RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS
Dr. Jonathan E. Collins academic research has been published in the American Political Science Review, Political Behavior, the Urban Affairs Review, Politics Groups & Identities, the Journal of Urban Affairs, Local Government Studies, and the Harvard Journal of African American Policy.
Public meetings are central part of American democracy and they happen all of the time. Public meetings also offer the greatest opportunity for us to have direct contact with our public officials. However, we have very few studies that focus on their importance. Democracy Speaks addresses this gap by offering a theory of the impact of engaging public meetings. Grounded in theories of participatory democracy and democratic deliberation, Democracy Speaks offers a full conceptual model and a range of empirical tests that demonstrate the implications for having school boards and city councils that commit to using public meetings as the space for open discourse with community stakeholders. The book manuscript is in preparation.
Here are research projects connected to Democracy Speaks:
DEMOCRATIC INNOVATION
RESEARCH PROJECTS
THE COMMUNITY DECIDES
Can we foster racial equity in the U.S. by empowering the school communities of low-income Black and Latinx families? The Community Decides project explores this question by initiating and evaluating a democratic process rooted in participatory democracy and deliberation. Through our process, students and parents of minoritized schools gain the opportunity to have direct input over the use of supplementary funding aimed towards improving their neighborhood school. This is a multi-year study aiming to assess the causal impact of a democratic intervention on individual empowerment and overall school improvement
CONNECTING CONGRESS TO CLASSROOMS
We propose to develop and test a technology-enabled experiential approach to deepening civic education in the high school social studies curriculum. The capstone experience at the center of our curriculum module is an online Deliberative Town Hall that engages students and teachers directly with their sitting member of Congress. This powerful, direct and authentic experience with democracy in practice will be embedded in a rigorous social studies curricular unit where high school students study a controversial topic that is of interest to them – and one that policymakers at the national level are grappling with – and then discuss the issue first with students from a different part of the state, and then with one of those very same policy makers.
Click Here for More Information on: Connecting Classrooms to Congress
VOCES CON PONDER
At the outset of the summer, the leaders of the Central Falls Public School District (CFSD) of Central Falls, RI allocated $100,000 for the public to decide its use. The dollars came by way of a federal grant received through the Elementary and Secondary School Relief (ESSR) funds. Public engagement in the decision-making process would center on a democratic innovation design called participatory budgeting (PB).
Click here for: Voces con Poder Evaluation Brief
Click here for: Voces con Poder Evaluation Full Report
PUBLICATIONS
Collins, J. E. (2021). Does the Meeting Style Matter? The Effects of Exposure to Participatory and Deliberative School Board Meetings. American Political Science Review, 1-15.
“Does Meeting Style Matter?” (public access version).
Collins, J., Lucero, E., & Trounstine, J. (2020). Will Concurrent Elections Reshape the Electorate?. California Journal of Politics and Policy, 1(1).
Collins, J. E. (2020). Do Teachers Want Democracy? Deliberative Culture and Teachers’ Evaluations of Schools. Urban Affairs Review, 56(5), 1529-1552.
Scott, J. S., & Collins, J. (2020). Riled up about running for office: examining the impact of emotions on political ambition. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 1-16.
Collins, J., & Block, R. (2018). Fired up, ready to go: The impact of age, campaign enthusiasm, and civic duty on African American voting. Political Behavior, 1-36.
Collins, J. (2018). Urban representation through deliberation: A theory and test of deliberative democracy at the local level. Journal of Urban Affairs, 40(7), 952-973.
Collins, J. (2017). Buying schools with social capital: how local response to state reform fosters education revenue inequality. Local Government Studies, 43(1), 22-43.