People all over the world aspire to participative democracy, and yet the democratic planning and design of any social system from cities to national health care programs, is too often threatened by the inability to engage stakeholders in a meaningful and productive dialogue.
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The use of dialogue for gaining understanding and building consensus on complex issues among interested and affected stakeholders necessitates the use of a new scientific paradigm to address these complexities. Over 30 years ago, a group of researchers made a commitment to the development and testing of a new scientific paradigm for enabling people to engage in meaningful dialogue today.

At this critical juncture of the evolutionary process of humanity, there cannot be conscious evolution without the capacity to explicate through dialogue the wisdom of the people in the Agoras of the 21st Century Global Village.
-Alexander Christakis