Academic debate

James Clive Mathews has taken issue with the representativeness of the sample. In response to his query, we released the time 1 opinions of the 3,500. Our policy is never to do so prior to a Deliberative Poll because publishing poll results may influence the deliberation. But afterwards there is no harm. The time 1 results are just another poll.

The only way to compare statistically the answers to questions is to compare the means. But means put on a 0 to 1 scale are incomprehensible to journalists and the public so we released percentage breakdowns instead.

Mathews has conducted his comparison by picking out parts of questions (in fact, parts of one selected question only). When we compared the means for all the questions between the 3,500 and the 362, we found that the substantive differences were only 4% of what they could possibly have been. Even a cursory comparison of the answers will show that the differences are mostly small between the 3,500 and the 362.

Pepper D Culpepper, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Malcolm Weiner Center for Social Policy at Harvard University, Archon Fung, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard, and Taeku Lee, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkley compare the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll to the Citizens Consultations undertaken by the EU earlier this year, and analyse some of the underlying aims. (Part 1)

Nearly every method of ascertaining the citizens' perspective relies upon a small number of actual citizens who, in some fashion, represent everyone else. Whereas the choices of designing electoral representation are well known - presidentialism or parliamentarianism? plurality rule or proportional representation? - the methods of direct citizen deliberation are novel and largely uncharted. It is therefore appropriate to experiment with a wide range of designs for public deliberation to identify the methods generate credible and useful citizens perspectives. Consider just a few of the important design choices.

Pepper D Culpepper, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Malcolm Weiner Center for Social Policy at Harvard University, Archon Fung, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard, and Taeku Lee, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkley compare the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll to the Citizens Consultations undertaken by the EU earlier this year, and analyse some of the underlying aims.

A specter of illegitimacy haunts the democracies of Europe. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said as much last month when he noted that political parties and elections in the UK fail to engage an increasing segment of Britons. In response, he called for new methods such as citizen juries to reconnect citizens with their allegedly democratic government.

If the problem of democratic legitimacy is acute in the United Kingdom, it has reached a critical stage in the European Union.

The day before the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll kicks off, materminds Professor James Fishkin and Professor Robert Luskin give a few more details about the practicalities:

A basic sampling issue is whether to try to represent the population of every individual member state or the population of Europe as a whole.

The day before the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll kicks off, materminds Professor James Fishkin and Professor Robert Luskin clarify deliberative polling's claims to representativeness:

To help establish that the sample is indeed representative, the characteristics and pre-deliberation views and knowledge of the participants (the initial interviewees who attend the deliberations) are compared with those of the non-participants (the initial interviewees who do not attend).

The day before the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll kicks off, materminds Professor James Fishkin and Professor Robert Luskin clarify what deliberative polling is all about:

A Deliberative Poll (DP) surveys a scientific, random sample before and after it has deliberated one or more policy issues or electoral choices.

As the academic debate over the merits of deliberative democracy and deliberative polling heats up following Professor Lupia's initial criticisms (and the response of deliberative polling masterminds Professors Fishkin and Luskin - and part 2), Lupia continues to expand on the need for representativeness:

On the Tomorrow's Europe website, the representativeness of the sample is claimed as a legitimating factor. Here is an instance where, ex ante, you can commit to credible measures of "representativeness."

As the academic debate over the merits of deliberative democracy and deliberative polling heats up following Professor Lupia's initial criticisms (and the response of deliberative polling continues to consider the potential effects:

The Tomorrow's Europe poll first requires a stronger and more clearly stated set of goals than appears on their website. Then, turn those goals into hypotheses that can be evaluated with data that you are able to collect.

Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - conclude their introductory series. (See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4)

The fourth [and final] purpose of deliberation is to help correct the mistakes that citizens, professionals and officials inevitably make when they take collective actions. This is a response to the last source of disagreement, the incomplete understanding that characterizes almost all of moral conflicts.

Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - continue their introductory series. (See part 1, part 2, part 3)

The third purpose of deliberation, to promote mutually respectful decision making, responds to an often neglected source of moral disagreement - incompatible moral values. Even utterly altruistic individuals trying to decide on the morally best standards for governing a society of abundance would not be able to reconcile some moral conflicts beyond a reasonable doubt. They would still confront, for example, the problem of abortion, which pits life against liberty. No less tractable would be other moral issues such as the question of how to balance privacy against security.

Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - continue their introductory series. (See part 1, part 2)

The second purpose of deliberation is to encourage public-spirited perspectives on public issues. This aim responds to another source of moral disagreement-limited generosity. Few people are inclined to be wholly altruistic when they are arguing about contentious issues of public policy, such as health care reform or foreign intervention.

