By Randall Nielsen

“Among the great variety of developments that have occurred in the twentieth century, I did not, ultimately, have any difficulty in choosing one as the preeminent development of the period: the rise of democracy.“ — Amartya Sen

At the Kettering Foundation’s semiannual retreat last January, staff and associates discussed opportunities for—and challenges to—engaging our research in international contexts. Some proposals focused on new lines of research. Others identified existing areas of Kettering research that might be usefully illuminated through wider international experience. As always, we tried to identify critical problems that the particular strengths of the foundation’s research might speak to. What have we learned about what people in other countries see as the central challenges to their efforts to strengthen democracy?

Participants noted the problems resulting from viewing democracy as a Western import. Subsequent discussion quickly led to insights about the importance of thinking clearly about how international research into the challenges of “making democracy work” should be done. One unique strength of the foundation’s research is the result of what we call joint-learning agreements. How might a similar approach in the international research help alleviate the “Western import” problem?

In a widely cited article published in the Journal of Democracy (1999), Amartya Sen argues that the “recognition of democracy as a universally relevant system, which moves in the direction of its acceptance as a universal value, is a major revolution in thinking, and one of the main contributions of the twentieth century.” However, Sen notes a critical challenge to democratic experiments, one identified by the Kettering Foundation a decade ago—a thin notion of what democracy is and what it requires of people, communities, and institutions.

Sen identifies one symptom of the problem: the tendency to equate democracy with the mechanics and structures of majority rule in elections. This implies that democracy is largely a technical challenge and can be exported—or even imposed—by creating formal institutions that structure repre¬sentative voting. As such, democracy is correctly seen as a Western concept. In many countries, this makes experiments with democracy harder to legitimize, and therefore less secure under the inevitable tensions brought on by change.

We may be witnessing the impact of that “thin notion” in Latin America. A recent report issued by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) found that over 50 percent of Latin Americans say they would support an authoritarian regime over democratic government if authoritarian rule could restore order and resolve their economic problems. If democracy is viewed principally as a means of choosing officeholders, it may not seem like much to give up.

The foundation’s research is based on a deeper, more general vision of democracy. It is grounded in a focus on the roles people need to play as problem-solving actors in democratic politics. As such, democracy is seen not as a destination—which when reached will deliver particular outcomes—but as the ongoing journey of people struggling with challenges to their collective ability to rule themselves. The challenges to citizen self-rule are not fixed; they emerge from changes in technology, demographics, and global political forces. Kettering research thus emphasizes the study of practices—ways that citizens, communities, and institutions can work together—that hold the promise of increasing the ability of people to act in concert on problems they share. It also recognizes that because circumstances change, constant study and refinement of the ways those practices work is required.

Seen that way, democracy is not a thing that can be granted to people, exported to people, or imposed. Democracy has to be made to work by the people who make up the citizenry of a place. What does that paradigm suggest about alternatives to “exporting democracy”?

One way the foundation develops and tests insights is through learning agreements with organizations that have their own reasons for attempting to “make democracy work as it should.” These organizations have chosen to explore how they can facilitate the public engagement of issues. Furthermore, they hope to learn from their efforts and share that learning systematically. The foundation’s joint-learning agreements do not fund the organization’s activity, but rather support the costs of documenting and sharing what is learned about mutually agreed-upon lines of questions.

The Kettering Foundation has two general goals for the joint-learning projects. First and most obvious is to develop our practical understanding of how to make public life work better, and report findings in ways that can inform other organizations struggling with similar challenges under different conditions. Kettering realizes that organizations exploring their impact on civic life need to learn their way to more effective practice. Learning is also necessary for efforts to continue to grow through time. The development and growth of effective democratic practice does not come from building on success so much as from learning from experience. Although it is difficult for any organization to reflect on unsuccessful efforts, it is exactly those “failures” that provide some of the best opportunities for shared learning.

However, we also know that many organizations lack the capacity to interrogate their experiences in productive ways. Most are set up to do things, not to reflect on and record what they are learning in ways that allow findings to be shared. The foundation’s shared-learning relationships deliberately intend to address that dilemma. When successful, they have the long-term effect of changing the way organizations see themselves as civic actors, especially through the development of their capacity to learn and document what they are learning and thus continue to innovate in practice.

Recent meetings with international organizations revealed some intriguing possibilities for shared-learning agreements. As described in Ileana Marin’s article, an increasing number of organizations around the world are coming to see the potential of deliberately exploring how to interact with citizens in public life. Some have recognized that, although there are no simple techniques for doing so, lessons from experience can be derived and shared so that efforts can complement and build on each other. There are clearly more opportunities for international shared-learning agreements now than ever before.

However, these meetings also reinforced our understanding of the challenges to doing international research through joint-learning agreements. By far the biggest obstacle is in distinguishing the goals of the foundation as a research organization from those of grantmaking organizations. Many of the standard protocols that tie organizations in other countries to U.S. grantmaking foundations are in direct tension with the development of joint-learning relationships. Joint-learning relationships depend on keeping the responsibility for the work, and the learning that results, located in the organizations and their communities. Extensive experience with grant evaluations, however, has taught many organizations to document instru¬mental activities rather than record their reflections on experiments.

Conventional practices of evaluation often hinder effective, self-generated learning, perhaps more so in international contexts. Still, we have reason to believe that the challenge can be dealt with successfully. At a recent meeting with organizations from various countries, one participant argued that he saw no tension between acting and learning in his organization’s protocols. He noted that organizations that proceed without reflection inevitably fail. Successful organizations are constantly learning. The challenge, he noted, is in capturing the learning in ways that can be shared with others. Although that challenge may be more difficult when dealing with organizations in other countries, the growing recognition of the potential of shared-learning agreements gives reason for hope.

Randall Nielsen is a program officer at the Kettering Foundation.

By Ileana Marin

We live in a time when many Americans have retreated from politics and public life, and many civic-minded organizations and public leaders seek to reengage them,” Richard Harwood writes in his article “The Engagement Path.” These words could easily have become the succinct motto for what many of us—formally or not so formally affiliated with nongovernmental organizations, universities, and other types of institutes all over the world—are struggling with.

And when I write “many of us,” I have in mind the international network that, simply to have an appropriate denomination, we refer to as the International Civil Society Consortium for Public Deliberation. At last count, this network included 250 international partners representing NGOs, universities, and individuals from Eastern and Central Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America, Asia, and the United States. Despite its obviously heterogeneous character, this international network, created over a number of years, is very strong.

