Generating Enthusiams through Public Involvement Forums in Japan

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Published March, 2003
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CBI Practitioners: 
Lawrence Susskind

 

CBI is working with a network of Japanese not-for-profit organizations and government officials in exploring ways of using consensus-building tools to address public policy disputes in Japan. The Public Involvement Forum, or PI-Forum, has teamed up with CBI to introduce these techniques to a Japanese audience through cases, simulations and training. CBI has prepared a repository of information that will be provided to public officials and researchers in the field through an on-line (Japanese) database. In addition, CBI President Larry Susskind and consultant Masahiro Matsuura presented a two-day seminar on consensus building in Tokyo on March 27-28, 2003.

 

What is PI-Forum?
PI-Forum evolved out of a loose network of professionals in the field of public policy-making in Japan who have an interest in participatory planning methods and was incorporated as a not-for-profit in 2002. Membership consists of government officials, university professors and professionals in the private sector. PI-Forum has hosted several “after-five,” informal seminars and workshops by well-known professors and cutting-edge practitioners. It is also in the process of launching the first on-line database of consensus building and public participation materials in Japan with the goal of providing these tools and information to both practitioners and researchers interested in consensus based processes.


On-line Database
On the database, anyone will be able to include their name and expertise on a list of dispute resolution practitioners. The list will be available to the public and assist parties to identify practitioners available to undertake and manage public dispute resolution processes. In the near future, PI-Forum will consider ways to certify practitioners on the list.

The database includes a list of documents and consensus building manuals of interest to practitioners and researchers. PI-Forum continues to compile information on articles and reports to make the database as comprehensive as possible. Users will be able to add relevant documents to the catalog, as well as, provide reviews of the listed files.

Case studies are very important tools for Japanese policy-makers to understand new policy instruments and frameworks, and as a Japanese maxim says, “To find something new is to learn from the past.” Providing an acceptable mechanism for sharing case studies will greatly facilitate spreading the idea of consensus building to public officials in Japan. The cases, specially written for PI-Forum by CBI, are broken into a systematic format that that will facilitate comparisons across cases and guide researchers in creating their own case studies. Currently, the database is only available in Japanese, however, PI-Forum is eager to make it available in other languages.

 

International Seminar in Tokyo
In order to ensure that interested practitioners increase their understanding of consensus building, Larry Susskind and Masahiro Matsuura presented a two-day training in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, on March 27 and 28, 2003. More than 70 government agency officials, policy analysts, consultants, NGO activists, university professors and graduate students attended. The course covered the basics of the mutual gains approach and the consensus building process through a series of lectures and simulations. Although materials drew from cases based in the United States and not Japan, participants found them extremely useful. According to a training organizer, the event was given an extraordinarily high evaluation.

Two days is not enough for participants to thoroughly understand the theory and practice of consensus building. However, the training has generated a high level of enthusiasm among professionals interested in testing consensus building techniques. More extensive discussions on how to “import” these ideas and techniques will include a wide array of stakeholders, experiments in field, and the evaluation of such experiments.

 

For more information on this case, please contact CBI.