'Think Globally, Act Locally'? Climate Change and Public Participation in Manchester and Frankfurt

D. Shelton. American Journal of International Law, 88 (4), 1994.

'Think Globally, Act Locally' was one of the most famous slogans of the 1970s environmental movement. Discourses about global climate change are now a vivid illustration of this "global thinking." Although there is a substantial amount of research about global environmental issues and policy initiatives, there is still a gap in understanding of how lay publics actually comprehend global climate change. Using qualitative research method, this study is a comparison of how lay publics in Frankfurt (Germany) and Manchester (UK) perceive these issues and the possible solutions.

Resource Link: http://www.asil.org

24 CFR Subtitle A

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2003.

Document from the Office of the Secretary, Housing and Urban Development, detailing the requirements for citizen participation in the use of funds from the government towards Housing and Urban Development directives.

Resource Link: http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_00/24cfrv1_00.html

A Brief History of Large Group Interventions

Barbara B. Bunker and Billie T. Alban. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, USA, 1997.

Large Group Interventions presents a comprehensive overview of twelve of the most powerful methods of large group interventions in use today. This comprehensive guide describes the methods' origins, explores their differences and similarities, and presents vivid examples and case studies of each intervention method in action.

A Citizen-Centric Internet: Why Candidate, Advocacy Group and Other Political Sites Fail, and What They Can Do About It

Scott Reents and Thomas Hill.

"The election year 2000," according to the authors, writing before the year 2000, "will be the year that the Internet shakes up politics." The authors estimated that the number of people going online for election information in 2000 would reach 35 million--more than three times the number who did the same in 1998 (source: Pew Research). The way in which political organizations respond to this massive demand will have lasting implications on their ability to function effectively.

Resource Link: http://www.e-thepeople.org/democracyproject/about_us/citizen.htm

A Community Builder's Tool Kit: 15 Tools for Creating Healthy, Productive Interracial/Multicultural Communities

Anti-Racism Initiative of the Institute for Democratic Renewal and Project Change, 2001.

This primer for revitalizing democracy from the ground up can be downloaded for free or ordered for $1.50 per copy.

Resource Link: http://www.race-democracy.org

A Community Guide to Protecting Indigenous Knowledge

Simon Brascoupé and Howard Mann. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada, 2001.

This guide is aimed at a community-level, to protecting Indigenous Knowledge. The article is situated within the context of how Canadian aboriginal people can control and protect their access to IK. The article indicates that: Some communities do not know what traditional knowledge they possess, many communities do not know how to go about identifying and protecting it, and there are few national and international laws that help Aboriginal communities preserve and protect their knowledge in a way that reflects their traditions and customs.

Resource Link: http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/pr/ra/ind/gui_e.pdf

A Dialogue on Foreign Policy: Report to Canadians

Department of Foreign Affairs, Canada, 2003.

The future of Canada's foreign policy lies in building on distinctive advantages in a time of great change and uncertainty. A diverse population makes them a microcosm of the world's peoples; their geography and population give them broad global interests; their economy is the most trade-oriented among the G7 nations; and their relationship with the United States is extensive and deep. With these and other assets, Canadians recognize that they have a unique basis for asserting a distinctive presence in the world. They also believe that in these times of enormous change, Canada must take stock of how they want to approach new and continuing international challenges. To represent the values, interests and aspirations of Canadians as they confront these challenges, their country's foreign policy must draw as broadly as possible on the views of our citizens.

Resource Link: http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/cip-pic/participate/fpd-en.asp

A Green Grassroots Revolution

Bill McAuliffe. Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, April 22, 2007.

Nan Skelton at the University of Minnesota brought this article to our attention, which she says is a great local story that shows the Mayors in St. Paul and Minneapolis beginning to make the paradigm shift to a culture of citizen-government partnership. The subtitle of this article is "It's called global warming, but cities and towns, including the Twin Cities, are waging the war."

Resource Link: http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1137316.html

A Guide to Participatory Budgeting

Brian Wampler.

Participatory Budgeting (PB) programs are innovative policymaking processes. Citizens are directly involved in making policy decisions. Forums are held throughout the year so that citizens have the opportunity to allocate resources, prioritize broad social policies, and monitor public spending. These programs are designed incorporate citizens into the policymaking process, spur administrative reform, and distribute public resources to low-income neighborhoods. Download the 32-page guide directly from the NCDD website.

Resource Link: http://www.thataway.org/exchange/files/docs/Wampler_PBGuide.pdf

A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society

An interdisciplinary journal of research and commentary concentrating on the intersection of law, policy, and information technology, the first issue featured a symposium on electronic rule-making, book reviews and an article on HIV/AIDS, Information and Communication in Africa. The journal is jointly produced by Carnegie Mellon's InSITeS and the Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies at The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.

Resource Link: http://www.is-journal.org

A New Approach to Risk Evaluation and Management: Risk-Based Precaution-Based, and Discourse-Based Strategies

Andreas Klinke and Ortwin Renn. Risk Analysis 22(6): 1071-1094, 2002.

This paper considers the three approaches to risk regulation: risk-based standards (reduction to below numerically quantified levels); precautionary-based standards (reduction of risk to as low as reasonably practicable); and discourse-based standards (reduction of risk to levels determined through deliberative processes). The authors support the need for deliberative processes in all three risk management approaches and identify the need for further development of social criteria in risk assessment approaches.