This expanding group draws strength from a special link, the main thread of which is the body of ideas that stand behind the larger concept of deliberative democracy. The group’s members continuously seek better ways to communicate and collaborate among themselves. It would be wrong to conclude that this network is too loose, given the great encounters that have occurred over the past years.

The Kettering Foundation (KF) has been the more or less “invisible entity” that, in many circumstances, made possible and then perfected this special link. However, through their work, the members from this impressive number of institutions have mingled before and after their connections via KF. Many of them have been using a deliberative democratic approach in their work for a long time. One of the best parts of KF’s role probably has been helping people give a name to the techniques they’ve been using and frame them in a more structured manner. Furthermore, KF has encouraged an appreciation of the contacts they have developed inside a network created, at times, in a rather ad-hoc manner

If I were to go back to Harwood’s article, it would be to note that, commonly, “people reach a critical juncture; their engagement will either move forward, be derailed, or simply get stuck.” The path through this, as many have observed, is to pose and respond to the right probing questions. In my mind, Kettering has continuously been the entity that always tries to pose the right questions. Furthermore, Kettering has, whenever possible and appropriate, offered a space for people—from the United States or other countries—to figure out what it is that they are really talking about and to describe it collectively using their own language, based on their own ideas, beliefs, and experience.

Through years of compiling information for the international newsletters (available, for those interested, on www.icscpd.org), I have had many experiences in gathering information and details on the work of my colleagues and friends from around the world. I learned through my work that, while getting to know people is wonderful and while meeting those who share the same interests is a life-enriching experience, it nonetheless is a great challenge to stay in touch and to keep up to date on both work and other matters. That is probably one of the reasons why many ideas, contacts, and relationships get lost in this big world. Although we do share a lot through our work, and our connections may sometimes be invisible, they nonetheless bring a great deal of joy on one hand, and plenty of interesting and useful knowledge on the other hand.

It continues to be a little difficult for some (particularly our U.S. colleagues at Kettering) to stay in touch with others in the international network, particularly those who come from universities, NGOs, or institutions that are narrowly purposeful and have, for the most part, very practical concerns in communities where needs are clear and sometimes desperate.

It seems that the “message” that stands behind deliberative democracy fits extremely well in those environments the civic or public problem is fundamentally settled; that is, democratic, and even cultivated or middle-class communities. The United States represents the most eloquent example, but in a paradoxical way, even some Eastern-European countries and some of the former Soviet countries fit the description of ordered societies a central or underlying concern is always the greater engagement of citizens in the command of their own lives.

This is what, for instance, one of our Russian colleagues said “I think that this practice (deliberative democracy) is very helpful and useful for the Russian NGOs in the discussion of hot issues, and also for those who believe that effective civil society and democracy require public involvement in the decision-making process. The skills and habits of public participation and initiative are lacking. Due to the absence of a real civic experience under the authoritarian communist regime, people are missing the skills for public dialogue and for reaching common ground on those public-policy issues that concern them. Thus, in my opinion, deliberation is a rightful and successful thing in order to reach this goal.”

That, after all, is the goal of deliberative practice. Reaching that goal must present a particular challenge in societies that have experienced extreme instability or where the problems to be addressed are as basic as access to the immediate necessities of life and social organization itself.

Ileana Marin was a program officer at the time with World Learning for International Development and a Kettering Associate.

This article was published in the Kettering Foundation’s Summer/Fall 2005 Connections.

By Mpho Putu

Introduction and Background

HIV/AIDS is a reality, and it impacts everyone in Africa. At bus stops and street corners, in restaurants, parks, schools, universities, cities, and villages, talk is about a friend who has just been infected or has passed away: a municipal councilor, a politician, a musician, a soccer player, a teacher, a father, or a mother. Everyone is affected. What does it mean to face the constant lurking threat of HIV infection? What does it mean to be surrounded by death—of friends and family—from AIDS? These are just two of the profoundly compelling questions people have grappled with in forums in South Africa over the past two years. Those forums were organized by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA). Other forums have been held in Botswana under the sponsorship of the International Women’s Democracy Center.

Two facts about HIV/AIDS stand out. First, the disease disproportionately affects sub-Saharan Africa. This region, with 10 percent of the world’s population, currently has 70 percent of the 40 million individuals suffering from this disease worldwide. Second, the disease most strongly affects the most economically productive layers of society. Commonly, disease finds its victims among the weak, the elderly, and the economically less productive. HIV/AIDS, however, commonly strikes those aged 15–49, the years during which people are contributing most to the economy of their households and their countries, as well as raising their children.

As a result, HIV/AIDS has a crucial impact on security in Africa. Security, however, refers not to the ability of state power to maintain law and order, but to what the well-being of members of society requires. The United Nations Human Development Report identifies the components of human security as economic security, food security, personal security, community security, and political security. HIV/AIDS impacts all of these. Its devastating effects undermine state functions like education, health, and social development, leaving behind millions of vulner¬able orphans with no means of support, causing economic crises, and threatening political stability. A weak society and a weak state (like those of most African nations) are vulnerable to political conflict, and this, in turn, creates a fertile ground for the further spread of the pandemic.
What Is the Issue?

The issue book HIV/AIDS: What Should Be Done provides people with a framework for deliberative discussion on the issue. The framework takes people through the consideration of three different approaches, or perspectives, regarding the issue:

Approach 1: Focus on the people living with HIV/AIDS

Approach 2: Improvement of quality of life

Approach 3: Prevention through education

What we have observed and learned in the forums, both in Botswana and South Africa, is that most of the people who came to these forums did so because the issue was personally relevant. They expressed this through the stories they told. Tellingly, most people who attended these forums were young and well aware that the pandemic takes its toll on their age group. At the very beginning of the forum, this intense personal connection to the issue set a serious tone for the owner¬ship of the issue that characterized the deliberation process. Interestingly, mod¬erators were impressed with the contrast between the opening discussions—which were emotional, serious, and often intense—and the relief participants later expressed at being able to talk about the issue and to consider choices.

The forums asked the question “What bothers you about HIV/AIDS?” Many acknowledged and recognized the pandemic as a problem and mentioned other concerns associated with it, but most still refuse to accept the reality of HIV/AIDS. Instead, some people blamed the sickness on witchcraft, on punishment from God, or on ancestors’ punishment (against people who have moved away from traditional practices). Some blamed it on infrastructural development (new tarred roads that connect distant rural areas and cities in Botswana), on poverty, or on the government. In South Africa, some participants could not understand why the government has been unable to find a cure for AIDS when technology and medical research is so advanced; others thought it a strategy by governments to reduce the population.

