The theme for this issue, Deliberative Democracy and Citizen Empowerment, focuses on how to engage "the public" in policy formulation. Currently, there is increasing interest from Civil Society in ideas regarding good governance, deepening democracy and citizen empowerment, particularly how to bring the public or "lay" perspectives into areas where traditionally the public has had little or no involvement. This issue draws togther some ket thinking around public participation, using a range of techniques know as "Deliberative and Inclusionary Processes" (DIPs), including mechanisms like Citizen Juries, Citizen Conferences and the like. The majority of experiences with these prcesses has been in the North, altghou incresingly these are being adopted and adapted to the South. This issue is guest edited by Michel Pimbert and Tom Wakefield. This issue also contains the results from the 1999 Readership Survey.