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When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation
All over the world, democratic reforms have brought power to the people, but under conditions where the people have little opportunity to think about the power that they exercise. In this book, James Fishkin combines a new theory of democracy with actual practice and shows how an idea that
harks back to ancient Athens can be used to revive our modern democracies. When the People Speak outlines deliberative democracy projects conducted by the author with various collaborators in the US, China, Britain, Denmark, Australia, Italy, Bulgaria, Northern Ireland, and in the entire European
Union. These projects have resulted in the massive expansion of wind power in Texas, the building of sewage treatment plants in China, and greater mutual understanding between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
harks back to ancient Athens can be used to revive our modern democracies. When the People Speak outlines deliberative democracy projects conducted by the author with various collaborators in the US, China, Britain, Denmark, Australia, Italy, Bulgaria, Northern Ireland, and in the entire European
Union. These projects have resulted in the massive expansion of wind power in Texas, the building of sewage treatment plants in China, and greater mutual understanding between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published August 6, 2009
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December 30, 2022
Why is it difficult to achieve both inclusion and thoughtfulness, both political equality and deliberation?
If I have one opinion in millions why should I take the time and trouble to become really informed about politics or policy? One might ask what is the difference between manipulation and persuasion?
How am I included? I am included when I vote (or perhaps when I have the same opportunity to vote as anyone else). From this perspective we have three core values, not just the two discussed so far— political equality, deliberation, and mass participation. Why not attempt to achieve all three?
By deliberation we mean the process by which individuals sincerely weigh the merits of competing arguments in discussions together.We can talk about the quality of a deliberative process in terms of five conditions (a. Information b. Substantive balance c. Diversity d. Conscientiousness e. Equal consideration). Achieving these five conditions to a high degree distinguishes deliberation from much ordinary conversation. Democratic deliberation is about questions of collective political will—about what should be done. It is about arriving at views that represent collective, informed consent. At a minimum, deliberation requires balanced argument and access to good information.
The paradox of voting or political participation is sometimes referred to as the “monster that ate rational choice theory.” The concern is that the people, even if they decide democratically, can do bad things. If we consider democracy to be a political method of decision, then the concern is that the method may have as its effect some fundamental injustices—injustices that would justify overriding or abandoning the method in at least some cases.
Fear of majority tyranny was one of the principal motivations for the original design of the US Constitution. Famously, Madison did not embrace the term “democracy” preferring “republic,” by which he meant “a government in which the scheme of representation takes place.” The rationale for the Senate was that “an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.” No matter how strongly the minority feels, if the numbers and intensities of the majority are strong enough, it could, in theory, have the weight of opinion on its side. And that would hardly seem relevant to whether or not the policy consequences were objectionable. The key is that the majority wants to do very bad things to the minority—impose avoidable severe deprivations—not that the minority feels more strongly about it than does the majority.
Thus democratic reforms should focus simply on improving the conditions for party competition. The prospects for competence in decision-making by the mass public should not be dismissed without evidence. Whether or not ordinary citizens appear competent may well depend on whether they have reason to pay attention, whether they think their voice will matter, how discussions and interactions are conducted, and how any data about their views is collected.
How inclusive? How thoughtful? To what effect? Under what conditions? But four questions pose a daunting challenge for both research and practical experimentation. The three principles—deliberation, political equality, and mass participation—pose a predictable pattern of conflict. Attempts to realize any two will undermine the achievement of the third.
Our impression from observation is that once participants learn that the experts disagree they feel freer to reexamine the issue for themselves. But it is important to note that we are not asking them for an expert judgment. It is rather a question of collective political will or public judgment. And this is an area that experts cannot reasonably substitute for the public, or its surrogates.
Deliberative Poll created a safe public space where people could actually talk about the issues on a reasoned basis, despite their fundamental disagreements on an issue sharply dividing the country. A hallmark of moral discussion is learning to view a problem from the point of view of those who are affected—-a kind of ideal role taking.
