Based on a nationwide survey of voters, this is a study of the historic 1993 New Zealand general election and referendum. It seeks to explain why New Zealanders made the choices they did - an extremely narrow majority for the National Party and a decision to shift to MMP representation.

On Consensus: A Framework for Adaptive Action is a tool in the toolbox of anyone looking to improve decision-making processes in general and to build consensus in particular. The book provides not only a step-by-step approach to building consensus but it also provides a framework for thinking about how to think about consensus. All institutions are built and sustained through some sort of consensus. The degree to which the consensus that underwrites institutions is conscious determines the future viability of collective choices and actions. Democracy is in need of better tools and thinking on consensus. The book provides a leverage for those involved in high stakes decision-making, especially where there is a convergence of governance, development and stewardship. It explores what is required to arrive at a conscious consensus and to build a path towards more adaptive action. Decision-framing... a profound meeting of minds.

Real organizational change isn't brought about by decree, pressure, permission, or even persuasion. Sustained change comes when people are passionately and personally committed to a future that they have helped to shape. If you want to turn your organization's cynics into owners, give them a voice in the decisions that impact their work. Consensus Through Conversation shows how. Consensus is a cooperative process in which all of a group's members develop and agree to actively support a decision. It's not mere acquiescence--consensus goes several steps beyond, transforming people from resigned instruction-followers to dedicated champions of an idea. Larry Dressler shows you exactly how to prepare for a successful consensus-building process, takes you step-by-step through that process, and offers tips for success and traps to avoid. Throughout, he provides a host of tools and examples that make this an eminently practical and immediately useful guide. Consensus Through Conversation will give you the tools you need to use consensus effectively in your organization. It is a handy, vital reference that you will turn to again and again in your efforts to tackle high stakes issues, make high quality decisions, and build enthusiasm and commitment to action.

Through a collaboration among twenty legal scholars from North America, Europe and Asia, this book presents an international consensus on the use of patent remedies for complex products such as smartphones, computer networks, and the Internet of Things. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This title was published in 2000: This text offers a standpoint on communicative, participatory planning called "consensus planning". The discussion takes place in the Netherlands, where consensus-based decision-making is part of the national heritage. The book explores recent Dutch infrastructure development experiences and concludes that communicative planning theory does not offer uniform relevance for the challenges that planning practitioners face. Building on these experiences, it proposes the concept of consensus planning as valuable in a complementary, normalized, and contingent way. Consensus planning, in other words, has diverse practical appearances and sometimes may not exist or be desirable.

Some philosophers on the African continent and beyond are convinced that consensus, as a polity, represents the best chance for Africa to fully democratise. In Consensus as Democracy in Africa, Bernard Matolino challenges the basic assumptions built into consensus as a social and political theory. Central to his challenge to the claimed viability of consensus as a democratic system are three major questions: Is consensus genuinely superior to its majoritarian counterpart? Is consensus itself truly a democratic system? Is consensus sufficiently different from the one-party system? In taking up these issues and others closely associated with them, Matolino shows that consensus as a system of democracy encounters several challenges that make its viability highly doubtful. Matolino then attempts a combination of an understanding of an authentic mode of democracy with African reality to work out what a more desirable polity would be for the continent.

The demand for consensus arises due to its absence. For each opinion held there will be another to counter it, and for each approach to problem solving an alternative will be suggested. Focusing on the bioethical problems surrounding new technical interventions in human reproduction, 15 authors try to examine the meaning, importance and feasibility of consensus. The very different perspectives from the philosophers, physicians, lawyers, theologians, politicians and sociologists contributing to this topic reflect on the difficulties and complexity of moral decision making, offer views on the problem of why decision making does not take place more harmoniously and asks if there can be any hope of a solution in a world where the discipline of contemporary ethics is characterised by a vast diversity - or chaos - of heterogenous theories and concurring approaches. This book is intended for philosophers, physicians, ethicists and everyone involved in moral decision making, to shape his or her understanding of this process and to help him or her to reflect on the concept of consensus.