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This is a federal Department of Energy training film designed for DOE project managers. Because its purpose is real-world training, it avoids sugarcoating most dimensions of a difficult process. As a result, it’s one of the best introductions to the overall principles of community involvement that I’ve found online. Its main subject is the citizen [...]

As in any other field, public sector consensus building always gets to the critical moment when choices have to be made. In my experience, how a group accomplishes this reveals more about motives behind decisions than any other step in the process. Several years ago, I worked with a large group to build consensus on [...]

Although I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about this so far, the emergence of interactive tools for online citizen engagement poses interesting questions for the future of public policy consensus building. It’s still early days in the development of the web technology, and experiments so far have been spotty. Despite the high orbit of [...]

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 [...]