Two conclusions emerge shedding light on deliberative quality. First, justified statements move opinion more than unjustified ones. In other words, statements offering reasons have more of an effect on opinion change than do statements that simply express support for a position. Second, imbalance in the argument pool has an effect on opinion mostly among the uninformed. Imbalance has little effect on those who become more informed. Hence we get a picture, among those who become most engaged in the deliberations, of participants who weigh balanced arguments and become more informed. Nevertheless, various projects suggest insights relevant to these categories:
a. Changes in policy attitudes
b. Changes in voting intention
c. Changes in information
d. Building “better citizens”(civic capacities)
e. Changes in collective consistency
f. Changes in the public dialogue
g. Changes in public policy
In addition, the information gains drove the opinion changes. It was those who became more informed who also changed their views. While participants have a greater sense that their preferences will have impact and will be listened to, what will those preferences be? We have noted that the preference changes are driven by information. Another hypothesis about the nature of post-deliberation preferences is that they will be more “public spirited.” In sum, the experience of deliberation seems to create “better citizens,” if one means by better citizens those who have developed civic capacities for dealing with public problems—information, efficacy, public spiritedness, and participation. And introducing deliberation into the schools would have lasting benefits as a method for reaching a broader public.
Deliberation creates a shared understanding of what is at stake in policy trade-offs. Deliberators need not agree on the solution, only on what they are disagreeing—or agreeing—about. The result has implications for our confidence in the collective meaningfulness of the public will. With high proximity to single-peakedness we can be confident that individually rational preferences will not produce collectively irrational results. We can be confident that arbitrary agenda manipulations will not determine the winners of a democratic consultation. Whatever arbitrariness might apply to “top of the head” preferences, we have greater assurance in the collective rationality of deliberative preferences.
By responsible advocacy, I mean advocacy based on good information in a context where arguments offered on one side are answered by another. By testing the issues with balanced arguments and good information, one can see the concerns that survive challenge by competing viewpoints.
Danish innovation is suggestive for the problem of successful institutionalization. Once this capacity for consultation is established as an independent consultative office of the government, insulated from direct political interference, it can be made available for difficult issues and used by commissions and various government entities that might need citizen input. In this way it offers a readily available alternative to the public hearings and public comment processes that so often engage only lobbyists and special interests. Such an alternative could mobilize a representative and informed public voice as a routine part of the public doing its due diligence on policy proposals.
Transparency is one protection. Another protection comes from the design. Consider some other cases where it is arguable that it should be harder to apply deliberative democracy. I have in mind:
a. Divided societies b. Virtual space c. Multinational and multistate deliberations.
While dispositions can be incentivized, they cannot be legislated by fiat or specified by an institutional design. And the dispositions people bring with them into the discussions are part of the background conditions for any project.
The public can engage in a constructive way even when there is a legacy of violent conflict and mutual suspicion. The discussions focused on four aspects of the role of citizens in a democracy: political participation, exercising choice, becoming informed, and public service. In each case, there were arguments for and against the importance of the basic goal and specific policy proposals that might achieve it.
In all these contexts, there is another option for bringing the thoughtful voice of the people into the process. The deliberative microcosm chosen by scientific sampling, not too different in basic concept from the microcosms chosen by lot in ancient Athens, offers a middle ground, a third way, between mass plebiscitary consultation on the one hand and elite decision on the other, between politically equal but nondeliberative masses and politically unequal but more deliberative elites.
A public sphere is a deliberative communicative system. But is it necessary? On some of the theories of democracy we have discussed, it is not. The aspiration for collective will formation is not shared among all visions of democracy.
But by denying the meaningfulness of public will formation, Competitive Democracy keeps the mechanism of democracy without its soul. The decision-making capacity that is supposed to animate the democratic process is just the result of whatever competitive efforts, exercised in whatever way happens to win in a mostly unrestricted adversary process. So, if elections are won by manipulation or deception, by bamboozling an inattentive public, that is just the way the rough game of politics is played.
The capacity for public will formation even at the national level, is limited. An increased identification as Europeans did not mean any increased support for something like a United States of Europe. Fraser nicely details the challenge facing democratic will formation beyond the nation-state and particularly in the EU context. Consider six assumptions of the traditional public sphere that clearly are violated :
a. The notion that sovereign power is exercised within the territorial boundaries of the nation-state.
b. The notion that the economy is territorially based within a nationstate.
c. The notion that the democratic dialogue takes place within a national citizenry resident within the boundaries of a nation-state.
d. The notion that there would be a national language.
e. The notion that there would be a national literature,culture,and shared identity.
f. The notion that there would be a shared infrastructure of communication to permit common dialogue.
