Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation

Abstract

James Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University. He is also professor of political science and communication, director of Stanford's Center for Deliberative Democracy, and chair of the Department of Communication. Fishkin is author of a number of books including Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform (Yale University Press, 1991), The Dialogue of Justice (Yale University Press, 1992 ), and The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy (Yale University Press, 1995). He is co-author with Bruce Ackerman of Deliberation Day (Yale University Press, 2004), and his most recent book When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation was published by Oxford University Press in 2009. Fishkin is best known for developing Deliberative Polling® -- a practice of public consultation that employs random samples of the citizenry to explore how opinions would change if they were more informed. Fishkin and his collaborators have conducted Deliberative Polls in the United States, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Bulgaria, China, Greece and other countries. Fishkin has been a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge as well as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. He has held a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. and has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Fishkin received his B.A. from Yale University in 1970. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from University of Cambridge.