Cross Collaborate

You are browsing the archives of 2009 August.

Reuniting America convened a series of leadership workshops on major issues from 2004 – 2007. These sessions drew together 140 leaders representing the full range of political values and perspectives that dominate discussion of public issues in the U.S. The eventual result was to develop the principles of transpartisanship, an effort to replace the demonizing [...]

Over the last few years, concepts like collaboration, the wisdom of crowds and collaborative networks have taken hold as innovative ways for involving large groups of people to help solve complicated public policy problems. However, the terms are often used so loosely that they’re in danger of being lumped together and, in effect, dismissed, especially [...]

What is mediator power and how does it operate in collaborative governance and public policy? I pose this question after reading the current issue of Conflict Resolution Quarterly (Vol. 26, No. 4). This collection of scholarly articles challenges basic concepts of mediation and calls for a searching reconsideration of its definition and practice. The contributions [...]

Andrew Rasiej, the founder of Personal Democracy Forum (PdF), gives an overview in this video of changes in politics and citizen engagement made possible by network technologies. As described online, PdF is “an annual conference and community website about the intersection of politics and technology,” especially the way in which “[t]echnology and the Internet are [...]

This is the first installment of a periodic series of posts highlighting sources of information and insight about collaborative public policy and its many related fields. Cross Collaborate looks at collaborative public policy as an emerging field that draws on numerous sources, including change management, negotiation, collaborative networks, deliberative democracy, mediation, consensus building and other [...]

I want to pick up the theme of the last post in this series and explore the relationship between public policy consensus building for purposes of conflict resolution and the formation and growth of self-organizing networks. Although there are many differences, both have similar long-term goals and can complement each other effectively. In the earlier [...]