The Practice of Deliberative Democracy

There is a familiar lament among politicians, public managers, and ordinary citizens about the gulf of suspicion separating citizens from their government (Dionne 1991; Gore 1994; Grieder 1992; Harris 1994; Harwood 1991; Lipset and Schneider 1987). Citizens are angry with their political leaders, estranged from civic institutions, distrustful of the news media, and pessimistic about the prospect for collective action to solve community problems. At the core of our dysfunctional political culture is the degraded quality of civic discourse—how we talk about public problems.