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Changing Post-Totalitarian Values in Russia through Public Deliberation Methodology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Sheri Frost  and
Denis Makarov
Sheri Frost
Affiliation:
Syracuse University
Denis Makarov
Affiliation:
Moscow State Pedagogical University
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Extract

Public Deliberation Methodology (PDM) developed from activities sponsored by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, which engages in research to enhance the practice of politics. Politics, generally understood, encompasses public activities that help create the kind of communities, the kind of country, and the kind of world order where people are interested and involved in governing and strengthening civil society.

PDM establishes an environment for interaction and exchange of ideas about improving the quality of political participation. Deliberative issues forums, which are the center-piece of PDM, are designed to help citizens act on common problems after making joint decisions. The forums employ a particular kind of discourse called “deliberation” or “deliberative dialogue.” Deliberation prompts collective cognitive reasoning by discouraging self-centered thinking and encouraging the reaching of shared and reflective judgments.

By engaging in deliberative dialogue, participants move beyond the limits of partisan politics and the simple airing of grievances. In a deliberative issues forum, people come together to talk through specific issues with the help of a moderator and an issue-specific guide. The guide presents options for resolving selected issues and outlines the pros and cons of each course of action in terms of its personal value. The tension created by being made to choose one of many viable options leads to deliberation and civic learning.

In this article we describe a PDM experiment sponsored by the political science department of Moscow State Pedagogical University and the Foundation for the Development of Civic Culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 1998 , pp. 775 - 781
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1998

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Footnotes

*

The authors are solely responsible for any errors. The research is ongoing and is being sponsored by the Foundation for the Development of Civic Culture, Russia.

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