Social & Economic Policy

The Challenge

On economic and social policy questions, perceptions about the “right” answers are often embedded in moral beliefs and backgrounds. Even when leaders and citizens have broadly shared goals—expanding economic opportunity, improving public education, increasing health insurance coverage, decreasing gun violence, reducing crime, or creating affordable housing—differences in experience, values, and perspectives can create conflict over how to achieve them. Analysis and public engagement are important, but expert-led decision-making and traditional public engagement processes—voting, public meetings, advocacy—are often ineffective at building consensus on these issues.

Our Approach

CBI has extensive experience with interrelated economic and social policy challenges. Our mediators build shared vision, agreements, and effective partnerships at every level from local to global, seeking a shift from polarized positions to a search for solutions that support common and complementary goals and values. In process-design and in our work with decisionmakers, advocates and citizens, we:

• Help stakeholders understand not only each other’s policy goals, but also the values that underpin those goals
• Create a joint search for new possibilities, driven by shared values and complementary interests
• Use future visioning to break through current impasses and the status quo
• Build mutual respect and relationships along with analytic rigor and policy feasibility
• Ensure that stakeholder dialogue and formal policymaking processes inform and influence each other

With this foundation, CBI helps increase the chances of finding common ground on the most challenging economic and social issues. 

Areas of Expertise

• Economic opportunity and mobility
• Public and affordable housing
• Community integration and development
• Criminal justice, re-entry, and reintegration
• Health care and long-term care reform
• Public education and learning