Resource Link: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/

A New Engagement?: Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen

Cliff Zukin, Scott Keeter, Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins and Michael X. Delli Carpini. Oxford University Press, 2006.

A New Engagement challenges the conventional wisdom that today's youth is plagued by a severe case of political apathy. The book tells a second tale about the changing nature of citizen engagement in American society. Instead of participating less, young people may be participating differently. The authors conclude with prescriptions for how to increase citizen engagement and a vision of how things might be different if a larger group and variety of citizens were to become engaged.

A New Weave of Power, People & Politics: The Action Guide for Advocacy and Citizen Participation

Lisa VeneKlasen with Valerie Miller. Just Associates, 2002.

A New Weave of Power, People & Politics provides a well-tested approach for building people?’s participation and collective power that goes beyond influencing policy and politics to transforming public decision-making altogether. Based on 25 years of participatory research, community development, neighborhood organizing, legal rights education, and large-scale campaign advocacy experiences worldwide, A New Weave combines concrete and practical action ?“steps?” with a sound theoretical foundation to help users understand the process of people-centered politics from planning to action.

Resource Link: http://www.justassociates.org/ActionGuide.htm

A Practical Guide to Consensus

Chris Carlson and Jim Arthur. Policy Consensus Institute.

This 75-page step-by-step handbook walks readers through the stages of sponsoring, organizing, and participating in a public policy consensus process. Designed primarily for government agencies or departments, the guide also is useful for any other sponsor of - or participant in - a consensus building process.

Resource Link: http://www.policyconsensus.org

A Report on CPRN?’s Community Forum: "Integrating Citizens' Voices into Policy Discourse"

Sandra Zagon. Canadian Policy Research Networks.

CPRN's Public Involvement Network hosted a community forum at a 2003 IAP2 conference. 33 delegates from Canada, Mexico and the U.S. heard from CPRN presenters the lessons of CPRN's growing experience in the practice of public dialogues. The Community Forums, which were part of the May 2003 IAP2 conference program, gave CPRN an excellent opportunity to share some of these lessons with over 30 public participation practitioners who were delegates at the Conference. CPRN's Community Forum took place on May 21, 2003, from 1:30 to 5:00 p.m.

Resource Link: http://www.cprn.com/en/doc.cfm?doc=341

A Review of Public Participation and Consultation Methods

J. Abelson, P-G. Forest, J. Eyles, P. Smith, E. Martin, F-P Gauvin. Deliberations about Deliberation: Issues in the Design and Evaluation of Public Consultation Processes, McMaster University Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis Research Working Paper 01-04, June, 2001.

This PDF document presents a 5-page matrix of public participation and consultation methods, both deliberative and non-deliberative. Included are Citizens Juries, Citizens Panels, Planning Cells, Consensus Conferences, Deliberative Polling, focus groups, consensus building exercises, surveys, public hearings, open houses, Citizen Advisory Committees, community planning, visioning, and more.

Resource Link: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/compareparticipation.pdf

A Seat at the Table: Membership in Federal Advisory Committees Evaluating Public Policy in Genetics

Caterine F. Ard and Marvin R. Natowicz. American Journal of Public Health, 91 (5), 787, 2001.

This study examined who participates in federal government advisory committees regarding public policy in human and medical genetics, what parties they represent, and to what extent the general public is meaningfully represented.

Resource Link: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1446679&blobtype=pdf

A Simple, Open, Scalable and Distributed Platform for Public Discourse

Thomas F. Gordon, Fraunhofer FOKUS.

There is some current debate about the relationships between e-democracy, e-government and, more recently, e-governance. The most widely accepted view, and the view the authors accept for the purposes of this paper, is that e-democracy is a subfield of e-government. One of the main issues in the field of e-democracy, and one that the authors discuss in this paper, is how to best use information and communications technology to facilitate public consultation, deliberation, participation or 'engagement' in policy-making processes such as urban planning.

Resource Link: http://www.lri.jur.uva.nl/~winkels/eGov2002/Gordon.pdf

A Summary of Citizen Participation Methods for the Waterfront Development Project in Oconto, Wisconsin

Kevin Silveira, Ron Shaffer and Chris Behr, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison/Extension.

The City of Oconto and the National Coastal Resources Institute sought to evaluate and integrate information on the economic and environmental impacts of waterfront development. A significant dimension of that effort was to go beyond the technical dimension of those decisions, and address the equally important local perceptions and concerns regarding the waterfront. This review of various techniques for gathering citizen input and encouraging involvement was originally prepared as background to the project team to help them involve Oconto residents in the decisions regarding the waterfront. The authors recommend that you use the document as a starting, not ending, point for building a citizen involvement strategy.

Resource Link: http://www.aae.wisc.edu/cced/931.pdf

A View From the City: Local Government Perspectives on Neighborhood-based Governance in Community-Building Initiatives

Robert Chaskin and Ali Abunimah. Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, 1997.

A study of efforts by private foundations and others to spur the use neighborhood-based governance structures to support communities' overall development suggests they have met with general acceptance by local governments. However, some limitations remain in the eyes of public officials.

Resource Link: http://www.chapinhall.org/article_abstract.aspx?ar=1289&L2=63&L3=108