Democracy in Motion: Evaluating the Practice and Impact of Deliberative Civic Engagement

by John Gastil (Editor)

Although the field of deliberative civic engagement is growing rapidly around the world, our knowledge and understanding of its practice and impacts remain highly fragmented. Democracy in Motion represents the first comprehensive attempt to assess the practice and impact of deliberative civic engagement. Organized in a series of chapters that address the big questions of deliberative civic engagement, it uses theory, research, and practice from around the world to explore what we know about, how we know it, and what remains to be understood. More than a simple summary of research, the book is designed to be accessible and useful to a wide variety of audiences, from scholars and practitioners working in numerous disciplines and fields, to public officials, activists, and average citizens who are seeking to utilize deliberative civic engagement in their communities. The book significantly enhances current scholarship, serving as a guide to existing research and identifying useful
future research. It also has promise for enhancing practice, for example by helping practitioners, public officials, and others better think through and articulate issues of design and outcomes, thus enabling them to garner more support for public deliberation activities. In addition, by identifying what remains to be learned about public deliberation, practitioners and public officials may be inspired to connect with scholars to conduct research and evaluations of their efforts.

314 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

John Gastil is a professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State University, where he also serves as Senior Scholar at the McCourtney Institute for Democracy. The National Science Foundation has supported numerous large-scale research programs for which he has served as a principal investigator.

Gastil has worked on campaigns for federal, state, and local office in California and New Mexico. He has also written two novels, which will be published in 2020 by Cosmic Egg Books (UK). He resides in State College, PA.

Reviews

[Reichnekov · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Gastil's Democracy in Small Groups was a banger, and this book is too, mostly. I had to read select chapters for a class, so I did not read the entire thing. It is well-written albeit a bit dense and dry.