Many expressed concern that the government is not doing more to combat the sickness. One example cited was the slow delivery of anti-retroviral drugs and other medical care to those living with the virus, especially pregnant mothers and children. At the same time, there was an acknowledgement that the media, government, and many institutions working on HIV/AIDS issues have managed to provide clear messages and extensive information about the disease. People know the facts; millions of condoms are available in public places; but people are continually surprised by the enormous and ever increasing numbers of newly infected cases. Many conclude that the message is not taken seriously. There is a sense that “it will not happen to me.”

Poverty and lack of education also contribute to ignorance. Many people die in silence, unwilling to come out and talk about what the pandemic does to them emotionally, spiritually, economically, and so on. Participants viewed this as a very complicated problem that affects various aspect of life, labelling it “the wicked issue.” Many acknowledged the epidemic, yet talking about it is avoided, and no one, especially the elderly, is prepared to reveal the true cause of sickness or death when it happens in the family. Sex and sexuality are still considered taboo topics in most African communities. “If we are not careful, our nation will soon perish. We must break the silence and tell the young people to do something positive to prevent the further spread of this killer disease,” said a 79-year-old man. This HIV/AIDS issue has brought feelings of fear, despair, depression, and defeat to many of the participants. At the same time, we discovered that it is not easy for people to deliberate on their experiences freely because of stigmatization.

The level of discussion and the quality of deliberation are largely determined by the level of education and standard of living. In poor communities, there is less ability to think critically and thoroughly about issues. It seems that the level of education has a real impact on the way people comprehend and frame these critical issues. As an example, people are concerned about the sickness and the deaths but cannot make a drastic change in behavior to prevent the disease from escalating. As such, the perception in most forums was that HIV/AIDS is a personal and individual problem, involving neither the government nor the community. Thus, people tend to keep it to themselves.

Many participants urged that people take responsibility for their lives. In their minds, the change of behavior is central to reducing the pandemic. Many others, noting that poverty, poor diet, and lack of medical care appear to be factors in the onset of the illness, urged the government to accelerate improvements in quality of life. Others urged the education of young people, truck drivers, refugees, and migrant workers.

Many people were apparently confused by the current debate among medical doctors, scientists, and professionals about HIV/AIDS. The debate is focused on the causes of HIV/AIDS, the efficacy of condoms, and the safety of anti-retrovirals. Disagreements continue between various stakeholders, including medical practitioners, pharmaceutical companies, governments, and HIV/AIDS activists and advocacy groups. This sense of confusion surrounding the facts about the disease has been exacerbated by the failure of governments and elected officials, especially in South Africa, to acknowledge and speak publicly about the scourge of HIV/AIDS. Some par¬ticipants noted that some government officials and high-profile members of the community had died, yet the true cause of their sickness and death remains unknown, only speculated. This often leaves citizens wondering whether HIV/AIDS is real or not.

As mentioned earlier, the deliberations on HIV/AIDS vary from forum to forum. In the discussions, many of those who are infected and therefore most affected by the disease often stated that the government should address their present pressing needs. They advocated the immediate provision of such basic necessities as food, water, shelter, and medical care. The reality of the pandemic and death compels them to act as with full rights, by demanding that the government meet its obligation by providing for their needs and protecting their right to life.

A strong sense emerged from the deliberations that unless the government considers HIV/AIDS an emergency—that is, by committing enough resources to procure treatment and to render sup-port and care for the poor—the future appears grim. As a result, HIV/AIDS is seen as a developmental problem of great complexity, requiring strong leadership and political commitment to reduce its effect.

In contrast, some participants, especially those from civil society organizations, argued that the HIV/AIDS issue is not simply about a virus that requires only medical intervention. Rather, they contend that the problem requires a rights-based approach, which significantly extends the responsibilities of the actors engaged in prevention and treatment. A rights-based approach means determining the needs of those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS and ensuring that their human rights are asserted and respected, what-ever their community’s or government’s view of the disease might be. The belief is that using a human rights framework to understand and analyze HIV/AIDS increases the scope of responses to the pandemic.

The forums provided participants with an opportunity to appreciate the broader implications of HIV/AIDS. Among other things, participants thought that the pandemic challenged them to consider extraordinary ways and means of dealing with it. At the core of this initiative is an emphasis on why and how political institutions, civil society organizations, and businesses should take the lead in combating the disease. It is clear that civil society and development professionals believe that the commitment to fight HIV/AIDS must emanate from leaders who are dedicated to human rights and who endorse sound policies and implement them justly and effectively. Everyone must take the initiative. Those who are HIV negative must continue to lead healthy lives and minimize their risk of HIV infection, and those who are positive must be counselled about risk reduction and ways of living positively with their HIV condition.

At the End of the Forum

Many people left the forums with the belief that something could be done. Many thought they had found a place where people were willing to talk and listen to them about this most personal and complicated issue. Most important, they saw the need to continue talking about HIV/AIDS in clubs and churches and with their friends.
Future Plans

IDASA plans to hold a number of forums in South Africa in disadvantaged and underprivileged communities, in high schools, and with Citizen Leader groups with whom we work. We have recently been invited again by the Washington-based International Women’s Democracy Center (Barbara Ferris) to continue with the work in Botswana, teaching issue framing, naming, and moderation, as well as holding some forums.

Mpho Putu works with the Institute for Democracy in South Africa.

By Catalina Arango

Although Colombian journalists are die-hard traditionalists and remain attached to old journalistic routines, the time has come for them to face their fear of change and begin the job of creating new visions for their audiences.

For many years, public life in my country has been seen as the exclusive province of political parties, traditional organizations, and government officials. And, on the whole, Colombian citizens have long been disinclined to involve themselves in politics and public life. But some Colombian citizens are tired of being treated as ignorant or as victims of the events that sweep over them; they want to be seen as participants and intelligent members of the public life. They are ready to make connections; they are learning the importance of deliberation; and, step-by-step, they are losing their fear of participating in public affairs.

Moreover, citizen audiences no longer see TV news reports as isolated dots in an empty space. Rather, they perceive them as threads in a complex net — connected, intersected, and superimposed. Events in Colombia have a past and a future, causes and consequences. They have visible and invisible faces. Television journalists in Colombia should take an active role in this process. They must begin thinking of their audiences as citizens in order to help convince them that they are citizens. Narratives and news reports should begin making the important connections, help create a better environment for public discussion, and reflect the agendas of the citizens they serve.