Dr. Ian O'Flynn is Lecturer in Political Theory at Newcastle University. He recently worked with James Fishkin, Robert Luskin and David Russell on a deliberative poll on the future of education policy in Northern Ireland. Information on this poll is publicly available via the Center for Deliberative Democracy's website.

Arthur Lupia claims that deliberative polls ‘can have beneficial effects, but only under specific conditions and with rather limited goals in mind'. There is some truth to this claim. Deliberative polls create a public that has never existed and probably never will exist. Political groups are not comprised of random samples, information is rarely balanced, safe deliberating spaces are generally hard to find, and so forth.

I am taking this opportunity to weigh in on the exchange between Arthur Lupia (and part 2), Jim Fishkin (and part 2), and others concerned with the Tomorrow's Europe Deliberative Poll. I come neither to praise nor bury this effort, but rather to simply offer some perspective.

The Deliberative Poll is but one of many practices created to enhance the quality of public deliberation. Before looking at its details, it's important to recognize that it shares common features with Citizen Juries, Planning Cells, Consensus Conferences, and other deliberative processes that have been developed over the past thirty years. These key features include:

1 - inclusion of a diverse cross-section of citizens in face-to-face discussion on public issues
2 - providing experts and partisans a role to express their views and share information with citizens
3 - a fair amount of semi-structured, professionally moderated discussion of (and reflection on) all that is heard during the process
4 - and a metric for faithfully recording the citizens' views after their deliberation

Only when held against an unreachable standard of perfection does the Deliberative Poll - or its peer processes - fail to achieve these four aims.

Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - continue their introductory series. (See part 1)

The first purpose of deliberative democracy is to promote the legitimacy of collective decisions.

This is a response to the first source of moral disagreement - scarcity of resources. Citizens would not have to argue about how best to distribute health care or how to balance environmental protection and economic growth if these goods and services were unlimited or not in conflict.

Deliberation often cannot resolve moral disagreements because there are reasonable differences about how health care or scarce organs should be distributed. But in the face of scarcity, deliberation can help those who do not get what they want or even what they need come to accept the legitimacy of a collective decision.

As the academic debate over the merits of deliberative democracy and deliberative polling heats up following Professor Lupia's initial criticisms (and the response of deliberative polling masterminds Professors Fishkin and Luskin - and part 2), Lupia returns to expand on the need for transparency:

The key premise is: procedural transparency fuels legitimacy. There are changes that could be made that would be helpful towards making the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll (DP) more transparent in its aims and methods. I would begin by using more precise language about key points.

As the academic debate over the merits of deliberative democracy and deliberative polling heats up following Professor Lupia's criticisms (with more to come shortly) and the response of deliberative polling masterminds Professors Fishkin and Luskin (and part 2), it's time to get to grips with the details.

Here, Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - begin an introduction to the theories underlying the concept of deliberative democracy:

Following the first of Professor Lupia's posts on the problems of deliberative polls, the two masterminds of the deliberative polling method, Professor James Fishkin of Stanford and Professor Robert Luskin of the University of Texas, explain a bit more about the results and methodology of their approach:

It is true that studies of "deliberation" have produced some variety of results - unsurprisingly, given the considerable variety in definitions and operationalizations underlying them.

Following the first of Professor Lupia's posts on the problems of deliberative polls, the two masterminds of the deliberative polling method, Professor James Fishkin of Stanford and Professor Robert Luskin of the University of Texas, respond to his accusations on the issue of transparency:

As the academic debate over the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll begins to take off, Professor Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research presents the first in a four-part series on some of his concerns about the methods and theories behind deliberative polling:

There are many contested and unresolved issues relevant to the effectiveness of deliberative polls (DP) and related deliberative mechanisms. I happen to believe that deliberative ventures such as DPs can have beneficial effects, but only under specific conditions and with rather limited goals in mind.

I am concerned with the basic credibility of a number of the claims made about the Tomorrow's Europe poll on its website.

From the comments to Professor Fishkin's introduction to the concept of the Tomorrow's Europe poll, reader mcconeb gets to the heart of the matter: the EU's little problem with democracy. Have something to add? Leave a comment, or email it in to james.clivematthews [at] opendemocracy.net

James Fishkin's exercises are interesting. They would make excellent school projects or could be adopted on a wide scale for a more interesting form of opinion polling. However, before we talk about hypothetical ways of forming opinions and weeding out special interests, let us look at a more tried and tested one: the democratic system currently used in all European member states.