Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?

In our modern world of propaganda, social media enclaves, misinformation, and manipulation, the connection between 'the will of the people' and political action has broken down, political divisions are becoming increasingly intractable, and democracies are growing ever more ungovernable. Democracy is in crisis. In Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?, James S. Fishkin argues that deliberative democracy can have surprisingly positive effects on all of these problems and charts a unique path to fixing them with his method of Deliberative Polling. After decades of applying and perfecting the methods of deliberative democracy in countries all over the world, this book synthesizes the results of 150 applications and shows how the method can be applied to resolve many of democracy's seemingly intractable challenges. It can clarify the public will and depolarize our divisions. It can be applied to major national and local decisions, it can spread in schools, it can be used by corporations, it can make for more meaningful ballot propositions, it can help reform the primary system, it can scale with technology, and most importantly, it can help reform electoral democracy, help preserve the guardrails that protect the electoral process, and provide key policy inputs in almost every contested issue area from climate change to the rights of minorities. Fishkin demonstrates that deliberative democracy is a practical solution if applied widely and lays out a vision for how to combine elections with deliberation to build a more deliberative society, one that cures our extreme partisanship and leads to substantive dialogues that foster mutual respect and more engaged voters. Deliberation provides a story of thoughtful empowerment and democratic reform, strengthening but not replacing our current institutions.

1 - Overview
2 - When the People Rule: Criteria for Popular Control
3 - Deliberative Democracy: A Dialogue between Theory and Practice
4 - Toward a Deliberative-Competitive System
5 - Institutions for a More Deliberative Society

James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His work focuses on Deliberative Polling, a process of deliberative public consultation that has been conducted more than 150 times around the world, and he is the author of Democracy When the People Are Thinking (OUP, 2020) among others.