If journalism sees citizens as participants in public affairs, it can see them as participants in a bilateral communication process as well. In fact, citizens are participants from the beginning: they turn off their television sets, switch channels, and make choices about the programs they watch.

As a consequence, journalists should begin incorporating and promoting public deliberation in their own practices and in the affairs of the community. Although skeptics may ask whether Colombians are ready to deliberate, in fact, Colombian culture is full of discussions, conversations, and meetings. Colombians love to get together to converse with friends, coworkers, or neighbors. They have a great sense of local community. Colombians love to debate. They are, however, quick to impose their views on others and have difficulty with tolerance and respect for other people’s points of view.

These exchanges, however, take place in private. Colombian citizens are extremely wary of participating publicly because they believe that politics is reserved for government officials; street protests are for revolutionaries; and they, as common people, are too ignorant to take any public action.

It is here that journalism has a role — to help citizens acquire the skills of public deliberation and to provide spaces to make visible and audible their local conversations, concerns, and initiatives. Television journalism should be full of images and voices that are connected with citizens’ lives and narratives that give citizens the sense of having something to say.

In short, to think of their audiences as citizens, TV journalism in Colombia must pay more attention to what the public is thinking. Colombian television should use its images and sound bites to promote public judgment among Colombians. It must give Colombians ways to prioritize their problems, suggest alternatives for solving them, and create new visions for the country. The solution to the country’s crisis can come from this effort.

Catalina Arango, a Colombian journalist, spent six months at the Kettering Foundation last year as a Fanning International Fellow in Journalism and Democracy.

By John Doble and Carol Selton

In Coming to Public Judgment, Daniel Yankelovich draws a distinction between people’s top-of-the-head opinions and their considered, worked-through judgments. Poll results, Yankelovich writes, are often mistakenly thought to be people’s final judgments, as opposed to their initial opinions.

Evidence of Yankelovich’s distinction can be seen in comparing poll and forum results on the promotion of democracy, the subject of the “Americans’ Role in the World” forums held in 2003 and 2004. In post-forum questionnaires, participants strongly endorsed the promotion of democracy—for example, a resounding 83 percent agreed that American “support of emerging democracies will, in the long run, enhance our own national security.” Furthermore, majorities of 60 percent or higher believed that “working to spread and maintain democracy in other countries will increase stability in the world” and that Americans “should help citizens of other countries develop stable democracies.” National surveys have echoed these findings. Taken in isolation, these findings appear to demonstrate that Americans endorse this country’s vigorous promotion of democracy across the globe.

But a different impression emerges when one listens to participants in the “Americans’ Role” forums. Most participants focused on one aspect: Should the United States “impose” democracy on other countries through the use of force? This question was answered with a resounding “no.” An Air Force serviceman in Panama City, Florida, said, “We can’t force our values on other people.” Participants in Carroll County, Maryland, said the idea amounted to “cultural imperialism.” A man in Austin, Texas, said, “I’m comfortable with promoting the spread of democracy as long as it doesn’t mean foist.”

Participants gave varying reasons for their views. Many worried about the costs of military intervention, in particular, the loss of life among service personnel and foreign civilians. Others expressed concern about offending foreigners’ cultural sensitivities. Some talked about the need for international approval; others said that, since the United States is far from perfect, it would be hypocritical for it to impose its system elsewhere.

The discussion was dominated by the current U.S. military action in Iraq. Although participants reached common ground on many aspects, Iraq proved divisive and, at times, polarizing. Some saw the war as necessary, saying that democratizing Iraq would reduce the threat of terrorism, that the war was an ethical response to a tyrant who had massacred countless innocents. Others disagreed, saying that democratizing Iraq was unrealistic, that it was being waged without international sanction, and that it was diverting resources from combating the real threat, Al Qaeda.

When discussions went further—that is, beyond the question of imposing democracy by force—most participants favored the United States taking pro-democracy steps. One view was that U.S. leaders should speak out in support of democratic values. In a forum in New Orleans, Louisiana, people supported former Secretary of State Powell’s criticism of Russia for closing down newspapers critical of the government. One man commented, “I do think we have a right to say, ‘you’re doing it wrong and we don’t like it, Mr. Putin.’” Many believed that democracy could be promoted through an exchange of ideas. One New Jersey man stated, “If we know about other countries and they know about us, they’ll know we’re not out to hurt them.” A woman from New Orleans noted the long-term benefits of “the many people from other countries who come here and get educated. . . . They take it back to their countries and start programs there.”

Travel and educational exchanges also drew strong support at the 2003 National Issues Convention in Philadelphia. Several participants commented that Americans are too isolated and know little about other peoples and cultures. Some favored working directly with citizens and citizen groups, saying “we’ve got to start with the grassroots and work up, [because] we’re not going to succeed by [military] might.” In forums on terrorism in 2002–2003, people expressed the desire for increased understanding of other nations, especially in the Middle East.

As a rule, however, when people talked about democracy, they thought only in terms of an American style of democracy, with similar procedures and institutions. People’s conception of democracy was mostly mechanical, including a constitution and bill of rights, checks and balances, and the separation of powers. Few people thought about democracy in terms of public deliberation in which citizens of other nations, as forum participants were doing, attend public forums to consider issues affecting their lives, community, and country.

Many participants expressed misgiv¬ings about the long-term consequences of U.S. ties to non-democratic countries. One man in a Memphis, Tennessee, forum said, “It’s like Iran—we propped up the Shah of Iran for a long time. . . . And [when] the [Ayatollah] took over, we were on the outs.” Participants were divided on this point: in questionnaires completed after the “Americans’ Role” forums, 42 percent favored and 48 percent opposed the United States cutting ties with foreign dictators.

In the forums on terrorism, people discussed the reasons for Arab and Muslim enmity toward the United States. Many said Middle-Eastern rage stems from U.S. support for unpopular governments that act contrary to the interests of their people. A man in a Missoula, Montana, forum said anti-American feelings are a result of the United States being “so closely aligned with dictatorial governments who could care less about religious freedoms, women’s rights, and other things the American people strongly believe in.”

Despite concerns about imposing democracy, broad agreement existed that the United States should promote human rights around the globe. In Lafayette, Indiana, people were concerned about the rights of Afghani women; students at Hofstra University and Virginia Tech discussed civil liberties and the rights of women and children; and in Overland Park, Kansas, people focused on genocide. An Englewood, New Jersey, woman said, “We need to support [people] when [their] human rights are being violated.”

People at an “Americans’ Role” forum in Philadelphia favored using force to prevent genocide or in humanitarian emergencies. Some argued that the United States should draw a line; a New Jersey woman said, “As long as they’re not killing their people, dismembering their people . . . [we should] let them run their own country.”

