Articulating political knowledge in deliberation

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Notes

1. B. Ackerman and J. Fishkin, ‘Deliberation Day’, Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 10, 2002, pp. 129–52.

2. The deliberative poll combines conventional opinion polling with public deliberation. It involves large groups of citizens with the largest experiment in the USA (the National Issues Convention) involving 466 people selected to be representative of the population as a whole. The deliberative poll is a four-stage process. First, the participant is asked to fill out a questionnaire, which includes questions about personal background, general political knowledge, knowledge of the issue to be discussed, and opinions and preferences concerning that issue. The second stage involves dissemination of information to all participants. Each participant is expected to have read this information prior to the third stage. The third stage is an event where participants meet each other, question witnesses and discuss (in small groups and plenary sessions) the chosen issue. The final stage involves a questionnaire that aims to evaluate both whether their knowledge of the issue has increased and whether, following their deliberations, their opinions and preferences have changed. This is not to suggest that knowledge is not discussed in evaluations and studies of other deliberative events. The focus is on deliberative polling because of the prominence of arguments about the importance of knowledge and the analysis of knowledge levels in the current evaluative literature.

3. We define deliberation as a communicative setting in which two or more people discuss an issue of social, political and/or ethical salience and where information is introduced either before or during discussion. This definition of deliberation is consistent with Eveland's emphasis on ‘interpersonal communication’. In this sense, deliberative events or settings include both those developed by political scientists, such as deliberative polling and those that have a broader social science and policy application including consensus conferences, citizens' juries and, under certain conditions, focus groups.

4. W. P. Eveland, ‘The Effect of Political Discussion in Producing Informed Citizens: The Role of Information, Motivation, and Elaboration’, Political Communication, Vol. 21, 2004, pp. 177–93; J. Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform, New Haven, CT, 1991; J. Fishkin, R. C. Luskin and R. Jowell, ‘Deliberative Polling and Public Consultation’, Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 53, 2000, pp. 657–66; J. Gastil and J. P. Dillard, ‘Increasing Political Sophistication through Public Deliberation’, Political Communication, Vol. 16, 1999, pp. 3–23.

5. Fishkin et al., op. cit., pp. 657–66, at p. 657.

6. See S. L. Althaus, ‘Information Effects in Collective Preferences’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 92, 1998, pp. 545–58; L. M. Bartels, ‘Uninformed Votes: Information Effects in Presidential Elections’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 40, 1996, pp. 194–230; S. B. Gordon and G. M. Segura, ‘Cross-national Variation in the Political Sophistication of Individuals: Capability or Choice?’, Journal of Politics, Vol. 59, 1997, pp. 126–47; J. Junn, ‘Participation and Political Knowledge’, in W. Crotty (ed.), Political Participation and American Democracy, Westport, CT, 1991, pp. 194–208; and J. R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, Cambridge,1992, for fuller explorations of the potential importance of the political knowledge of the mass electorate in representative democracies on which arguments about the potential for the transformation of policy and political preferences are based.

7. Eveland, op. cit., pp. 177–93.

8. Ibid., p. 179.

9. Ibid., p. 190.

10. M. Cooke, ‘Five Arguments for Deliberative Democracy’, Political Studies, Vol. 48, 2000, pp. 947–69.

11. J. Gastil and J. P. Dillard, op. cit., pp. 3–23.

12. R. Luskin, J. S. Fishkin and R. Jowell, ‘Considered Opinions: Deliberative Polling in Britain’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 32, 2002, pp. 455–87.

13. J. Fishkin and R. C. Luskin, ‘Bringing Deliberation to the Democratic Dialogue’, in M. McCombs and A. Reynolds (eds), The Poll with a Human Face: The National Issues Convention Experiment in Political Communication, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1999, pp. 3–38.

14. S. E. Bennett, R. S. Flickinger and S. L. Rhine, ‘Political Talk Over Here, Over There, Over Time’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 30, 2000, pp. 99–119.

15. Ibid., p. 117.

16. Ibid., p. 119.

17. D. Denver, G. Hands and B. Jones, ‘Fishkin and the Deliberative Opinion Poll: Lessons from a Study of the Granada 500 Television Programme’, Political Communication, Vol. 12, 1995, pp. 147–56.

