Deliberative practices have long been a central part of self-governance in the Global South. Nevertheless, following the so-called “deliberative turn” in democratic theory in the 1980s, new citizen deliberation practices flourished in the Global South and North, giving rise to a growing demographic of deliberative practitioners or public participation professionals inside bureaucracies, in the private sector, and in nongovernmental organizations (Lee, 2014; Friess & Herff, 2023; Bherer, Gauthier & Simard 2017). Starting with Central and Western Europe, North America, and Oceania, demand from institutional actors and a growing capacity precipitated networks like the Democracy R&D, National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD), International Association for Public Participation (IAP2), and the International Association for Facilitators (IAF). These networks constitute sites of knowledge transfer and co-creation in the ecosystem, alongside other channels such as conferences, publications, fellowship or train-to-trainer programs, certifications, databases, and open-source software (OECD, 2022). In addition to formal sites, we can also identify mutual learning as happening in informal, interpersonal interactions between practitioners as well as during the implementation of projects that are co-delivered by more than one organization.

Take a moment to try to identify how you rate the value of spaces, tools, or interactions in the deliberative democracy ecosystem. Do you consider how well a network facilitates important connections for you or introduces you to best practices? When you download a how-to guidebook pdf, is it important how well-researched the recommendations are, or how applicable they are to your context? Does the authority of the individual authors or organizations matter?

How would these evaluations change if we applied Global South and mutual learning perspectives to these sites? Beginning from the perspective that learning is political pushes us to take a step back and re-interrogate the value of the spaces where we engage with like-minded peers and the value of the products, we circulate to share knowledge. For example, we can think once more about what makes an organization seem reputable to us or why something is considered a best practice. Rather than intrinsic, obvious facts, the value we ascribe to knowledge in our practice worlds is implicated in broader patterns of power and authority.

Lupia and Norton (2017) importantly reminded us that inequality is always in the room within a deliberative forum. We ought also to consider the potential that inequality is in the room—in our networks, handbooks, projects, or informal interactions—during our backstage organizing efforts as practitioners of deliberative spaces.

In this section, we present in-depth case studies of 6 instances of knowledge transfer and co-creation in the field, with this shift in mind. We evaluate these spaces and tools through the Global South and mutual learning lenses, keeping the following questions in mind:

• To what extent do these instances of knowledge comprise examples of mutual learning understood as ‘genuine and non-coercive processes’?
  
  
• How well do these instances serve Global South actors?
  
  
• Are they representative of and well-equipped to support the global scope of the field today?

For each case, we focus on what can be learned from the experience to inform our methodology on mutual learning. Our selection criteria comprises high-profile cases of knowledge transfer and practices of mutual learning, underlined with an attempt to cover a diversity of formats ranging from networks to insights from informal interactions. Additionally, we will also present a case study to share what was learned from projects delivered under the New Frontiers project upon its completion.