Tensions in Deliberative Practice: A View from Civil Society.

This paper presents empirical findings from an interpretive case study of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice (the Network). It focuses on their efforts to develop policy ideas grounded in the experience of their members, and to promote them throughout the "deliberative system," a series of forums and spheres where communicative practices that foster critical, public reflection take place. Findings indicate that the organization adopts a "dual strategy" where they collaborate with government agents in face-to-face deliberative forums and take independent action outside them. This dual strategy surfaces two tensions in deliberative practice that the Network learned to manage in order to get their ideas onto the public stage: 1) doing policy advocacy that requires collaboration with policy elites while staying "bottom up," and 2) developing policy ideas relevant to decision makers while maintaining the autonomy to be critical. Acknowledgements: I gratefully acknowledge the contribution of staff, affiliates, and colleagues of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice for their contribution to this research. They brought to interviews a deep knowledge of the environmental justice movement and its history in New Mexico. This research was supported by the Research and Documentation component of Leadership for a Changing World (LCW), a program sponsored by the Ford Foundation; I recognize the contributions of my colleagues at the Research Center for Leadership in Action, and our co-researchers and partners in LCW who shaped my understanding of social change work. I am grateful for the comments of anonymous reviewers and participants of the panel 'Accounting for politics in applications of deliberative democracy theory' at the Interpretative Policy Analysis Conference in 2008, where this paper was first presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]