Participatory projects

My focus has been on “anticipatory” or “front-end” governance deliberation, where citizens and officials are exploring a policy area and developing possible policy approaches. The group I work with comes from the perspective that much policy discussion is too late in the game, too binary in a partisan way, and too often has preemptive bias that rules out possible approaches based on a range of faulty assumptions.

I am interested in the notion of embedding sound deliberation and public participation in institutions and in the best practices that match the methods to the circumstances. I am of the belief that public sector managers have a professional obligation to understand participatory methods, even if they are not deliberative practitioners, so as to at least be informed supervisors and managers of interactions with the public.