When the People Speak: CHOICE Review

When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation was reviewed in the Jun 2010 issue of CHOICE.

"After many years of perfecting the art of deliberative polling from his place as director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, Fishkin offers fresh evidence of the promise the model holds for democracy. The DVD included with the book shows how 27 European countries provided a diverse range of randomly selected citizens, speaking many languages, and proved that a few days of deliberative engagement produces authentic political thinking. Fishkin's four basic models of democracy are competitive democracy, elite deliberation, participatory democracy, and deliberative democracy. Of these, deliberative democracy gives a human voice to citizens and offers an escape from sound bites, manipulation, and incentives for rational ignorance found in common political practice. Deliberative democracy seeks conditions in which people enter political dialogue as equals but have an opportunity for informed deliberation with others. The goal is to find out what people would really think if they could share concerns and hear from experts--opinions change, and people learn about one another. The author provides evidence for the model and suggests how it can be used to reform democracy. Organization, technology, and incentives make it possible to become more thoughtful democratic citizens. Wonderful research; strongly recommended. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections."

-- A. R. Brunello, Eckerd College