Democratic ideals must be considered in the plural. “More democracy” does not mean any one thing. It could mean increasing the opportunities for mass participation through more referenda, primaries, or other forms of direct consultation. Or it could mean improving the degree to which the votes or preferences of everyone are considered equally through redistricting or equalizing the technology of voting or other such reforms, or it could mean increasing the extent of voter information and deliberation. In other words, it can mean more participation, or more political equality, or more deliberation. But we have found with the trilemma that these values are in conflict when pursued in any really ambitious manner.
The causal issues have been worked out in the economic “theory of the second best,” in which if one factor is constrained (it cannot be fully realized) then it may be less than optimal to try to achieve the maximum value of the other factors.
In the more limited realm of democratic theory, the burden of our argument is that the fundamental principles of democracy do not add up to such a single, coherent ideal to be approached, step by step. Rather than a unitary ideal we are in a situation that might more plausibly be termed “ideals without an ideal.” Each basic component, if emphasized substantially further, would take public policy in a different direction. Achieving political equality and participation leads to a thin, plebiscitary democracy in which deliberation is undermined. Achieving political equality and deliberation leaves out mass participation. Achieving deliberation and participation can be achieved for those unequally motivated and interested, but violates political equality. With the choices posed by the trilemma, there is not a coherent direction of movement for realizing all three principles to a high degree at the same time. We can evaluate the trade-offs in particular hard choices, perhaps coming to the conclusion that a reform is warranted, on balance, but it will remain contested whether or not that moves us closer or farther away from an ideal.
Does the pattern of conflict we have encountered with democracy mean that democratic theory is especially unsettled? Elsewhere I have argued that the equal opportunity problem is subject to a trilemma between three fundamental principles: merit, equal life chances, and the autonomy of the family. Liberty within the family sets up a conflict with equality, since parents will use their liberty to help their children prepare.
As with our democratic theory trilemma, we can get any two of the three principles, but under the assumption that there are background conditions of inequality, all three are not achievable. The upshot is that trying to improve each of these principles, or any two at the same time, will take public policy in a quite different direction. We are left with ideals without an ideal—while we can trade-off conflicting principles for each marginal choice, there is no clear overall direction for us to move toward the realization of a single, coherent, and unified ideal.
Why might there be this parallel between one trilemma and another, between democratic theory and the theory of justice? It is plausible to think of the core of liberal democratic theory as a continuing dialogue about the competing roles of liberty and equality. The equality component includes a series of “process equalities” requiring equal consideration of everyone’s relevant claims or interests, whether these are in meritocratic selection in the employment market, or in protection of rights in the legal system or protection of fundamental interests in the health care system or, as we saw in detail, in the consideration of one’s views or votes in the political system. In all of these cases, the equality claim to equal consideration comes up against the fact that people employ their liberty to create differences, differences in the characteristics that people bring to the process of equal consideration and in their abilities to make use of the process.
In our democratic theory case, the formal claim is political equality requiring equal consideration of one’s views or considered judgments. The liberty claims concern the liberty to form opinions (deliberation) and the liberty to participate. As we saw earlier, under realistic conditions we can fully achieve only two out of three. We have conflicting ideals but no single ideal that drives us in an unambiguous direction for reform—if the goal is to fulfill all three simultaneously.
But there is another possible role for achieving a second-best, rather than ideal, solution. Instead of approximating an ideal, a second-best solution can proxy it. Realizing the two key principles of deliberative democracy—deliberation and political equality—for a representative microcosm offers a picture of what everyone would think under good conditions. In theory if everyone deliberated, the conclusions would not be much different. So the microcosm offers a proxy for the much more ambitious scenario of what would happen if everyone discussed the issues and weighed competing arguments under similarly favorable conditions.
