• DOI:10.1002/NCR.91202
• Corpus ID: 144101389

Deliberative Dialogue to Expand Civic Engagement: What Kind of Talk Does Democracy Need?

@article{McCoy2002DeliberativeDT,
  title={Deliberative Dialogue to Expand Civic Engagement: What Kind of Talk Does Democracy Need?},
  author={Martha L. McCoy and Patrick Scully},
  journal={National Civic Review},
  year={2002},
  volume={91},
  pages={117-135}
}

• M. McCoy, Patrick Scully
• Published 1 June 2002
• Sociology, Political Science
• National Civic Review

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 flourishing democracy presume the active involvement of many people across society. 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 deliberation 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 enhancing 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 engagement 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 communities 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 missing when public talk is used to strengthen civic engagement. The first union is between two strains of public talk—dialogue and deliberation. 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 citizens to make decisions on public policy. We will describe what we have learned about how the combination of deliberation and dialogue can be used