Great to see that collaboration and deliberation have currency in the current administration. In particular, I am pleased that the very ideal of a "citizen" - informed, empowered, engaged - has subverted the formerly prominent "customer."

What worries me though is that "collaboration" and "deliberation" are pitted against each, both in Dr Noveck's book and in the way the two are positioned in your blog post. Phrases like "lack of imagination," "procedural uniformity," and "orderly discussion" are far too derisive to be representative of the actual state of play in the field.

What I think is more important than a review of the merits of public deliberation is clarification of basic premises here: deliberation plays a fundamentally different role in governance than collaboration, and so the comparison is something of apples to oranges.

Deliberation constitutes a set of practices that clarify how the public thinks, and where its policy preferences lie. Collaboration defines a set of practices for translating those priorities into workable public policy.

I hope in future conversations the two sets of practices can be seen as complementary toward producing more enduring and effective public policy as we continue to shape our union.

Cheers!

Thanks John. One area I agree with Beth (from what I can learn here; I need to pick up the book) is the way deliberative processes have suffered by giving experts a "backseat" in public processes eg often informants to background materials or "presenters" set up as issue "framers" and context setters.

The missed opportunity is for them to work with the public to deepen understanding, evaluate complex trade-offs, and even for them to get a window in on how the public thinks and wrestles with the issues.

What collaborative processes tend to achieve is a more instrumental application of expert knowledge, in service of optimal policy design. Cheers.