Overall, these findings suggest that participants are of mixed opinions and have not completed the working through necessary to a considered judgment. Although they favor promoting democracy and believe this could promote stability throughout the world, most were opposed to using force to accomplish that end. At the same time, participants assigned a high priority to safeguarding human rights; many were willing, especially with international support, to intervene militarily to prevent genocide.

By Gabriel Murillo

The title of this short essay is very pretentious. First, deliberation as a collective process to reach consensus and create agendas for social change is still largely unknown in Latin America. Second, the public in general is not familiar with the meaning of deliberative democracy and its relation to political representation and citizen participation. Third, most Latin Americans still find it difficult to distinguish between deliberation as a collective process with a distinctive methodology and deliberative democracy as a political compass in which representation and participation merge.

Nevertheless, deliberative forums appeared in Latin America in the early 1990s. The initial experiences took place in Colombia and were promoted by the Political Science Department of the University of Los Andes in Bogotá. They were a rather orthodox application of the methodological approach the Kettering Foundation had been using in the United States. Later, new civic institutions and NGOs in other countries began implementing deliberative forums after learning about them at the Kettering Foundation. Argentina, Brazil, and Guatemala followed Colombia. Two or three years later, participatory gatherings were being developed in Ecuador and Venezuela with Colombian assistance; in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras thanks to Guatemalan leadership; and in Paraguay with the help of Argentina.

These efforts faced more obstacles than opportunities. It was quickly understood that the entire deliberation project had to be adapted to local realities and distinctiveness. Initially, its flexibility with the application of the procedures associated with deliberative methodology was indispensable. It proved very difficult to develop all components with the same level of autonomy and familiarity, particularly the framing component and the convening strategy. Participants’ lack of previous exposure to explicit collective conversations that sought solutions to common problems constituted a serious handicap. Although other forms of tacit deliberation were already embedded in the Latin American political culture, there was no prior direct knowledge of this form of citizen practice. People were not familiar with a structured approach to identify, name, and frame a public problem amenable to collective solutions. Even less well known were structured public forums in which citizens deliberate in order to solve public matters. When “deliberation” had any meaning for participants, it related to formal practices of legislative debates intended to generate formal norms and procedures.

Recruitment of forum participants was difficult because of the lack of trust between people that stems from the high rates of crime and corruption in Latin America and the fact that average citizens are rarely a part of decision making. As a result of this mistrust, most people were surprised by the invitation to participate in the meetings. Not all accepted the invitation, and those that did appeared to do so with some degree of uncertainty.

These two obstacles—the lack of knowledge about deliberation and an initial reluctance to participate—as well as the high cost of formally implementing deliberative forums on a growing and sustainable basis combined to suggest that the project might be impossible. Fortunately opportunities materialized that helped overcome these handicaps. One was sharing the difficult and challenging experiences at the yearly international encounters hosted by the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio. The other was the launching of the Inter-American Democracy Network (IADN) in 1995. These two responses were oriented toward a commitment to strengthen deliberation in Latin America. The resources from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) allocated to IADN were crucial to achieving continuity and to expanding deliberation in the already mentioned countries as well as other sites—Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, and Bolivia and Peru in South America.

In the IADN’s first five years, programs on deliberation produced a sizeable number of issue books, manuals, and videos on many topics of public interest, such as education, electoral participation, citizen security, solid waste disposal, the struggle against corruption, environmental protection, child care, and youth. An evaluation of this work, required for renewal of another USAID grant to support democracy in the Americas, concluded that the promotion of deliberation was one of the most important achievements of this hemispheric network.

By 2000, an important collection of both human resources and materials was available for expanding the deliberative methodology in Latin America. The last five-year period has been rather busy, although uneven in the implementation of deliberation throughout the region.

Although not exhaustive, the following examples provide a panorama of this growth. First, a USAID-sponsored project to promote citizen participation in justice reform in Bolivia has used the deliberative methodology to generate public involve¬ment in justice administration. Second, a recognized advertising agency in the Dominican Republic has adopted this methodology to fight the lack of neigh¬borhood security in Santo Domingo. Third, in Jamaica, a well-known NGO devoted to conflict resolution in Kingston’s low-income areas applied this method to encourage citizen involvement in resisting urban violence. Fourth, in Colombia, with Kettering’s sponsorship, the University of Los Andes in Bogotá, along with a local college in Cartagena de Indias, has implemented a Public Policy Institute (PPI), for local leaders and educators that will use deliberation to create public agendas for problem solving. At present, these two universities are planning a second PPI to reinforce this approach. Fifth, the National Ministry of Education in Colombia will include the deliberative methodology as a recommended practice to promote civic education in public and private schools throughout the country. Sixth, at a regional level, the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) has provided a grant to the IADN Executive Secretariat (SERID) to develop four pilot training programs on the methodology in different countries that have been offered to their grantees. For this purpose, SERID is gathering materials produced in all the countries that have worked with deliberative forums throughout Latin America. In addition, it is inviting Latin Americans with previous practical experience in this method to create a clearinghouse to provide the required resources to the pilot projects. Finally, Partners of the Americas in Washington has launched the first online project to promote deliberation among OSC’s on the creation of employment to strengthen democracy and governance in Latin America. The output of this online dialogue will be used to improve the content of the next agenda for the Fifth Summit of the Americas, which will take place in Mar del Plata, Argentina, this fall.

These examples indicate a growing and promising future for the practice of public deliberation throughout Latin America. After 15 years of searching for better ways to generate awareness about the importance of this way to strengthen democracy has elapsed, the advocates of this approach must understand that the road ahead is still a very long one. Democracy in Latin America encounters countless challenges and enemies; among the most important are growing poverty and weak citizen involvement in the search for solutions to public problems. Public deliberation as a method of generating ample participation and responsible collective action for social change and deliberative democracy as an environment for promoting responsible political representation and active and pluralistic participation are required to strengthen democracy in the region.

Gabriel Murillo is a professor of Political Science at the University of the Andes in Colombia.

