Questions for the book club

Tomorrow - Thursday, May 15 - we'll hold the spring meeting of the Everyday Democracy Book Club right here at Democracy Space. The live blog session will run one hour, from 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern, featuring Matt Leighninger and his book, The Next Form of Democracy: How Expert Rule Is Giving Way to Shared Governance - and Why Politics Will Never Be the Same.

Below are a few questions we'll try to ask Matt during the event. You'll have a chance to ask questions "from the floor," too.

What new things have you learned about civic involvement  since finishing your book? Can you give examples of a few new shared governance programs that have emerged since its publication?

What sort of updates are you getting from the communities that you featured in the book? What progress are people in those areas continuing to make in their efforts to involve citizens more deeply in democracy? What challenges are they facing?

Do you think the intense interest in this year's U.S. presidential election will translate into more people being interested in active involvement in their local government. Why or why not?

You live in Canada, but you are an American citizen. How has this dual perspective influenced your research and your writing about the growth in this new form of democracy? Are there lessons the two nations can learn from one another? What can North America learn from other regions of the world?

And here are a few questions mentioned during the recent PACE webinar, "How Local Governments Are Reinventing Civic Engagement." We can tackle these if we have time, too.

What's better - temporary processes for public engagement, or permanent structures? If the former, should they be run by city employees or outside facilitators? If the latter, how can such structures be sustained?

Should more decisions be made and implemented at the neighborhood level?

Should citizen participants be selected randomly or by interest level?

Can we develop a new language to better describe these new forms of shared governance, as well as minimum standards to guide everyone doing the work?

We hope to see you back here at DemSpace at 1 p.m. Eastern on Thursday.