Consensus Building and Sustainability Transition

Spring Semester, Wednesdays 13:30-15:10 Room 310H

The course deals with two essential themes in policy-making processes: consensus building and sustainability transition.

Consensus building is an integral part of policy-making in any part of the world. Through community meetings, policy-makers need to negotiate and reach an agreement with a wide variety of stakeholders in order to implement their proposals. Other modes of public engagement for deliberative democracy have been explored in recent years as well. For example, Climate Assemblies organized in different parts of Europe convene randomly sampled citizens and ask them to deliberate on climate policy in a “minipublics” format.

In addition, the sustainability transition (transformation) has become a critical issue in the face of climate change worldwide. For example, the transition from internal combustion engines to battery electric vehicles has to be accelerated in developed nations to meet the mandates. The theory and practice of transition management seek to accelerate sustainability transition by strategically promoting frontrunners and softening the incumbent regimes.

This course will review theories of public participation and democratic engagements and provide practical instructions for designing processes for negotiation, deliberation, or sustainability transition. The course aims to nurture students' skills in designing and managing appropriate public participation and transition processes in different settings.

Course schedule (TBD)

#1	Introduction	-Introduction to the course
#2	Overview of participatory, collaborative, and deliberative processes	- Three categories of democratic engagements in policy-making (participatory, collaborative, and deliberative processes) will be reviewed.
#3	Designing collaborative processes	- Consensus building processes for involving stakeholders and seeking negotiated agreements - Stakeholder analysis
#4	Theory and practice of deliberative democracy	- Challenges of value-laden conflicts - Practice of deliberative democracy through mini-publics
#5	Theory of transition and its management	- Limits of negotiation-driven processes and the need for accelerating sustainability transition - Transition management processes
#6	Mid-term presentations	- Each student is asked to suggest a topic/issue of their choice.
#7	Cases from Japan	-Learning from project stories
#8	Facilitating dialogue	- Learn practical techniques for facilitating dialogues for negotiation
#9	Final-presentations	- Each student is asked to suggest an outline of consensus building or transition management processes for the topic of their choice.
#10-12	SITE VISIT	Narita Airport and Community Historical Museum and/or Suginami Garbage-War Museum
#13-14	SITE VISIT	CLIMATE ASSEMBLY OR PARTICIPATORY PROCESSES IN THE KANTO REGION

 

 

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