Given that it is much more feasible to get high-quality deliberation in a manageably small, representative microcosm than it would be for the whole society, we can work out the considered judgments of the people under good conditions and insert those conclusions (and the reasons offered for them) into the policy dialogue and into the policy process. The proxy can usefully stand in for the ideal, particularly when the ideal may be far out of reach. The ultimate pluralism of principles embodied by “ideals without an ideal” provides an additional rationale for deliberative public consultation.
In this book we have posited various democratic ideals—political equality, deliberation, mass participation, non-tyranny. We have also reviewed practical efforts to implement some of these ideals. In the case of deliberative democracy, our focus has been the effort to convene statistically representative microcosms of the people gathered under good conditions for deliberation. But we have also discussed other efforts to implement some of these democratic principles, ranging from ancient Athens to the American founding, where deliberation was a key ideal, to attempts by the Progressives and modern reformers where the focus shifted to participation and political equality with the spread of the mass primary and the referendum.
While democratic theory is a lively subject there is not a single dominant theory, but rather a competition among very different visions. To try and get a handle on what the different visions have in common and where they differ, we organized our discussion around their connections to core principles. The result is a rudimentary grammar of democracy. Each theory can most plausibly be interpreted as a commitment primarily to two of the four principles—Competitive Democracy (with its commitment to political equality in elections and non-tyranny), Participatory Democracy (with its commitment to mass participation and political equality), Elite Deliberation (with its commitment to deliberation and non-tyranny), and Deliberative Democracy (commitment to the combination of political equality and deliberation).
The last of these gives us the voice of the people under conditions where it would be worth listening to. If “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” as Americans declared in 1776, then surely more thoughtful and meaningful consent of the governed has a place in the continuing process of doing the public’s business. Reviving the Athenian ideal, with the best modern technology available, provides a practical method for bringing deliberative democracy to life.
On contemplating toward concluding reflections: Democracy, justice, and other trilemmas, forceless force of the better argument, shall affect the outcome of the deliberative process.
If I have one opinion in millions why should I take the time and trouble to become really informed about politics or policy? One might ask what is the difference between manipulation and persuasion?
How am I included? I am included when I vote (or perhaps when I have the same opportunity to vote as anyone else). From this perspective we have three core values, not just the two discussed so far— political equality, deliberation, and mass participation. Why not attempt to achieve all three?
By deliberation we mean the process by which individuals sincerely weigh the merits of competing arguments in discussions together.We can talk about the quality of a deliberative process in terms of five conditions (a. Information b. Substantive balance c. Diversity d. Conscientiousness e. Equal consideration). Achieving these five conditions to a high degree distinguishes deliberation from much ordinary conversation. Democratic deliberation is about questions of collective political will—about what should be done. It is about arriving at views that represent collective, informed consent. At a minimum, deliberation requires balanced argument and access to good information.
The paradox of voting or political participation is sometimes referred to as the “monster that ate rational choice theory.” The concern is that the people, even if they decide democratically, can do bad things. If we consider democracy to be a political method of decision, then the concern is that the method may have as its effect some fundamental injustices—injustices that would justify overriding or abandoning the method in at least some cases.
Fear of majority tyranny was one of the principal motivations for the original design of the US Constitution. Famously, Madison did not embrace the term “democracy” preferring “republic,” by which he meant “a government in which the scheme of representation takes place.” The rationale for the Senate was that “an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.” No matter how strongly the minority feels, if the numbers and intensities of the majority are strong enough, it could, in theory, have the weight of opinion on its side. And that would hardly seem relevant to whether or not the policy consequences were objectionable. The key is that the majority wants to do very bad things to the minority—impose avoidable severe deprivations—not that the minority feels more strongly about it than does the majority.
Thus democratic reforms should focus simply on improving the conditions for party competition. The prospects for competence in decision-making by the mass public should not be dismissed without evidence. Whether or not ordinary citizens appear competent may well depend on whether they have reason to pay attention, whether they think their voice will matter, how discussions and interactions are conducted, and how any data about their views is collected.
How inclusive? How thoughtful? To what effect? Under what conditions? But four questions pose a daunting challenge for both research and practical experimentation. The three principles—deliberation, political equality, and mass participation—pose a predictable pattern of conflict. Attempts to realize any two will undermine the achievement of the third.
