As President and co-founder of Viewpoint Learning, Dr. Steven Rosell leads the development of innovative dialogue-based techniques and their application in both business and the public sector. These dialogues - whether with the public, key stakeholders or employees - enable decision-makers to understand different viewpoints in depth and use that understanding to find common ground and new ways forward.
Rosell acts as an advisor to governments, international agencies, and major firms, and is the author of numerous articles and four books on questions of governance, leadership, and learning. His most recent books are Renewing Governance: Governing by Learning in the Information Age, and Changing Frames.
Previously, Rosell was a senior official of the Government of Canada, where he led the group responsible for advising four Prime Ministers on the organization and machinery of government and related issues. He continues to serve as president of the Meridian International Institute, a not-for-profit policy and action research organization.
Dr. Rosell's Comments Before the Pepperdine Conference
Dr. Rosell noted that public expectations had evolved in the past 30 years. There is a greater insistence by the public for a stronger voice in the things that affect them and also a greater demand for openness, accountability and responsiveness. Americans are now educated and informed, but this trend has been confounded in recent years by the dramatic increase in public mistrust of virtually all institutions.
The number and diversity of stakeholders and special interests whose views need to be taken into account have multiplied in recent years. These voices include economic interests, ethnic and religious groups, seniors and political minorities just to mention a few. Information has become easily available through the media and the internet, however there is a tendency for people to gravitate towards information sources that shields them from being exposed to points of view that are different from their own.
A significant policy reform geared towards engaging the public must take two things into consideration: technical feasibility and the ability to reflect public values. Engaging the public is not an easy task and the benefits and drawbacks of different ways of eliciting the public voice are often unclear.
Polls can be useful, however their biggest drawback is their unreliability. People will always respond even when they have little or no knowledge of the issue at hand. Thus polls often collect raw opinion that has little indication of intensity of conviction on specific views. Focus groups, on the other hand, are able to capture what people know and do not know and also portray peoples thoughts processes and feelings. However, like polls, they project only raw opinion. Town hall meetings provide a venue for the public to vent and the opportunity for leaders to hear and respond to the public's grievances. However, the meetings tend not to be representative of the entire public and often only the loudest voices are likely to be heard.
The major faults in the existing public engagement models are the top down approach, driven by experts, that is usually employed. In this approach both the public and the experts do not interact to find a middle ground. These sessions do not engage the public's perspective nor do they aim to learn from the public. The sessions also have a predisposition to make the conflict larger than it is and offer little motivation for the public to pay attention and expend effort. These models do not mirror the way people actually make up their minds.
Deliberative democracy seeks to address the weaknesses of these existing public engagement models. All deliberative democracy practitioners believe that a strong public engagement is essential to our democracy. They recognize the limitations of the existing public engagement models and agree that raw and distorted opinion should not shape policies. The public should be provided with opportunities to engage in more active and complex deliberative processes. The price for achieving sustainable support for tough policy decisions depends on citizens working through the difficult tradeoffs that are almost always involved.
The new public engagement model seeks to include dialogue. It involves taking raw public opinion and filtering it through a sample of citizens that includes varying viewpoints; considering value based choices; and obtaining information through dialogue (with peers and experts). This process culminates in a more informed public whose decisions have been well thought out and tend to be both firm and consistent.
Dr. Rosell concluded by outlining 10 ground rules for engaging the public:
- When leaders and the public are out of phase, leaders must take initiative.
- The public should be engaged before decisions are made.
- There must be a clear outline of how dialogue will connect to subsequent decision-making.
- The public must be made aware that the leaders are listening and are responsive. Leaders must engage in a dialogue where they are learning from the public and as well as teaching.
- Issues ought to be framed from the citizens', rather than an expert's, point of view
- Consider only one or two issues at a time.
- Do not rely on open ended discussions. Formulate a limited number of choices.
- Highlight the values implicit in the choices.
- Create a neutral space where people can work through alternatives, learn from each other and move beyond wishful thinking. Third parties are usually good at providing this space.
- Dialogue should be used to build trust and find common ground.