Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Candidate selection in representative democracies is usually either by party elites or by mass primaries, an American innovation lately spreading o the rest of the democratic world. The choice between the two poses a dilemma for reform. Primaries allow mass participation, but by voters who are rarely well informed and or deliberative. Elites are generally well informed and may even deliberative, but decision making confined to them violates political equality.

How then to provide for both deliberation and equality? A solution has lain in the dust of history for centuries—the deliberative microcosm chosen by lot. An ancient version was common for many political processes in Athens. A modern adaptation is embodied in Deliberative Polling.

This paper reports on the first use of Deliberative Polling for the official selection of candidates for office by a major political party anywhere in the world. In June 2006, Deliberative Polling was used to select a mayoral candidate in Marousi, one of the principal municipalities of the Athens area. PASOK, the Greek Socialist party, used a recruited a random sample hundreds of Marousi citizens to discuss the policy issues facing the city and the choice of a mayoral candidate to deal with them. At the end of the process, two rounds of secret balloting selected one of six candidates as PASOK’s official candidate for the mayorship of Marousi.

This paper analyzes the changes in both policy attitude changes and candidate preferences. We consider the sample’s knowledge gains, the extent to which they drove the changes in candidate preference, and the extent to which the final secret ballot voting can be generated by the questionnaire results. The paper also considers the viability of Deliberative Polling for candidate selection based on this first effort.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Paper (prepared oral presentation)
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Proponents of deliberative democracy argue that deliberative experiences can help to improve political engagement and perceptions of political self-efficacy. Research into Deliberative Polling has confirmed that the DP process can result in these impacts. Some theorists have argued that deliberation is a unique and uniquely powerful form of interaction at developing these results. If this is the case, then participating in discussions which meet deliberative ideals should be more effective at predicting these results than those that do not. Two studies conducted during an Australian state-level Deliberative Poll assessed the development of deliberative quality across the course of the DP and its impact on later opinion change. The first study developed and conducted initial validation of a scale to assess deliberative quality, then used it to assess deliberative quality across the three days of the DP. Deliberative quality was high but declined with time over the course of the DP. Consistent with previous research, groups with higher proportions of women showed more discontent with the deliberative quality of the discussion. The second study surveyed participants at six months post-DP, and found a significant increase in perceptions of political efficacy and political understanding. Deliberative quality at the individual or group level did not predict these changes, suggesting that they were not related to adherence to deliberative ideals, as defined by theorists and assessed by our measure. Other mechanisms such as information exchange may be more likely predictors of these effects.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper focuses on the norm of sincerity in democratic deliberations. Markovits articulates the various dangers this norm holds for deliberation, from the way in which it conceives of social knowledge and human psychology, to its glorification of consensus, to its denigration of "rhetorical" forms of speech and those voices thought to be using such forms. She explores how the claim to sincerity finds its ultimate expression in the "cult of plain speech" and the "realist style," modes of speech that hamstring deliberation, highlighting the need for a more complex understanding of discourse ethics in democratic theory.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper considers how “public talk” in the context of electoral contests can be transformed in a way that it more closely approximates deliberative discourse. To do this, it triangulates between three essential factors: what deliberative theory, and in particular, the principle of reciprocity asks of voters; what political psychologists know about how people make electoral decisions; and what voters actually want from political campaigns. Specifically, I argue deliberative theory invites voters to do more than simply inform themselves: they must do so in an unbiased manner and in a way that enables them to offer reasons for their vote choice should they ever be called to account. I then consider how reasonable these requirements are given what political psychologists have learned about political interest, how people process information during campaigns, and how they make electoral decisions. Finally, I consider how these reforms mesh with what people actually want from campaigns, drawing on research that examines how Americans feel about their political processes. Based on this analysis, I argue that deliberativists must broaden their reform agenda to take the larger electoral context into account. Moreover, I conclude that certain potentially effective reforms, such as a National Deliberation Day, do not mesh well with what voters want from campaigns, while others that rely on the use of deliberative “shortcuts” do.