Our impression from observation is that once participants learn that the experts disagree they feel freer to reexamine the issue for themselves. But it is important to note that we are not asking them for an expert judgment. It is rather a question of collective political will or public judgment. And this is an area that experts cannot reasonably substitute for the public, or its surrogates.
Deliberative Poll created a safe public space where people could actually talk about the issues on a reasoned basis, despite their fundamental disagreements on an issue sharply dividing the country. A hallmark of moral discussion is learning to view a problem from the point of view of those who are affected—-a kind of ideal role taking.
Two conclusions emerge shedding light on deliberative quality. First, justified statements move opinion more than unjustified ones. In other words, statements offering reasons have more of an effect on opinion change than do statements that simply express support for a position. Second, imbalance in the argument pool has an effect on opinion mostly among the uninformed. Imbalance has little effect on those who become more informed. Hence we get a picture, among those who become most engaged in the deliberations, of participants who weigh balanced arguments and become more informed. Nevertheless, various projects suggest insights relevant to these categories:
a. Changes in policy attitudes
b. Changes in voting intention
c. Changes in information
d. Building “better citizens”(civic capacities)
e. Changes in collective consistency
f. Changes in the public dialogue
g. Changes in public policy
In addition, the information gains drove the opinion changes. It was those who became more informed who also changed their views. While participants have a greater sense that their preferences will have impact and will be listened to, what will those preferences be? We have noted that the preference changes are driven by information. Another hypothesis about the nature of post-deliberation preferences is that they will be more “public spirited.” In sum, the experience of deliberation seems to create “better citizens,” if one means by better citizens those who have developed civic capacities for dealing with public problems—information, efficacy, public spiritedness, and participation. And introducing deliberation into the schools would have lasting benefits as a method for reaching a broader public.
Deliberation creates a shared understanding of what is at stake in policy trade-offs. Deliberators need not agree on the solution, only on what they are disagreeing—or agreeing—about. The result has implications for our confidence in the collective meaningfulness of the public will. With high proximity to single-peakedness we can be confident that individually rational preferences will not produce collectively irrational results. We can be confident that arbitrary agenda manipulations will not determine the winners of a democratic consultation. Whatever arbitrariness might apply to “top of the head” preferences, we have greater assurance in the collective rationality of deliberative preferences.
By responsible advocacy, I mean advocacy based on good information in a context where arguments offered on one side are answered by another. By testing the issues with balanced arguments and good information, one can see the concerns that survive challenge by competing viewpoints.
Danish innovation is suggestive for the problem of successful institutionalization. Once this capacity for consultation is established as an independent consultative office of the government, insulated from direct political interference, it can be made available for difficult issues and used by commissions and various government entities that might need citizen input. In this way it offers a readily available alternative to the public hearings and public comment processes that so often engage only lobbyists and special interests. Such an alternative could mobilize a representative and informed public voice as a routine part of the public doing its due diligence on policy proposals.
Transparency is one protection. Another protection comes from the design. Consider some other cases where it is arguable that it should be harder to apply deliberative democracy. I have in mind:
a. Divided societies b. Virtual space c. Multinational and multistate deliberations.
While dispositions can be incentivized, they cannot be legislated by fiat or specified by an institutional design. And the dispositions people bring with them into the discussions are part of the background conditions for any project.
The public can engage in a constructive way even when there is a legacy of violent conflict and mutual suspicion. The discussions focused on four aspects of the role of citizens in a democracy: political participation, exercising choice, becoming informed, and public service. In each case, there were arguments for and against the importance of the basic goal and specific policy proposals that might achieve it.
In all these contexts, there is another option for bringing the thoughtful voice of the people into the process. The deliberative microcosm chosen by scientific sampling, not too different in basic concept from the microcosms chosen by lot in ancient Athens, offers a middle ground, a third way, between mass plebiscitary consultation on the one hand and elite decision on the other, between politically equal but nondeliberative masses and politically unequal but more deliberative elites.
A public sphere is a deliberative communicative system. But is it necessary? On some of the theories of democracy we have discussed, it is not. The aspiration for collective will formation is not shared among all visions of democracy.