By Harold H. Saunders

Sustained Dialogue is a systematic process for political, social, and economic change. Its distinguishing characteristic is that it focuses on transforming the relationships that block collaboration. Sustained Dialogue is best suited to those situations not ready for formal mediation and negotiation; it is so, because it addresses the strained relationships that prevent people from talking in the rea¬soned ways mediation and negotiation require.
Sustained Dialogue conceptualizes three decades of experience with adver¬saries and what they do when they sit down repeatedly to address what divides them. Sustained Dialogue has its roots in my experience as a U.S. diplomat in the Arab-Israeli peace process after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The first lesson of that experience is that a continuous process has the power to transform seemingly intractable relationships—as demonstrat¬ed in the grueling work that produced five Arab-Israeli agreements from 1974 to 1979. The second lesson is the importance of engaging the human dimension of conflict, which in the Arab-Israeli setting included Israelis who had survived the Holocaust and Palestinians who had lost their homes to Israeli military action in 1948.

After leaving government service in 1981, I became associated with the Kettering Foundation’s Dartmouth Conference, the longest continuous bilateral dialogue between American and Soviet citizens, which started in 1960. After the November 1981 gathering, I was asked to be the U.S. co-chair of the newly established Regional Conflicts Task Force (RCTF). Its purpose was to improve understanding of the overall Soviet-U.S. relationship by probing interactions between the countries in regions where the superpowers competed through local proxies.

This task force met 18 times in the 1980s. We learned that bringing the same group together regularly created four opportunities: (1) It built a cumulative agenda—questions left unanswered in one meeting could be placed on the agenda for the next. (2) It built a common body of knowledge, both about each other’s analysis and about each superpower’s interest in these distant conflicts. (3) We gradually learned to talk analytically rather than engage in polemics. (4) Ultimately, we learned to work together.
As experience with unofficial dialogue accumulated, two concepts emerged:

First, relationship was defined by five components:
(1) Identity, the life experience that has brought a person or group to the present.

(2) Interests, both concrete and psychological, that bring people to a sense of their dependence on one another to achieve their goals.

(3) Power, defined not only as “control over superior resources and the actions of others” but as “the capacity of citizens acting together to influ¬ence the course of events without great material resources.”

(4) Perceptions, misperceptions, and stereotypes.

(5) Patterns of interaction, including respect for certain limits on behavior.

Second, we recognized from our semiannual meetings over a decade that, when people come together repeatedly in dialogue over time, one can discern a pattern in the evolution of their relationships.

From that insight came the conceptualization of Sustained Dialogue as a five-stage process—an analytical and working framework to permit moderators and participants alike to understand the progression of relationships as they grow together in dialogue.

Stage One: People in conflict decide to engage in dialogue—often with great difficulty—because they feel compelled to build a relationship to resolve problems.

Stage Two: Together they map and name the elements of those problems and the relationships responsible for creating and responding to them. At first, they vent their grievances and anger with each other. This venting provides both the ingredients for an ultimate agenda and an opportunity for moderators to analyze the dynamics of the relationships. This stage ends when someone says, “What we really need to focus on is . . .”

Stage Three: In much more analytical exchanges, participants probe the specific problem they have identified: (1) to name that problem in a way that reflects the concerns of all those affected by it; (2) to probe the dynamics of the relationships underlying that problem; (3) to broadly lay out possible ways to enter into those relationships in order to change them; (4) to weigh those possible approaches and to come to a sense of direction to guide the next steps; (5) to weigh the consequences of moving in that direction against the consequences of inaction; and (6) to decide whether to try designing such change.

Stage Four: Together they design a scenario of steps to be taken to change troublesome relationships and to precipitate practical actions. They sequence those steps so that they interact—one building on another, generating participa¬tion and momentum.

Stage Five: They devise ways to put that scenario into the hands of those who can act on it.

When the Soviet Union dissolved, RCTF members made three decisions: (1) They would focus on the new Russian-U.S. relationship. (2) They would complete the conceptualization of the process of dialogue they had learned together. (3) They would test that conceptualization by applying the process to one of the conflicts that had broken out in the territory of the former Soviet Union. They chose the Republic of Tajikistan, where a vicious civil war had broken out shortly after independence. The first meeting took place in March 1993.

In the 12 years since, Sustained Dialogue in Tajikistan has moved from peacemaking to peacebuilding. Tajikistani participants named themselves the “Inter-Tajik Dialogue in the Framework of the Dartmouth Conference.” In its first year, when Sustained Dialogue was the only channel between the government and the opposition, it helped begin a negotiation. In the next three years, they worked on a nonofficial track parallel to the formal UN-mediated negotiations. They injected important ideas that were incorporated in the Peace Agreement of 1997. That agreement established the National Reconciliation Commission to implement the Peace Agreement, with five Dialogue participants as members. In 2000, Dialogue participants formed their own NGO, the Public Committee for Democratic Processes.

In the summer of 2002, David Mathews, Kettering’s president, proposed moving Sustained Dialogue from the Kettering program to a space of its own to allow for fuller development. As Mathews said, the deliberative process is Kettering’s answer for strengthening peaceful communities; Sustained Dialogue is an answer to 9/11.

As a result, the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue was incorporated in the fall of 2002.

It works on five tracks: (1) It continues with its partners in the Dartmouth Regional Conflicts Task Force and independently to conduct dialogues on its own. The Tajiks are conducting dialogues in seven regions of their country, and there is prospect of a revival of the Inter-Tajik Dialogue itself. We are also conducting a dialogue among inhabitants of Armenia-Azerbaijan-Nagorno Karabakh, where a conflict has been stalemated for more than a decade. We are conducting a dialogue with individuals from the Muslim-Arab heartland, Western Europe, and the United States. (2) We are working with established NGOs in South Africa, New Zealand, and the Western Hemisphere to help them incorporate Sustained Dialogue in their programs. (3) In April 2005, our second annual collegiate conference drew 130 participants from 18 universities and high schools to learn how they as citizens can help heal relationships that block democratic collaboration. (4) Through a collaboration between Kettering and the Fielding Graduate Institute, we co-teach with Fielding faculty a course in dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement. (5) We are exploring the opportunities for transforming working relationships in the corporate world.

We are engaged in developing the substantive base for our work through practice and experiment and systema-tizing our knowledge in publications and training manuals. As with any unendowed organization, we are struggling to regular¬ize a long-term financial foundation.

Harold H. Saunders is the director of international affairs at the Kettering Foundation.

By Parviz Mullojanov

It was August 1999 when we, 17 Tajik citizens representing different political, social, and ethnic factions of our society, gathered in Moscow in order to participate in one of the most decisive and important rounds of the Inter-Tajik Sustained Dialogue. Begun in 1993 during one of the most disastrous periods of the Tajik civil war, the Inter-Tajik Dialogue had helped bring about the peace treaty, signed in 1997, between government and opposition forces. During the postconflict period, the dialogue had served as a way to discuss the most acute problems related to the peace process.

