Greek Revival

The Financial Times today profiles Jim Fishkin and a Greek revival: of deliberative democracy.

Fishkin, a political scientist at Stanford University in California and the University of Texas, is a man seized with a big idea, which he believes is large enough to be of global importance. He thinks that this idea - which goes by the name of deliberative democracy - addresses one of the large public anxieties of our times: the rapidly eroding popular support for the main variants of democratic politics, evidenced by a decline in voting, in party membership, activism and loyalty, in interest in public affairs in the news media, in trust in politicians and in democratic institutions.

George Papandreou of PASOK described why his party used a Deliberative Poll to choose a mayoral candidate this way.

One of the big things we in politics face is the abstention of the people from politics. We don’t put the complexity of the issues to them. When we do ask them their opinion, we do so in a superficial way. What this does is to go back to an ancient Greek concept - and carries the idea that everyone is equal. But it does it with a scientific method so that we get close to an idea of what society as a whole is saying.

Bill Corbett