But by denying the meaningfulness of public will formation, Competitive Democracy keeps the mechanism of democracy without its soul. The decision-making capacity that is supposed to animate the democratic process is just the result of whatever competitive efforts, exercised in whatever way happens to win in a mostly unrestricted adversary process. So, if elections are won by manipulation or deception, by bamboozling an inattentive public, that is just the way the rough game of politics is played.
The capacity for public will formation even at the national level, is limited. An increased identification as Europeans did not mean any increased support for something like a United States of Europe. Fraser nicely details the challenge facing democratic will formation beyond the nation-state and particularly in the EU context. Consider six assumptions of the traditional public sphere that clearly are violated :
a. The notion that sovereign power is exercised within the territorial boundaries of the nation-state.
b. The notion that the economy is territorially based within a nationstate.
c. The notion that the democratic dialogue takes place within a national citizenry resident within the boundaries of a nation-state.
d. The notion that there would be a national language.
e. The notion that there would be a national literature,culture,and shared identity.
f. The notion that there would be a shared infrastructure of communication to permit common dialogue.
Democratic ideals must be considered in the plural. “More democracy” does not mean any one thing. It could mean increasing the opportunities for mass participation through more referenda, primaries, or other forms of direct consultation. Or it could mean improving the degree to which the votes or preferences of everyone are considered equally through redistricting or equalizing the technology of voting or other such reforms, or it could mean increasing the extent of voter information and deliberation. In other words, it can mean more participation, or more political equality, or more deliberation. But we have found with the trilemma that these values are in conflict when pursued in any really ambitious manner.
The causal issues have been worked out in the economic “theory of the second best,” in which if one factor is constrained (it cannot be fully realized) then it may be less than optimal to try to achieve the maximum value of the other factors.
In the more limited realm of democratic theory, the burden of our argument is that the fundamental principles of democracy do not add up to such a single, coherent ideal to be approached, step by step. Rather than a unitary ideal we are in a situation that might more plausibly be termed “ideals without an ideal.” Each basic component, if emphasized substantially further, would take public policy in a different direction. Achieving political equality and participation leads to a thin, plebiscitary democracy in which deliberation is undermined. Achieving political equality and deliberation leaves out mass participation. Achieving deliberation and participation can be achieved for those unequally motivated and interested, but violates political equality. With the choices posed by the trilemma, there is not a coherent direction of movement for realizing all three principles to a high degree at the same time. We can evaluate the trade-offs in particular hard choices, perhaps coming to the conclusion that a reform is warranted, on balance, but it will remain contested whether or not that moves us closer or farther away from an ideal.
Does the pattern of conflict we have encountered with democracy mean that democratic theory is especially unsettled? Elsewhere I have argued that the equal opportunity problem is subject to a trilemma between three fundamental principles: merit, equal life chances, and the autonomy of the family. Liberty within the family sets up a conflict with equality, since parents will use their liberty to help their children prepare.
As with our democratic theory trilemma, we can get any two of the three principles, but under the assumption that there are background conditions of inequality, all three are not achievable. The upshot is that trying to improve each of these principles, or any two at the same time, will take public policy in a quite different direction. We are left with ideals without an ideal—while we can trade-off conflicting principles for each marginal choice, there is no clear overall direction for us to move toward the realization of a single, coherent, and unified ideal.
Why might there be this parallel between one trilemma and another, between democratic theory and the theory of justice? It is plausible to think of the core of liberal democratic theory as a continuing dialogue about the competing roles of liberty and equality. The equality component includes a series of “process equalities” requiring equal consideration of everyone’s relevant claims or interests, whether these are in meritocratic selection in the employment market, or in protection of rights in the legal system or protection of fundamental interests in the health care system or, as we saw in detail, in the consideration of one’s views or votes in the political system. In all of these cases, the equality claim to equal consideration comes up against the fact that people employ their liberty to create differences, differences in the characteristics that people bring to the process of equal consideration and in their abilities to make use of the process.