By 1999, there was one major concern shared equally by all of us: how to ensure the further strengthening of the peace- and confidence-building process in Tajikistan, how to make the peace in our country sustainable. The treaty had been seriously tested twice in the two years since its signing, by clashes and fighting between the progovernment and opposition troops, and it was our common feeling that something had to be done in order to guarantee further development of the Tajik peace process. Another concern was the future of the Inter-Tajik Dialogue: As internal political conditions in Tajikistan change, we asked ourselves, what shape and role should the dialogue take in the postconflict period?

During the August meeting, dialogue participants reached the following main conclusions: It was time to move from the discussion and deliberation process to the next stage: implementation of practical actions. Over the six-year course of the Inter-Tajik Dialogue, its members had managed to identify the most acute problems and obstacles confronting the peace process in Tajikistan. Moreover, they had managed to work out and propose a number of choices and approaches as a basis for some principal peace agreements The dialogue’s next stage — as it was identified by the August meeting participants — was to be a period of practical implementation of the major decisions and approaches worked out during the previous long and productive process of deliberation.

It was time to shift the Inter-Tajik Dialogue from Moscow to Tajikistan. Since the beginning, the dialogue had been held in Russia due to the complexity of the political situation in Tajikistan. But after the adoption of the peace treaty, internal political conditions became much more conducive to holding events such as the dialogue, inside the country.

It was also time to shift the dialogue from the top- and mid-levels to the level of ordinary citizens and communities. The official peace process involved a restricted number of top decision makers and could therefore be violated at any moment due to subjective reasons, such as personal misunderstanding between those involved or political self-interest. The only way to make the peace process really sustainable was to make it more public. In other words, the more people, especially on the community level, involved in the peace process, the more stable it will become.

During the August meeting, participants designed a plan of action that included concrete ways to implement the decisions resulting from the dialogue. One of the major decisions was to establish a nongovernmental organization (NGO) inside Tajikistan to be responsible for practical implementation of the action plan. The NGO was established and registered in Tajikistan in March 2000 as the Public Committee for Democratic Processes (PCDP).

The main course of action for the PCDP was carefully designed by a working group consisting of the most prominent members of the dialogue based on international experience; in this respect, the advice and recommendations of Harold Saunders, director of international affairs for the Kettering Foundation (KF), and KF associate Randa Slim were especially useful for working-group members.

One of the major directions of the PCDP became what is known as the Economic Development Committee (EDC) Track. This involved the establishment of citizen groups in three different regions of Tajikistan where ethnic, political, and social tensions still threatened regional stability. Each EDC’s primary aim was to mitigate the tensions and stabilize the situation on a community level by involving representatives of opposing groups in deliberation about social and economic issues, joint economic activities, and cooperation.

We decided that every EDC should consist of 12-15 people representing all levels, ethnic groups, and factions of local society. Representatives of different and sometimes opposing factions were to discuss economic and social problems specific to their region and find ways to solve them. In other words, the EDC Track could be described briefly as conflict resolution through social and economic development, with the main approach being public deliberation. The EDC Track proceeded in stages:

• First — We selected three regions of the republic: Kofarnihon, located near the capital, Dushanbe, and considered one of the opposition strongholds; Shahritus, located along the Afghan-Tajik border; and the city of Qurghan-teppa, located in the south. The three regions are different but, at the same time, they had one particular feature in common: in all of them, clashes and atrocities during the civil war were widespread. As a result, the tension between local communities and ethnic groups was still high. The Kofarnihon and Shahritus EDCs were created on the community level. The Qurghan-teppa EDC, however, was established on the government level and was supervised by the local deputy mayor, which turned out to be a mistake: being too official, the Qurghan-teppa EDC finally failed and was discontinued at the end of the first year. But the other two EDCs survived and are successfully continuing their activities today.

• Second — We carefully selected two moderators in every region. We tried to find the most respected and influential people to use as our representatives in the regions. We asked the moderators to identify among local people potential participants for every EDC. In order to get good feedback, it was especially important to ensure wide representation on the EDCs. Therefore, EDC members represent all levels and ethnic groups of local society; among them are doctors, farmers, engineers, laborers, journalists, and local officeholders. We tried also to maintain balance inside every EDC in order to avoid any kind of domination in terms of ethnic, regional, or professional affiliation.

• Third — In June 2000, we conducted the first training workshop for the moderators. During the next two years, every EDC moderator participated in a series of workshops on moderating skills held by the Public Committee.

• Fourth — Each EDC conducted a series of monthly meetings during which the participants discussed economic and social conditions in their region and identified a cluster of the most acute problems and issues. In the course of the first year, EDC members successfully completed the issue-framing and naming stages. Throughout this period, PC representatives participated in every EDC meeting, taking responsibility for logistical issues and helping local moderators facilitate when necessary.

• Fifth — At the end of the first year, the EDCs entered the next stage: the design of concrete actions. In the previous stage, they had managed to identify the most acute economic and social problems in their communities; during the next stage, they identified ways and mechanisms to solve the problems. The Public Committee offered to EDC members a series of one- or two-day training workshops on fundraising and proposal writing. EDC members then developed concrete projects and proposals, which were later submitted to the appropriate donor agencies. A separate working group made up of EDC members and invited experts from outside worked out the details for each project.

• Sixth — The two EDCs have each developed a few proposals based on the needs and characteristics of their regions. For instance, in Kofarnihon, where many stock-breeding farms are located, the EDC developed proposals for the creation of a milk-processing factory in the region. By the end of the second year, donor agencies had approved some of the proposals, and both EDCs entered the stage of practical implementation of their own ideas and plans.

• Seventh — Today, the Public Committee is shifting its attention to other regions of the country, creating new EDCs in the city of Kulob (south) and Buston district (north). As for the original EDCs, they themselves were responsible for defining their future: they had to decide whether to end their activities after implementation of the first grants or to continue their own development as informal associations of citizens or NGOs.

Both Kofarnihon and Shahritus EDC members have decided for now to continue their activities. As one of the Kofarnihon EDC members recently stated: “We want to continue our EDC activities because this is an opportunity for us to become more responsible for our own future and rely on our own efforts.”

During my last visit to Kofarnihon, I asked a group of local EDC members to define the main outcomes of their work. Their answers could be summarized in the following way: First of all, the relationship inside the EDC between representatives of different communities and ethnic groups has essentially changed. Through working together, people have established steady contacts and, sometimes, even friendships.

