Bridging the gap between public officials and the public

A report by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, 2011
By Tina Nabatchi and Cynthia Farrar

This report explores what elected officials know and think about public deliberation, as well as what they need to know to assess the potential value of public deliberation as a governance tool. Data from interviews with twenty-four state legislators and senior staff for federal legislators yielded some provocative results with practical implications for the field of public deliberation.