In our democratic theory case, the formal claim is political equality requiring equal consideration of one’s views or considered judgments. The liberty claims concern the liberty to form opinions (deliberation) and the liberty to participate. As we saw earlier, under realistic conditions we can fully achieve only two out of three. We have conflicting ideals but no single ideal that drives us in an unambiguous direction for reform—if the goal is to fulfill all three simultaneously.
But there is another possible role for achieving a second-best, rather than ideal, solution. Instead of approximating an ideal, a second-best solution can proxy it. Realizing the two key principles of deliberative democracy—deliberation and political equality—for a representative microcosm offers a picture of what everyone would think under good conditions. In theory if everyone deliberated, the conclusions would not be much different. So the microcosm offers a proxy for the much more ambitious scenario of what would happen if everyone discussed the issues and weighed competing arguments under similarly favorable conditions.
Given that it is much more feasible to get high-quality deliberation in a manageably small, representative microcosm than it would be for the whole society, we can work out the considered judgments of the people under good conditions and insert those conclusions (and the reasons offered for them) into the policy dialogue and into the policy process. The proxy can usefully stand in for the ideal, particularly when the ideal may be far out of reach. The ultimate pluralism of principles embodied by “ideals without an ideal” provides an additional rationale for deliberative public consultation.
In this book we have posited various democratic ideals—political equality, deliberation, mass participation, non-tyranny. We have also reviewed practical efforts to implement some of these ideals. In the case of deliberative democracy, our focus has been the effort to convene statistically representative microcosms of the people gathered under good conditions for deliberation. But we have also discussed other efforts to implement some of these democratic principles, ranging from ancient Athens to the American founding, where deliberation was a key ideal, to attempts by the Progressives and modern reformers where the focus shifted to participation and political equality with the spread of the mass primary and the referendum.
While democratic theory is a lively subject there is not a single dominant theory, but rather a competition among very different visions. To try and get a handle on what the different visions have in common and where they differ, we organized our discussion around their connections to core principles. The result is a rudimentary grammar of democracy. Each theory can most plausibly be interpreted as a commitment primarily to two of the four principles—Competitive Democracy (with its commitment to political equality in elections and non-tyranny), Participatory Democracy (with its commitment to mass participation and political equality), Elite Deliberation (with its commitment to deliberation and non-tyranny), and Deliberative Democracy (commitment to the combination of political equality and deliberation).
The last of these gives us the voice of the people under conditions where it would be worth listening to. If “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” as Americans declared in 1776, then surely more thoughtful and meaningful consent of the governed has a place in the continuing process of doing the public’s business. Reviving the Athenian ideal, with the best modern technology available, provides a practical method for bringing deliberative democracy to life.
On contemplating toward concluding reflections: Democracy, justice, and other trilemmas, forceless force of the better argument, shall affect the outcome of the deliberative process.
August 15, 2020
Had the author written nothing else, I would have gone with four stars instead of three. Problem is, there are more important books by Fishkin that supercede this one. His 1991 Democracy and Deliberation makes a clearer theoretical argument for creating a deliberative minipublic (the Deliberative Poll, in particular), and 2018's Democracy When the People Are Thinking has the most compelling examples of Deliberative Polls all in one volume. The Voice of the People (1995) is the best general-audience argument for a more deliberative democracy, and Deliberation Day (2004) is the most wild-eyed call for making elections more deliberative. This books draws together all of those strands, but it suffers by comparison with the more forceful and detailed arguments that stand beside it on the bookshelf of Fishkin's writings.
December 29, 2010
Very useful arguments about the nature of public opinion and what can be done about it. His ideas of raw and refined PO are particularly useful. I have used this book for teaching for several terms in a row, and I think it works well. A really nice DVD of a Deliberative Poll conducted in Brussels for the EU is included with the hardcover book.
February 25, 2012
the book did have a promising title, topic and theme, but somehow lost the way in the middle. Maybe I'm not the intended audience, but I felt that after stating his ideas and theme upfront(viz the importance of deliberative democracy upfront with examples), the book became more of an academic exercise rather than a popular science version. Still, for those into critical thinking, this is really a must read
January 20, 2014
At first, first three chapters are theory and somewhat vague. Gets better after chapter 4.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews