Why use deliberative dialogue to address public issues?
When citizens engage in deliberative dialogue about an issue and when a community has a habit of asking its members to make choices, the directions that are chosen often are better and they have a legitimacy that simply doesn’t exist otherwise. Citizens catch the bug of being engaged and of taking ownership of problems. They talk about what they can do, not what others ought to do. Deliberative dialogue is a way of making a connection with others in your community that you don’t usually interact with and to an issue that can often feel too big to influence or too impersonal to relate to directly. Participants in deliberative dialogue forums are able to see their personal stake in public issues because they are encouraged to draw on their own values, concerns and life experiences as well as on pertinent facts and technical information in addressing those problems. And because they are doing this in the company of others engaged in the same thing, they are able to make stronger connectio
