James S. Fishkin

James S. Fishkin (born 1948) is a professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University. Fishkin is a widely cited scholar on his work on Deliberative democracy. Along with Robert Luskin (no connection to Karl Rove's attorney of the same name), he has pioneered a model of polling called the Deliberative Poll.

Contents

Career

Fishkin received his BA degree and Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. He holds a second Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cambridge University, United Kingdom.

Deliberative Poll

The Deliberative Opinion Poll takes a representative random sample of the people and brings the people together at a place to deliberate about an issue. The people are provided briefing materials which are made in concert with all interested parties and done in a way so as to represent each position in a balanced way. The people are asked to vote after a day or more of deliberation. The decisions made by such arrangements have been alternatively used to elect candidates in primaries (Greece) or recommend policy decisions (China, Texas) etc. It was the basis of the The People's Parliament, a Channel 4 program on which Fishkin was a consultant that aired in the UK (1994-1999).

More than 40 such deliberative polls have now taken place around the world including China, Greece, UK etc.

Publications

Books

Deliberative democracy
Political theory and philosophy
Prominent journal papers

External links