Planungszelle
International
- Citizens
Jury®
Jefferson
Center (USA)
The
Jefferson Center is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization
that advocates the use of a democratic process known
as the Citizens Jury®.
The
aim of the Center has been to create and maintain
a high quality method for engaging a microcosm of
the public in the discussion of public policy issues.
The Citizens Jury process brings together 18 to
24 randomly selected citizens for five days of hearings
in which they hear from a variety of witnesses,
deliberate among themselves and report their findings
to decision makers and the public.
The
Center does not take stands on issues. Its
commitment is to empower the public in a fair and
neutral setting to discover what it believes are
the best ways to deal with significant public issues.
The
Citizens Jury process is very similar to the Planungszelle,
invented in Germany by Peter Dienel in the early
1970s. Together these models were introduced
in Great Britain in the middle 1990s by the Institute
for Public Policy Research in London. Since then
the process has spread to Australia, Spain, India
and elsewhere.
The
Center stands ready to help those interested in
undertaking new Citizens Jury projects.
Link:
http://www.jefferson-center.org
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Spain
Spain
- Citizen Participation as a Tool in Environmental
Education
by Hans Harms
The
"Planning Cell" method
A
mechanism which fulfils these requirements is the
"planning cell" developed by Prof. Peter Dienel
at the "Forschungsstelle für Bürgerbeteiligung
und Planungsverfahren" (Research Office for Citizen’s
Participation and Planning Processes) at the University
of Wuppertal in the seventies and which aims to
bring citizens’ interests into planning and
decision processes at different levels (communities,
national, international). The "planning cell" is
a group of citizens selected in a random procedure
and released (with remuneration) from their daily
activities for a limited period in order to work
out solutions to problems, assisted by process moderators.
In this method citizens act as lay assessors or
lay planners. On the one hand, citizens are given
the chance to participate personally in the joint
formation of informed opinion, with a realistic
prospect of producing an actual impact (process
aspect, participation). On the other hand, the method
provides the prospect of a prompt and appropriate
solution to relevant problems (result-/product aspect).
In order to realistically achieve these aims, it
is important to ensure that the participants are
sufficiently informed and motivated and also that
the group is "immunized" against external interests
influencing their decision, and against the organization-specific
interests of the process itself. The procedure has
been tested out and refined several times in the
past in various different types of projects dealing
with different topics, including environmental matters.
"Polis
- International Network in Environmental Education"
Link:
http://allies.alliance21.org/polis/spip.php?article173
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