On March 27, 2026, 16 undergraduate students in Japan joined 50 graduate students in Norway for a virtual exchange focused on local sustainability challenges. The session was part of the SPICE Social Entrepreneurship course offered at Eikei University of Hiroshima (Eikei) and co-organized with the Faculty of Technology, Art and Design at the Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). 

The exchange served as the culminating activity of a course that SPICE has offered at Eikei since 2022, made possible in large part by the vision of Hiroshima’s former Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki. The course guides students through community engagement, local sustainability challenges, and problem-solving using design thinking methods. This year, students tackled topics including rural transportation, migrant worker conditions, seniors' access to AI, and cybersecurity. What distinguished this iteration was the opportunity for students to test their ideas with an international audience whose academic background differed significantly from their own. 

To create that opportunity, SPICE partnered with OsloMet’s master’s program in Applied Computer and Information Technology. Though the two programs differ in size, location, and disciplinary focus – one rooted in liberal arts, the other in STEM – they share a common goal: helping students explore complex social problems through interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration. To prepare for the virtual session, Eikei students created short video presentations introducing the sustainability challenges they had identified in Hiroshima. OsloMet students then reframed those challenges in their own local content and developed technical solutions in response. During the live session, students from both sides met in breakout discussions facilitated by Eikei student assistants, where Oslo teams proposed solutions and Hiroshima teams asked questions and explored implementation. 

For Eikei students, the most significant learning emerged from the reflective activities that followed. Students’ responses centered on two pillars the SPICE course had set from the beginning: intercultural competence and interdisciplinary thinking.

Eikei students reflecting on Japan-Norway student exchange | Photo Credit: SPICE

On the intercultural side, the exchange made clear how deeply local context shapes the way problems are understood and solved. A group working on AI and senior citizens, for instance, found that differing attitudes toward aging in Japan and Norway influenced both how the problem was defined and which solutions seemed viable. One student wrote: 

"The most memorable moment was when the very first prototype shown — from Group 9 — was an AI-generated image of a pizza with wheels, with an elderly person smiling next to it. I felt that our perspectives on social welfare and the public good were fundamentally different. Our conception of government's mission is something close to protecting the vulnerable. Their view, by contrast, were rooted in a focus on individual flourishing and self-actualization. It really took me by surprise."

Another student recalled a similarly unexpected moment:

“I received a lot of basic questions about everyday life in Japan — things like 'Isn't it normal for people in Japanese suburbs to ride electric scooters?' or 'How much do elderly people in Japan actually use smartphones?' I had expected questions about complex solutions, but I realized that even things I take for granted carry invisible assumptions and biases. In a cross-cultural setting, you have to align on the basics before you can go deeper."

These moments pushed students to examine their own assumptions and recognize how context shapes both problems and solutions. 

The interdisciplinary dimension was equally revealing. Eikei students admired how their Norwegian peers translated broad social concerns into concrete, technically grounded proposals. At the same time, the exchange helped them see the value of their own liberal arts education. One student reflected:

“Since the Oslo students each specialize in one field, it seemed like every group felt compelled to apply that expertise — which meant their solutions often ended up looking similar. We, on the other hand, are trained to approach problems from multiple disciplines and to include not just what’s immediately feasible but also future possibilities. Seeing that difference made so concrete was what left the strongest impression.”

Rather than viewing technical expertise as inherently superior, Eikei students came to see stakeholder engagement and contextual sensitivity as equally essential for addressing complex challenges, and concluded that effective solutions require both. This shift in perspective reflects a central aim of STEAM education: integrating a human-centered perspective into the traditional STEM framework (link to a related article). 

This experience reinforced the value of designing courses that connect students across institutions, disciplines, and cultures. The impact, it turns out, extended beyond the participants themselves. One of the Eikei student assistants who helped facilitate the session also reflected on what the experience meant to her (link). Many Eikei students expressed a desire for more sustained collaboration with their Norwegian peers, suggesting that future iterations of such a course could benefit from extending the exchange beyond a single session. More time and more exchanges would create greater space for mutual understanding and deeper engagement with complex "wicked" social problems.

Eikei students in SPICE Social Entrepreneurship course | Photo Credit: SPICE

Acknowledgement: I am deeply grateful to Professor Tulpesh Patel at OsloMet for making this partnership both possible and genuinely rewarding. Since we began working together in August 2025, it has been a true collaboration, the one built on regular conversation, mutual trust, and a shared belief in the value of human-centered, context-sensitive learning, an approach that lies at the heart of STEAM education. Working with Professor Patel has been a personal reminder of why cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaboration matters. 

SPICE's course on Social Entrepreneurship with Eikei University of Hiroshima is one of SPICE’s local student programs in Japan.

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Introduction and Contribution

Democracies face a host of ongoing challenges, including the rise of elected autocrats, income inequality, mainstreamed forms of xenophobic nationalism, and political apathy. All of these challenges pose threats to democratic participation — elected autocrats restrict it, inequality makes it easier for oligarchs to sway election outcomes, and xenophobia can discourage cultural outsiders from voting.

Apart from practical threats to democratic participation, an established intellectual tradition has viewed participation with deep skepticism. In this view, democracy is good simply because it ensures peaceful transfers of power and protects individual rights. Collective decisions, however, cannot be meaningfully viewed as representing the “will of the people” owing to manipulation, apathy, and the high costs of acquiring political knowledge. Is this “realist” vision the best one can hope for in democratic life?

In “Can deliberation have lasting effects?,” James Fishkin, Valentin Bolotnyy, Joshua Lerner, Alice Siu, and Norman Bradburn show how a three-day deliberative experiment in late 2019 had large and long-term effects on turnout and voting behavior. Those most likely to exhibit these civic behaviors nearly a year later had come to follow politics more closely and see their political opinions as valuable. At the same time, the experiment’s effects on participants’ policy views were significant only in the short term — most deliberators eventually reverted to their previously held policy positions.

That three days of deliberation had such lasting civic effects suggests that efforts to create more inclusive forms of democratic participation are both possible and scalable. Moreover, it suggests that academic skepticism about democratic participation is not an argument against citizens’ capacities for reasonable decision-making; rather, it is an argument against our imperfect contexts of participation. Deliberative experiments may offer hope for improving these contexts.

The Deliberative Experiment and Its Effects on Policy Views

In September 2019 — one week prior to the experiment — a treatment group (i.e., those who would deliberate) of 523 registered voters from around the US and a control group of 844 voters were surveyed on their political attitudes. Members of the treatment group then deliberated on five issue domains (the economy, environment, immigration, health care, foreign policy) in small groups and on 47 policy proposals (e.g., redistributing wealth in some way). 26 of these proposals were characterized by extreme partisan polarization, meaning significant numbers of those who identified as Democrats or Republicans held the most extreme views. After the deliberations ended, both the treatment and control groups were surveyed. Then, three subsequent surveys were conducted in late 2020.

Among the treatment group, deliberation produced significant, short-term depolarization on 20 of the 26 (polarized) policy proposals. In other words, the averages for participants who identified with each party moved closer together (though not necessarily toward the center). These changes were large, sometimes 40 percentage points, as in the case of Republicans abandoning extreme positions on immigration. Meanwhile, the control group’s policy positions changed hardly at all — pointing to the key role played by deliberation. Within the five issue areas, averages among deliberators shifted leftward on all but the economy.
 

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Figure 1. Policy-Based Score (PBS) Changes over Time
Note: Policy-based score (PBS) is constructed for each individual based on responses to 26 questions identified as the most polarizing. The upper chart shows the participant group, and the lower chart shows the control group. T1 is the survey wave prior to the deliberations, T2 is right after the deliberations, and T3 is 10 months after, in July 2020.
 

By late 2020, however, the treatment group’s policy positions mostly reverted to their pre-deliberation levels. The differences between these two points in time were still significant compared with the control group, yet relatively small in absolute terms. These policy reversions are perhaps unsurprising: deliberators returned to an environment of heightened polarization and aggressive campaigning during the 2020 election cycle. (To be sure, and from the standpoint of finding solutions to collective problems, policy reversion is not especially concerning — the aim of deliberation is to bring citizens together to reason and compromise, which the experiment accomplished.)

A Civic Awakening?

The lack of long-term policy effects suggests that three-day deliberations may be limited in their ability to create a more encompassing, participatory society. However, the treatment group demonstrated large and persistent changes in their intention to vote (i.e., turnout) and their candidate of choice. Among the control group, Joe Biden was favored over Donald Trump by about four percentage points — very close to Biden’s actual margin in the popular vote. Among the treatment group, however, Biden was favored by 28 percentage points. The gaps in turnout were similarly large. (Note that these are intentions, not reports of actual decisions. However, Tables 6 and 7 in the article show similar effects for recollected votes after the election.)
 

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Table 2. Voting Intention for Participant and Control Groups, Time 4
 

These civic outcomes are especially surprising because (a) voting behavior is thought to be stable and deeply rooted in one’s psychology and social context, and (b) experimental efforts to increase turnout have been most successful when undertaken shortly before elections, as opposed to one whole year prior. The effects were most pronounced among political moderates and those without college degrees — perhaps pointing to the educative effects of deliberation.
 

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Figure 5. Effects on Vote Intention Captured by Predictive Modeling, by Education
Note: Middle are those participants who have Policy-Based Scores between 3 and 5 (inclusive) at Time 1. Non-middle participants are all other participants. Positive prediction error shows that, on average, participants were more likely to vote for Biden than predicted by the model. Vote intention data are collected at Time 4, in October, 2020. Full calibrated model used to construct this figure can be found in the APSR Dataverse.
 

Why did deliberation produce only short-term policy effects but long-term effects on voting behavior? The authors posit that deliberation caused an “awakening of civic capacities.” They reason that deliberation was a transformative experience in terms of stimulating political engagement and a sense of efficacy. And indeed, the treatment group was, in the long term, more likely than the control group to follow the 2020 election campaign, believe their political opinions mattered, and acquire general information about American politics. (The latter is measured in terms of knowing which party controlled the House and Senate.)
 

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Figure 9. Having “Political Opinions Worth Listening to”
Note: Policy-based score is constructed for each individual based on responses to 26 questions identified as the most polarizing. Responses to the question “How strongly would you disagree or agree with the following statement?”[I have opinions about politics that are worth listening to.] were collected at T1 (just before deliberations), T2 (just after), and T3 (10 months later, July 2020).
 

The authors close by discussing efforts to scale up civic engagement, such as the Stanford Online Deliberation Platform. In all, “Can deliberation have lasting effects?” provides a rigorous case for the value of deliberation in strengthening democratic participation.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

This article was written by Dr. Bert Bower, Curriculum Developer for the SPICE Latin America Project and later Founder and CEO of Teachers’ Curriculum Institute, the nation’s preeminent provider of K–12 experiential social studies materials. This is the fifth of several articles—focusing on the 50-year history of SPICE—that will be posted this year. In its early years, SPICE comprised several separate area-focused projects.

Congratulations to SPICE on 50 years of providing the nation’s schools with the most global-minded, engaging curriculum ever created. I had the pleasure of working as a curriculum developer with SPICE for 12 years, from 1976 to 1998. It was for me, as it has been for countless other educators, a truly life-changing experience.

At age 19, I transferred to Stanford and soon found myself attached to the Latin America Project of SPICE. Dr. David Grossman, Founding Director of SPICE, encouraged me to create a curriculum unit centered around a village in highland Guatemala where I had served as an Amigos de las Americas volunteer. David guided me in creating my first piece of curriculum and then encouraged me to present it at the California Council for the Social Studies. It proved to be wildly popular.

I soon discovered that teachers were hungry for materials that engaged their students and challenged them to take a global perspective. That was exactly what SPICE offered. Working with Dr. Grossman and the SPICE staff, I learned to create curriculum unlike anything offered by other companies or organizations. SPICE staff created lessons that taught students to write in Chinese, to simulate entering and interacting with others in a global village, and to travel down the Nile River. I was amazed at how lessons like these delighted and challenged students.

My years with SPICE taught me to embrace innovation in everything I developed. Imagine teaching the conquest of Mexico from multiple perspectives. Or using in-person interviews with villagers in a small Mexican town to drive home a heartfelt lesson on the hows and whys of out-migration. Or teaching about Latin America by analyzing and “stepping into” modern art from throughout the region. These lessons were as impactful in the classroom as they were exciting to teach.

Really, the most important thing I learned from Dr. Grossman and the SPICE staff was a true joie de vivre when it came to curriculum development. We had so much fun creating curriculum. Staff meetings were always insightful and filled with laughter. Close friendships were the norm at our workshops. Deep learning and global enlightenment were the celebrated outcomes of our work.

This sense of learning, wonderment, and lively esprit de corps has stayed with me ever since I left SPICE—and, as a result, has touched tens of thousands of others. Happy Birthday, SPICE!

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In its June 20, 2026, edition, the Nikkei Shimbun's Market Beat financial analysis column, titled US Stocks Attract Japanese Money, examines how the U.S. stock market is becoming a "major league" that is increasingly attracting capital from Japanese individual investors. Several factors drive this phenomenon:

• Massive IPOs: Unprecedentedly large IPOs, as seen by SpaceX, are capturing global attention and investment.
• Structural Advantages: U.S. markets are moving fast to include new, large companies in major stock indices, which forces index-tracking funds to buy shares and creates automatic demand.
• 24-Hour Trading: U.S. exchanges like the NYSE and Nasdaq are moving toward near 24-hour trading to specifically capture Asian daytime investors, making it easier for them to participate.

The column describes how Japanese investors are increasingly bypassing domestic options to capture the immense growth driven by American AI, data infrastructure, and advanced technology IPOs. "Founders and early-stage investors prefer large-scale markets that offer price discovery, liquidity, and visibility. This is likely to accelerate the concentration of innovative companies in the United States," says Curtis Milhaupt, the William F. Baxter-Visa International Professor of Law and APARC faculty affiliate.

The article notes that the speculative nature of advanced tech sectors inevitably fuels market volatility and could pose risks for Japanese investors looking across the Pacific, urging Japanese investors to identify promising domestic companies.