management process, which has included more than 30 organizations in its oversight and governance, and claims to have reversed the decline in water quality and begun, for example, to bring salmon back into the waters.
- In China, over the last ten years, the public hearing has become a common tool for public engagement. There is now some appetite to look to Western theory to improve practice. Traditional forums, called something that roughly translates to "heart to heart discussions, are becoming commonly used in local governance.

Overall observations:
- Not much discussion about the role of ICTs in promoting, supporting deliberative processes
- Real issues about peace and security concerns and their intersection with democratization
- There are very few Asian societies in which the public assumes that civil society has a right to participate in policy development ie still the domain of state apparatus
- Not just in the Pacific, but there is a tenor to this work that feels tokenistic, for example statements along the lines of, "Governments have money to spend; non-profits have credibility to sell. Citizen engagement is an opportunity for governments to buy credibility."
- Donor community lacks a large enough framework for understanding the benefits of deliberation to civil society.

I hope to go into alot of these issues in greater detail, as well as introduce you to some of the amazing folks gathered here.

OLA AND BIENVENU

Thanks to Ted Becker, editor of the Journal of Public Deliberation, for inviting me here to spout off a bit about this "movement" known as deliberative democracy. I say "movement" (ie in quotes, which comes from here ) for a reason, and I hope through this blog we can get some clarity around the question of whether deliberation is indeed a "movement" (as opposed to, say, an expert, academic or profession-driven reform), as well as lots of other interesting questions.

So what is this blog about anyway? At its root, its an opportunity to discuss deliberation and democracy within the context of contemporary affairs: track opportunities and experiences of public deliberation while offering criticism and constructive feedback to citizens, government officials, practitioners and scholars around key practices and sacred cows. Map these process to current events

By and large I'm going to adopt the curmudgeonly style that many of us know and have come to love in the force of Ted. So, while not a a gloves off, rock'em-sock'em street brawl, this blog should be a decidedly non-deliberative forum (it's a blog afterall!) where everyone is invited to contribute to a vigorous debate about some of the issues that I don't hear being addressed in many coversations driving the field forward, since that is, afterall, where theory hits the floor. Issues like impact, inclusion, representation, and legitimacy. Also, what issues require massive public deliberation? To what end? In what format?

So this is a big public square, and I'm about to pull a Kack London and get up on my soap box and start telling some stories and asking questions. Feel free to knock me off and get your own stories in!

Okay, that's enough from me about the what and the why. Please jump right in; if you have a "story" you'd like post here, just email me at editor [at] deliberative-democracy.net. Let's have some fun with the why, why and how's of deliberative democracy and question this assumption that a movement in fact exists, and how can we push deliberative democracy forward, if at all.