One of the founding principles of American Democracy is that an informed and educated electorate is more apt to participate in the political process. Yet special interest groups, political action committees and powerful lobbyists have transformed the way in which public policy is shaped and enacted. The current crisis of faith in government has reached unprecedented levels – a recent study revealed that less than 25 percent of Americans expect the federal government to “do what is right,” and only 34 percent believe that government “cares what people like me think.”1 However, a growing number of social scientists argue that people lack only the means to participate, and that given the opportunity, they will play the role envisioned by the likes of Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton.
Results have shown that deliberative polling, a programmatic approach to restoring participatory Democracy, can be highly effective at motivating ordinary private citizens to take part in the democratic process.2 “What you see on TV, and in most polling, is an impersonation of public opinion. The actual public isn’t really like that, especially when it is given something more than sound bites and distorted public messaging,” said James Fishkin, a political scientist who has developed a proprietary polling method.3 This dialogue uses “television and public
opinion research in a new and constructive way.”4 Citing results from applications of deliberative polling, this paper will show that the innovative, systemic method pioneered by
Fishkin and others offers a badly needed solution to public apathy, which fosters an environment of exploitation and malfeasance within the corridors of power.5 Finally, it will be contended that any credible venture capable of encouraging citizens to learn about, and participate in, the democratic process must be protected and invested with protections that hold it outside the pale of power politics.
In 1996, a consortium of Texas public utility companies determined that traditional means of gathering public feedback were inadequate for the kind of partnership they wanted to establish with their customers. “Town meetings and focus groups for their part are apt to be unrepresentative. The former attract mainly organized interests and lobbyists, while the latter are too small to be reliably representative”6 Deliberative polling, which supplies participants with substantive material and involves them in discussions with policy leaders and experts, proved so effective that the utilities commission ruled that henceforth the public would be fully informed about all issues before being consulted as to policy decisions. Deliberative polling yielded significant changes in participants’ opinions on a broad spectrum of issues, ranging from the environment and the viability of wind power to more subjective categories, such as an increase in the belief that officials care what the public thinks.
In January 2010, a British seminar showed that deliberative polling could effect change in public opinion in other democracies as well. British political scientist John Parkinson reported that “the participants were blown away by the experienceIt’s brilliant stuff to be part of, and
there should be more like it.”7 Called POWER 2010, participants assessed political issues including the need for a written constitution and altering the parliamentary system to facilitate proportional representation. Discussions during the forum’s second stage, after participants had digested and discussed balanced and detailed information, revealed that “the deliberative assembly was a great success in its own righta group of ordinary people came together, were eager for information and advice and deliberated seriously over two intense days.”8 In one significant example, participants indicated that their belief in the use of deliberative processes for consulting the public on controversial issues more than doubled.
The deliberative process that Professor Fishkin has established was actually anticipated by researchers at the University of Hawaii in 1978. The Hawaii “Televote” enabled participants to become centrally involved in discussion on two constitutional issues, one having to do with the need to select judges in Hawaii by popular election rather than by executive appointment. The success of the initial televote led to nine others in Hawaii, and inspired similar forums held in New Zealand and in Southern California to gather public opinion prior to the 1984 Summer Olympic Games.9 In her account of the televote experience, Slaton wrote that participatory democracy may be the antidote to the problem of moral uncertainty, to the extent
that citizens empowered by information and the belief that they truly have a voice in the political process are demonstrably more likely to adopt a proactive stance as part of the electorate.
However, despite its popularity among average citizens, deliberative polling remains as vulnerable to political manipulation as any other tool aimed at transforming the political landscape. There first must exist the will and desire to utilize deliberative polling in order to gain frank and honest responses to sensitive political issues, many of which may impact the political standing of officials who are in a position to authorize such methods. As such, political theorist Albena Azmanova contended in a 2010 article that there is a danger deliberative polling may become “an important part of the persuasion industry (it is) allegedly countering”10 Also, there is concern that it offers only minimal benefits to a pluralistic, multi-cultural institution, such as the European Union.11
While Azmanova makes a valid point, there can be no denying the widespread acceptance of deliberative polling in democracies from North America to Europe and the Far East.12 It is true that, in an open society, there exists the possibility that analytical methods intended to assess and affect public opinion could be manipulated, thus becoming part of the unhealthy political climate it aims to improve. Such criticism is often accompanied by the suggestion that deliberative polling be closely monitored by government officials, perhaps even regulated. However, it must be argued that any credible informational resource that effectively
encourages greater public participation in Democracy should be endowed with third-party objectivity, existing free of undue internal influences. According to Fishkin, nothing less than our most basic and cherished rights are at stake. “Without political equality, votes are not counted equally or the voices of some do not get an effective hearing.”
Bibliography
Albena Azmanova. ‘Deliberative Conflict and the Better Argument Mystique,’ The Good Society, The Good Society, 19, (2010), pp. 35-48.
Irena Fiket, Espen D.H. Olsen & Hans-Jorg Trenz. ‘Deliberation Under Conditions of Language Pluralism,’ Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Norway (September 2011), pp. 1-32.
James S. Fishkin. ‘Deliberative Polling: Toward a Better-Informed Democracy.’ The Center for Deliberative Studies, Stanford University.
James S. Fishkin. Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993).
James S. Fishkin & Peter Laslett. Debating Deliberative Democracy. (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003).
James S. Fishkin & Robert Luskin. ‘Bringing Deliberation to the Democratic Dialogue,’ in The Poll With a Human Face: The National Issues Convention Experiment, Maxwell McCombs & Amy Reynolds, eds., (Locale: Psychology Press, 1999).
Joe Klein. ‘How Can a Democracy Solve Tough Problems?’ Time (September 2010).
Carole J. Lukensmeyer. ‘Strengthening Citizen Participation & Democracy.’ (Washington, DC: AmericaSpeaks, 2010).
Kevin O’Leary. Saving Democracy: A Plan for Real Representation in America. (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).
John Parkinson. ‘There’s More to Deliberative Democracy than Deliberative Polling.’ Reuters, (January 2010).
Christa D. Slaton. Televote: Expanding Citizen Participation in the Quantum Age. (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1992).
Steve Weir. ‘What Ideas Came Out of the Deliberative Poll and Why?’ OurKingdom, London, UK, 2010.
