# PolicyCraft: Supporting Collaborative and Participatory Policy Design through Case-Grounded Deliberation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.15644 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15644/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 24 Sep 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Policy Maps: Tools for Guiding the Unbounded Space of LLM Behaviors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18203/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models in Politics and Democracy: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04498/) (2024)
- [What Makes LLM Agent Simulations Useful for Policy Practice? An Iterative Design Study in Emergency Preparedness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21868/) (2025)
- [Botender: Supporting Communities in Collaboratively Designing AI Agents through Case-Based Provocations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25492/) (2025)
- [PolicyPad: Collaborative Prototyping of LLM Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19680/) (2025)
- [Asking For It: Question-Answering for Predicting Rule Infractions in Online Content Moderation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06350/) (2025)
- ["Better Ask for Forgiveness than Permission": Practices and Policies of AI Disclosure in Freelance Work](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07459/) (2026)
- [Informing AI Policy Assessment using Large-Scale Simulation of Interventions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27395/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Community and organizational policies are typically designed in a top-down, centralized fashion, with limited input from impacted stakeholders. This can result in policies that are misaligned with community needs or perceived as illegitimate. How can we support more collaborative, participatory approaches to policy design? In this paper, we present PolicyCraft, a system that structures collaborative policy design through case-grounded deliberation. Building on past research that highlights the value of concrete cases in establishing common ground, PolicyCraft supports users in collaboratively proposing, critiquing, and revising policies through discussion and voting on cases. A field study across two university courses showed that students using PolicyCraft reached greater consensus and developed better-supported course policies, compared with those using a baseline system that did not scaffold their use of concrete cases. Reflecting on our findings, we discuss opportunities for future HCI systems to help groups more effectively bridge between abstract policies and concrete cases.