open Democracy News Analysis - Fishkin and Luskin reply to Lupia, - Comments

Arthur Lupia on "Fishkin and Luskin reply to Lupia"

Arthur Lupia — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:32:40 +0100

In my original post, I raised questions about the transparency and effectiveness of deliberative mechanisms such as Deliberative Polls (DP). Jim Fishkin and Professor Luskin have made several claims in their response that deserve additional attention. (This version of my response is extended to parallel the complete entry of Fishkin and Luskin.) In sum, deliberation can sometimes do great things, it can sometimes cause huge problems, and it can often have no lasting effect at all. Everyone who has a stake in Tomorrow’s Europe has a right to ask direct questions about what a Deliberative Poll can -- and cannot -- accomplish. 1. Jim and Professor Luskin begin by suggesting that my motive in questioning Deliberative Polling is that it challenges my past work. It is odd for an advocate of deliberation to defend his claims by questioning others’ motives. It is well known within the deliberative democracy community, that this kind of maneuver does more to impede successful deliberation rather than facilitate open conversation. To deal with the facts of his claim, I have published a number of articles and books focuses on the conditions under which citizens can successfully use various pieces of information to make quality decisions. I show that sometimes citizens can be successful when skeptics and pundits do not expect it. In other cases, citizens are not at successful. This is all very well documented -- as Jim Fishkin knows. I invite you to have a look at my website (http://www.umich.edu/~lupia) and draw your own conclusion. 2. I was invited by the editors of this blog, to offer greater clarity in what deliberative democracy can and cannot do. To this end, the main conclusion of an expansive set of scientific research (almost none of which is by me) is that if you want to propose credible means for helping citizens be more effective, it is important to understand the conditions under which citizens can -- and cannot -- use information effectively. The questions I and others have raised about deliberation come from a disconnect between claims about the effects of deliberation (such as some made by Jim) and heavily researched findings about learning and decision making that emerge from experiments and related scientific work in fields such as psychology, sociology, political science, and the neurosciences. In this case, the science-Fishkin disconnect does not automatically imply that Jim is wrong when he makes claims about DPs, but it does mean that there is a legitimate basis for asking whether he is right. 3. In science, a common way to handle such matters is to facilitate replication. This often entails sharing data from which key claims are made. Later in their response, Fishkin and Luskin admit that they have "been slow about making our data more widely available." Slow is right. Their website refers to dozens of studies costing many millions of dollars including some that are over a decade old. But even as of today, there does not appear to be a single dataset that is publicly available. They then claim that, "We have been the victims of our own success in entrepreneuring a continuing stream of Deliberative Polls, which has retarded our efforts to write up the results for scholarly publication." This response does not hold water in the scientific community. That they have been "too busy" over the last decade to post data on which they seek to base scientifically validated claims is not a credible response. Today, it takes only a few minutes to post a dataset on the web. If Jim is serious about obtaining the legitimacy for DPs that comes from transparency, then he should make his data available without delay. While defending himself, Jim cites instances where he has shared his data. However, most of these people are **his coauthors.** This is not of much help in facilitating independent evaluations. When people want to have a large social impact and claim scientific credibility, transparency typically means making data available for everyone.

Arthur Lupia on "Fishkin and Luskin reply to Lupia"

Arthur Lupia — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:31:20 +0100

Deliberation is the essential component of a deliberative poll. Jim Fishkin suggests that only one person (me), and only a few others, have raised questions about the effects and effectiveness of deliberation and deliberative democracy. It is easy to verify that this claim is specious. All you need is a search engine. Go to one and type in the exact phrase “critique of deliberative democracy.” I did this on google.com this morning. Over 3500 entries emerge. Next type the exact phrase, “critique of deliberation.” Over 4500 entries emerge. Of course, not all people who are genuinely interested in understanding how deliberation works use the exact phrases above. For a more general view, type in the terms “deliberative,” “democracy,” and “critique.” Over 240,000 entries come up. Next, enter “deliberation” AND “critique.” There are over 1.3 million entries. These are big numbers (and they are for English language searches only.) Of course, there are repeated entries in each group (we all know how search engines work) and some of the entries respond to criticisms. But even if a only few hundred or thousand distinct entries remain (with many by leading scholars in multiple scientific, legal, and technical fields), it is clear that a wide range of questions about what deliberation can – and cannot do – are being raised. Fishkin’s claim, therefore, is inconsistent with the facts. People who are serious about wanting the promise of deliberative democracy to be realized should be open to serious questions about what it can accomplish. They should see that it is in their interest to facilitate rigorous, independent, third-party evaluations of the issues raised by numerous experts.

Fishkin and Luskin reply to Lupia,

James Fishkin — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:50:39 +0100

The full, unedited text of the response of Professors Fishkin and Luskin to the criticisms of Professor Lupia:

Skip Lupia has staked a good part of his career on the view that, by and large, ordinary citizens successfully use cognitive short cuts and simple cues to reach the same policy views and electoral choices they would reach if they knew and thought a lot more about them--and that deliberation should therefore make little difference. The evidence from Deliberative Polling challenges a great deal of his past work.

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