Public Policy Institutes: Where It All Begins

Public Policy Institutes (PPIs) serve as the window to NIF, or National Issues Forums. We assume that you are attending a PPI to learn about NIF because your community is at a crossroads and needs to learn how to talk about critical issues in a nonconfrontational, nonpartisan manner.

At a PPI, you learn how to do that. You learn how to take responsibility for your community, come together as a public, talk through the issues that concern you, and act together to address the issue at hand.

We call that doing deliberative democracy.

NIF is a way to develop deliberative skills. To deliberate means to weigh. NIF forums and study circles help citizens weigh carefully the advantages, disadvantages, costs, and trade-offs of basic choices about an issue.

PPIs concentrate on building strategies and skills for planning and organizing a forum and for moderating deliberative decision making.

PPIs hold an NIF forum to which both the participants and members of the community at large are invited. At those forums, we use what we call an NIF issue book. Each year, the NIF program develops a number of nonpartisan issue books. They are carefully written to assist citizens in deliberating together in order to make hard choices about tough issues. These books are used by more than 6,000 communities and organizations of many different kinds across the nation. These communities and organizations operate their own programs.

However, NIF is not an organization. NIF is a network of citizens and their organizations.

Best put: NIF is public space without an address.

In addition to the forum, most of the PPIs also hold small-group forums on NIF issues within a small-group setting. Here, participants get their first opportunity to try their hand at moderating. In this respect, NIF issue books "jump-start" deliberation. They use one or more of the NIF issue books as a vehicle for developing these strategies and skills.

PPIs may go more deeply into the tasks of organizing forums and working with officeholders. They may provide more discussion about how to develop steering committees to aid in the planning. They may provide opportunities for participants with like interests to meet in "affinity groups" - like teachers, law enforcement officers, literacy volunteers, community leadership development alumni, etc.

This year, there are 29 PPI sites in 25 states. They arc sponsored by a variety of organizations: a neighborhood association, a statewide humanities foundation, community colleges, various universities, national organizations, and an assortment of other institutions. Please read the listing of the 2001 PPIs on the PPI page.

Some of the PPIs have a local, community focus. Some focus on larger cities or parts of a state. Some are statewide in orientation. Some attract regional or national participation. Some focus on general populations of citizens. Some are more oriented toward a segment of the public, such as high school teachers and students. Several are only two days in length. One is five days, and includes a two-day issue-framing workshop. Three days is the norm.

This year, the Criminal justice PPI is in its first year of operation. Others have been in place for many years.

Whether the PPI you are attending is being held for the first time or is one of the oldest, we want you to come away with an understanding of the deliberative process and the enthusiasm necessary to take that understanding back to your home community and put it to work. Later, we hope you will share your success stories with us. That is how we are further able to spread the word about deliberative democracy.