Deliberation is the process of making choices about how to approach wicked issues together. The process involves choicework, meaning groups of people from all different walks of life having to weigh actions against possible tradeoffs or consequences and deciding what actions would the group could live with.
Deliberation is ‘the kind of reasoning and talking we do when a difficult decision has to be made, a great deal is at stake, and there are competing options or approaches we might take. It means to weigh possible actions carefully by examining what is most valuable to us.’
– Kettering Foundation (link)
The Bridging Wicked Divides project and its collaborations utilize deliberation because of its benefits to democracy and to the public. We often use a model of deliberative forums developed by the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI), one of the oldest and most practiced methods of public deliberation in the U.S.