18. The Granada 500 was a televised event which occurred in the run-up to the general election of 1992. The focus of the programme was on allowing citizens to receive information and question politicians rather than on small group discussions. It is therefore worth questioning whether this exercise equates very well with the deliberative poll process developed by Fishkin and his associates that places more emphasis on group discussion.

19. Gastil and Dillard, op. cit., pp. 3–23.

20. D. M. Merkle, ‘Review: The National Issues Convention Deliberative Poll’, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 60, 1996, pp. 588–619.

21. J. R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, Cambridge, 1992; R. Anderson, A. Heath and R. Sinnott, ‘Political Knowledge and Electoral Choice’, CREST Working Paper No. 87, 2001; Bartels, op. cit., pp. 194–230; A. Heath, R. Andersen and R. Sinnott, ‘Do Less Informed Voters Make Mistakes? Political Knowledge and Electoral Choice’, CREST Working Paper No. 97, 2002; A. Heath and J. R. Tilley, ‘Political Knowledge and Values in Britain, 1983–1997’, CREST Working Paper No. 102, 2003.

22. J. Martin, A. Heath, K. Ashworth and R. Jowell ‘Development of a Short Quiz to Measure Political Knowledge’, CREST Working Paper No. 21, 1993.

23. M. X. Delli Carpini and S. Keeter, ‘Measuring Political Knowledge: Putting First Things First’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 37, 1993, pp. 1179–206; M. X. Delli Carpini and S. Keeter, What Americans Know about Politics and Why it Matters, New Haven, CT, 1996.

24. J. R. Baker, L. L. M. Bennett, S. E. Bennett and R. S. Flickinger, ‘Citizens’ Knowledge and Perceptions of Legislatures in Canada, Britain and the United States', Journal of Legislative Studies, Vol. 2, 1996, pp. 44–62.

25. S. E. Bennett, ‘Is the Public's Ignorance of Politics Trivial?’, Critical Review, Vol. 15, 1988, pp. 307–37; S. E. Bennett, ‘“Know-nothings” Revisited: The Meaning of Political Ignorance Today’, Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 65, 2003, pp. 476–90.

26. J. J. Mondak, ‘Reconsidering the Measurement of Political Knowledge’, Political Analysis, Vol. 8, 1999, pp. 57–82.

27. Ibid., p. 59.

28. E. Frazer and K. Macdonald, ‘Sex Differences in Political Knowledge’, Political Studies, Vol. 51, 2003, pp. 67–83.

29. Ibid., p. 68.

30. D. A. Graber, ‘Mediated Politics and Citizenship in the Twenty-first Century’, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 55, 2004, pp. 545–71; D. A. Graber, ‘Why Voters Fail Information Tests: Can the Hurdles be Overcome?’, Political Communication, Vol. 11, 1994, pp. 331–46.

31. Graber, ‘Why Voters Fail Information Tests’, op. cit., p. 340.

32. Ibid., p. 341.

33. Graber, ‘Mediated Politics and Citizenship in the Twenty-first Century’, op. cit., p. 562.

34. Bennett, ‘Is the Public's Ignorance of Politics Trivial?’, op. cit., p. 326.

35. The topic areas were: local environment, genetic modification, climate change, energy, animals and biodiversity, and land use and the countryside.

36. P. Healey, ‘Building Institutional Capacity through Collaborative Approaches to Urban Planning’, Environment and Planning A, Vol. 30, 1998, pp. 1531–46; idem, Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies, London, 1997.

37. A. Acre and N. Long, ‘The Dynamics of Knowledge: Interfaces between Bureaucrats and Peasants’, in N. Long and A. Long (eds), Battlefields of Knowledge: The Interlocking of Theory and Practice in Social Research and Development, London, 1992, pp. 211–246.

38. B. Latour and S. Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, Princeton, NJ, 1986.

39. J. Burgess, ‘Situating Knowledges, Sharing Values and Reaching Collective Decisions’, in I. Cook, D. Crouch, S. Naylor and J. R. Ryan (eds), Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns: Perspectives on Cultural Geography, London, 2000, pp. 271–287; C. M. Harrison, J. Burgess and J. Clark, ‘Discounted Knowledges: Farmers’ and Residents' Understandings of Nature Conservation Goals and Policies', Journal of Environmental Management, Vol. 54, 1998, pp. 305–20.