Deliberative polling and public consultation
Abstract
BY JAMES S. FISHKIN, ROBERT C. LUSKIN AND ROGER JOWELL At the heart of any notion of democracy is some element of public input into the policy-making process. Inputs can take the form of direct democracy or parliamentary democracy or both. Parliamentary democracy is a form of representative democracy, in which the electorate determines who its representatives are; the majority party or coalition forms the government; and the government decides public policies. Historically, British democracy has been representative democracy. Direct democracy is manifest in a referendum or an initiative, in which electors vote directly for or against adopting a policy. Institutions of direct democracy are prominent in Switzerland and in American states such as California, but they have been very unusual in the past in Britain. Tony Blair has made the promotion of more popular inputs in public policy a leading feature of his approach to government, for example endorsing the idea of national referendums on electoral systems and on joining the European Monetary Union. But the distribution of votes in elections and referendums is not necessarily a good indicator of public preferences. One obvious source of error is low turnout: voters and non-voters may differ signiï¬cantly in