About

James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University, where he is a Professor of Communication and a Professor of Political Science (by courtesy). He is also the Director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab. Fishkin received his B.A. from Yale in 1970, and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale as well as a second Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cambridge. His academic work focuses on deliberative democracy, public consultation, and the development of Deliberative Polling®, a practice that employs random samples of citizens to explore how opinions change when they are more informed. His research has stimulated over 100 Deliberative Polls across 28 countries, influencing government and policy decisions worldwide. Fishkin is the author of several books, including 'Democracy When the People Are Thinking' (2018), 'When the People Speak' (2009), 'Deliberation Day' (2004), and 'Democracy and Deliberation' (1991). He is recognized as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and has held various academic appointments and honors, including fellowships at Stanford and Cambridge. His work primarily aims to enhance democratic processes through informed citizen engagement and deliberation.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Economics
• Psychology
• Chemistry
• Medicine
• Public relations
• Public economics
• Political economy
• Positive economics
• Business

Selected publications

• Making Deliberative Democracy Practical: Public Consultation and Dispute Resolution

  2026-01-06 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Deliberative democracy is a form of alternative dispute resolution. Consulting the public in a thoughtful and representative way can lead to consequential public policy outcomes that might otherwise have been difficult to achieve. However, some recent literature appears to treat deliberative democracy and alternative dispute resolution as rivals. 1 While there are differences in emphasis and in theoretical preoccupations between the two, there are also some overlapping aims and methods.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Endnotes

  2025-03-04

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Institutions for a More Deliberative Society

  2025-03-04

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter argues that we could create a more deliberative society by scaling deliberation in two ways: first by the proliferation of deliberative minipublics so that everyone can, as Aristotle observed about ancient Athens, “rule and be ruled in turn.” This is the rotation method. Second, for the most consequential issues and elections we institute an organized process of mass deliberation which Ackerman and Fishkin called “Deliberation Day.” Another mass process is to introduce deliberation at scale into the schools as an improved form of civic education. All of these applications are intended to move us in the direction of a more deliberative society, with greater mutual respect, more deliberative voters, a viable process of higher law-making for constitutional change, reform of ballot propositions, and reinvigoration of shareholder democracy.

  PublisherDOI

• Overview

  2025-03-04

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Democracy is under siege. Party competition seems to lead to extreme polarization, producing deadlock. Should it be replaced by technocrats? Should it be replaced by autocrats? Should it be replaced by random samples that are not elected? This chapter argues none of the above. Deliberation by random samples can usefully supplement elections, cure our great divisions, and provide public buy-in for solutions to our difficult choices. Based on the author’s decades of research in applying deliberative democracy in the US and in countries around the world, it shows how deliberation can make our elections more meaningful, our policies more responsive, and our society more civil.

  PublisherDOI

• Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?

  2025-03-03 · 9 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Democracy needs to make a connection between “the will of the people” and what is actually done. This connection has broken down in a world of propaganda, social media enclaves, misinformation, and manipulation. Meanwhile our political divisions seem ever more intractable and our democracies ever more ungovernable. Based on decades of applying and perfecting methods of deliberative democracy in countries around the world, Fishkin argues that deliberative democracy can have surprisingly positive effects on all these problems. Fishkin’s method of Deliberative Polling has been applied 150 times in countries around the world. In this book, Fishkin synthesizes the results and shows how they can be applied to help resolve many of democracy’s seemingly intractable challenges. Deliberative democracy can be applied to major national and local decisions, it can spread in the schools, it can be used by corporations, it can make for more meaningful ballot propositions, it can help reform the primary system, it can scale with technology. Most importantly, it can help reform electoral democracy, help preserve the guardrails that protect the electoral process, and provide key policy inputs on almost every contested issue from climate change to the rights of minorities. Fishkin ends by laying out a vision for how to combine elections with deliberation and build a more deliberative society—one that cures our extreme partisanship and leads to substantive dialogues that foster mutual respect and more engaged voters.

  PublisherDOI

• Toward a Deliberative–Competitive System

  2025-03-04

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter presents an overview of findings from Deliberative Polls showing that deliberation dramatically depolarizes our most extreme political divisions on contested topics. People learn to hear and understand the other side of contested issues and they often move to some degree closer to those they most strongly disagree with. Accuracy-based motivated reasoning along with the contact hypothesis lead to some diminution of extreme partisan polarization. Deliberation also has long-term effects on producing more deliberative voters (those who will vote following their considered judgments on the issues) even up to a year after deliberation, and it will increase support for the guardrails of electoral democracy so that those who deliberate will have greater respect for the norms that make party competition-based democracy possible. Technology can also be employed to make Deliberative Polling more practical. Results from the Stanford AI-Assisted Online Deliberation Platform are discussed.

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• List of Tables

  2025-03-04

  paratext1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Scaling Dialogue for Democracy: Can Automated Deliberation Create More Deliberative Voters?

  Perspectives on Politics · 2025-01-03 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The theory and practice of what has come to be called “deliberative democracy” have been revived for the modern era with a focus on deliberative microcosms selected through random sampling or “sortition.” But might it be possible to spread some of the benefits of deliberation beyond mini-publics to the broader society? Can technology assist with scaling an organized deliberative process? In particular, would those who experience such a process become more deliberative voters? Would their considered judgments from deliberation influence their voting? We draw on a larger than usual experiment with public deliberation and a one-year follow-up in the mid-term U.S. elections to suggest answers to these questions. It has implications for whether spreading an organized deliberative process could, in theory, be used to create more deliberative elections.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• List of Figures

  2025-03-04

  paratext1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• When the People Rule

  2025-03-04

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Democracy requires some form of popular control. By whom? Of what? Through what kinds of institutions? This chapter argues for inclusion of all adult citizens making meaningful choices under conditions of equality in elections offering different alternatives under conditions where the public can deliberate about them. While these criteria may seem obvious, it is hard to satisfy all of them. The problem of extreme partisan polarization (what George Washington warned about as the “spirit of party”) is introduced. The chapter sketches how deliberation can moderate the spirit of party. The problem of tyranny of the majority and of the minority is discussed as a fundamental threat to democracy.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Fred D. Miller

  Bowling Green State University

  184 shared

• Jeffrey Paul

  University of Manitoba

  182 shared

• Richard Epstein

  New York University

  121 shared

• George Mason

  Royal North Shore Hospital

  101 shared

• Carmen E. Pavel

  100 shared

• Carrie‐Ann Biondi

  Bowling Green State University

  100 shared

• Daniel Jacobson

  Bridge University

  100 shared

• Jacob S. Levy

  Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

  100 shared

Education

• B.A.

  Yale

  1970

• Ph.D., Political Science

  Yale

• Ph.D., Philosophy

  Cambridge

Awards & honors

• Eyes of Texas Award, University of Texas at Austin (1996)
• Visiting Fellow Commoner, Trinity College, Cambridge, Englan…
• Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sc…
• Erik H. Erikson Prize, International Society of Political Ps…
• Jacob Cooper Philosophy Prize, Yale University (1968)