As members of the EDC working groups, they were accustomed to meeting frequently, and for many of them, seeing each other every other day has turned into a kind of habit. As a result, the stereotypes and biases they used to have about each other have diminished. Moreover, they have begun to understand that economic and social development of their communities cannot be secured without joint efforts by all community members, regardless of their political or ethnic backgrounds.

In the future, as proposals and projects are implemented, cooperation between EDC members is going to increase. This would gradually affect more and more people outside of the EDCs. In time, the relationships between the communities and people involved should improve and become more peaceful and cooperative instead of conflictual. I suspect this would be the real and most essential outcome of our dialogue.

Parviz Mullojanov is director of programs for the Public Committee for Democratic Processes in Tajikistan.

By Angela Romano

Immigration is controversial not only in the United States, but in countless other countries as well. Although Australia was a haven for political refugees from East Timor and Kosovo in the late 1990s, since 2001 the nation has been divided politically over how to respond to asylum seekers. Observers believe that much of the angry, disruptive debate has been fueled by the media—in particular talk radio, or talkback radio as it is called in Australia. This is ironic because only a few years before, the same medium was key to pressuring the government to accept Albanian refugees from Kosovo. Public support at that time was broad. As one caller to a popular talkback program put it in the 1990s, “I’d put a couple up, mate. I have a couple of spare beds and plenty of tucker.”

However, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and deteriorating economies in the Middle East have changed the situation drastically. Since 1999, asylum seekers, rather than apply at Australian embassies abroad, have increasingly attempted to arrive by boat and apply directly for refugee status. Although government policies have stemmed the flow of asylum seekers, the political and financial costs have been high. By some estimates, the effort to intercept and detain would-be refugees is costing the country as much as $300 million (Australian) per year—$300,000 for each refugee prevented from entering the country.

Given the issue’s divisiveness, journalism faculty and students at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) began a research project to explore whether a more deliberative form of public discussion on the airwaves might have yielded a differ¬ent outcome. The project places journalists at the centre of community deliberation on the economic and social challenges created by incoming asylum seekers and refugees. The effort did not begin with the belief that a “best answer” already existed; rather, the goal was to explore how the media might gauge public concerns on the issue and cover the news so as to help citizens resolve those concerns.

Although most media coverage relied on official sources in government, busi¬ness, and elsewhere, the QUT group has experimented with approaches that permit ordinary citizens to establish the news agenda. Queenslanders, for example, were asked what concerned them about asylum seekers and refugees and why they held those concerns. The short-term goal is to use this knowledge to produce stories on topics about which citizens feel confused or insufficiently informed. The long-term goal is to develop a guide for further public deliberation that contains key aspects of traditional NIF or Kettering issue books and that reveals how communities (1) nominate or name particular problems, (2) frame them to reveal their true nature or the underlying problems behind them, (3) identify possible solutions, and (4) weigh the benefits and tradeoffs associated with those solutions. Those ideas, accordingly, will then provide both a guide and the material for future radio news on the topic.

Beyond simply offering an example of how journalists can better connect with the public, our research has revealed how journalists’ own framing of the issue—through the use of both sources and language—made it difficult for the public to come to terms with the issue. Few citizens have any direct contact with asylum seekers. The press, as well, has little contact, since journalists’ access to detention centers is severely limited. Because of those restrictions, the media group Reporters Sans Frontiéres (Reporters Without Borders) downgraded Australia’s position on its International Press Freedom Index from 12th to 15th.

Although conservative columnists have criticized the press as “too soft” on asylum seekers, a considerable body of academic research and press commentary presents a very different picture. Rather than being soft, press accounts have often demonized asylum seekers—describing their arrival in terms of invasion, attack, contagious disease, floods, or tidal waves. Numerous media accounts circulated mes¬sages that asylum seekers might include “sleeper” terrorists who threaten national security. When public tension was high, news stories seldom included the voices of asylum seekers or refugees themselves. Mass media outlets, particularly tabloids and talkback radio, reflected the general Australian discomfort with the increased numbers of Middle Eastern and Islamic people among asylum seekers and refugees.

Strict government control of detainees and detention centers created problems for journalists, but other problems sprang from the journalists’ own limited understanding of the issues involved. One example is the so-called Tampa crisis of 2001 when the Howard government refused to allow a group of asylum seekers, who had been rescued by a Norwegian tanker after their boat began sinking, onto Australian soil so that their applications for refugee status could be considered. Press coverage used terms like refugees, boat people, and illegal immigrants as if they were interchangeable.

The press was also so disconnected from the public that it failed to indicate why people were so anxious about asylum seekers when there had been no increase in the number of applicants in several years. The only change had been that more asylum seekers were lodging their applications onshore after travelling to Australia by boat. Our current research project attempts to identify how a deeper understanding of these community concerns could help journalists better address the public’s information needs. The QUT program attempts to use a variety of strategies—stakeholder consultations, community forums, town hall meetings, and focus groups.

Early research identified some significant trends. Public support for refugees accepted through offshore programs was increasing at the same time support was falling for asylum seekers attempting to reach Australian shores by boat. There was, however, little evidence of this nuance in media coverage. Although government policies have greatly reduced the arrival of boat refugees (since 2001 only one boat has arrived), nothing has been done to address the underlying social roots of the public’s particular con¬cern about asylum seekers arriving by boat.

Citizens might work through these issues better if the news they received included the following: more information about the political problems that prompted the increase in the asylum seekers arriving by boat, their experiences, how claims are processed, how Australians might determine whether boat refugees are a threat or a useful addition to society, and what alternative responses Australians might make to their arrival.

To test these ideas we initiated a pilot program, “New Horizons, New Homes,” three 30-minute programs that aired on community radio in March. These productions taught students a great deal, as they had to learn to frame issues, manage and condense a variety and volume of information, and maintain their objectivity and impartiality while doing so.

Balance was a problem. News coverage of the boat people has been largely negative, but few formal groups exist with overtly anti-immigration stances and even fewer were willing to go on the air in support of current or increased government restrictions. This is contrary to the situation in the United States where anti-immigrant groups abound. At the same time, government officials were reluctant to speak with student journalists in detail—making it hard to obtain alternative viewpoints from formal institutions on the issue. This situation, however, had an unexpected benefit, in that it forced students to engage more directly with the local community. Students spoke to more than 130 citizens, and, from those discussions, selected and aired a range of comments that typified community concerns.

In the longer term, this project will explore strategies to build journalism’s role as a mediator of community politics. New models of journalistic practice may ultimately produce better solutions for Australian communities and strengthen Australia’s social fabric.

Angela Romano is a senior lecturer in Journalism at the Queensland University of Technology.