Election winners frequently tout their success as a mandate to do as they choose, suggesting that they have been ordained to represent and act on overwhelming public opinion. This is generally the argument regardless of the winning party and it’s generally wrong.

I have to think that this is something ...
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What if you were in a coma for six years and woke up to the social media apocalypse of 2016? Ask blogger Hossein Derakhshan. He was jailed from 2008 to 2014 in Tehran for his online activism about Iran. In his November article for MIT Technology review, he writes:

“when ...
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In the December 29 issue of the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria writes an interesting column on the trajectory of democracy in the United States.

In it, he discusses the concept of “illiberal democracy” where elections and populism are in place, but the rule of law, respect for minorities, freedom ...
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What is a town hall meeting?

In the United States, a town hall meeting is an informal public meeting, function, or event derived from the traditional town hall meetings of Colonial America. Typically open to everybody in a town community and held at the local municipal building, attendees would present ...
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Across the US, civility is declining. We could argue about why – but the bottom line is that our communities’ capacity to have constructive conversations about things that matter is not what it used to be. People are not always interested in finding agreement and some even come to public ...
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Lots of things changed on November 8, not the least of which was our time-honored tradition of conducting and relying on public opinion polls as reasonable predictors of outcomes. It was fascinating on election night to watch as it slowly dawned on the media that their entire paradigm had shifted; ...
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Community development is in trouble. By that I mean people who work for government and who help develop communities are in trouble. Not every public sector agency or employee, of course, but these are difficult days for those who believe that the pursuit of facts, truth, reason, building communities, and ...
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Ground Rules for Citizen Engagement

Across the US, civility is declining. We could argue about why, but the bottom line is that our communities’ capacity to have constructive conversations about things that matter is not what it used to be. People are not interested in finding agreement and some even ...
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