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91 Nat'l Civic Rev. 117 (2002)
Deliberative Dialogue to Expand Civic Engagement: What Kind of Talk Does Democracy Need?

handle is hein.journals/natmnr91 and id is 113 raw text is: ARTICLES Deliberative Dialogue to Expand Civic Engagement: What Kind of Talk Does Democracy Need? Martha L. McCoy, Patrick L. Scully The need to expand and deepen civic engagement is a central theme of a loosely defined and growing civic movement. A strong civic life and a flour- ishing democracy presume the active involvement of many people across soci- ety. Civic engagement is thus both a barometer of our public life and a focal point for action when we want to improve it. While regular citizen-to-citizen communication has always been a central part of democracy, public delibera- tion is just starting to be defined as a field of thought and practice. In this article we focus on face-to-face democratic deliberation as a means of enhanc- ing civic engagement. We bring ideas and insights from our work in communities to answer the question, What kind of public talk is most likely to expand civic engage- ment and make it meaningful to all sorts of people? This emerging field has a rich and growing set of perspectives and practices; unfortunately, we don't have the space to catalogue and detail all the promising approaches and what they have taught us. But we can describe what we have been learning in commu- nities where community-wide deliberation for action and change is being used as a process for widespread, meaningful civic engagement. In doing this we make a case for two powerful but unusual marriages that are frequently miss- ing when public talk is used to strengthen civic engagement. The first union is between two strains of public talk-dialogue and delib- eration. The process of dialogue, as it is usually understood, can bring many benefits to civic life-an orientation toward constructive communication, the dispelling of stereotypes, honesty in relaying ideas, and the intention to listen to and understand the other.1 A related process, deliberation, brings a different benefit-the use of critical thinking and reasoned argument as a way for citi- zens to make decisions on public policy. We will describe what we have learned about how the combination of deliberation and dialogue can be used Note: The authors would like to thank Molly Holme Barrett for her superb editorial advice. NATIONAL Civic REVIEW, vol. 91, no. 2, Summer 2002 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc 11i7

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