1. Morone 1990: 9, 323. On the pattern of reform, see Ibid.: 9–15.

2. This section of this chapter is adapted from John Gastil and James P. Dillard, "The Aims, Methods, and Effects of Deliberative Civic Education through the National Issues Forums," Communication Education 48 (April 1999): 179–182. I thank the National Communication Association for allowing my use of this material.

3. On the Lyceum, see Bode 1956; on the Chautaqua Assembly, see Gould 1961; on Great Books, see Davis 1961; on other programs, see Mathews 1994, Mattson 1998, Oliver 1987, and Tjerandsen 1980.

4. Bormann 1996: 99–103

5. For a more detailed discussion of study circles and the National Issues Forums, see Gastil and Dillard 1999a. Mark Burton and Kevin Mattson (1999) identify civic education as one of many goals that deliberative programs can pursue, and they provide examples of different efforts to promote deliberation.

6. Study Circles Resource Center 1991b. For the rationale behind the Study Circles Resource Center, see Leighninger and McCoy 1998.

7. Study Circles Resource Center 1991a: 1.

8. Study Circles Resource Center 1991b: 1.

9. Study Circles Resource Center 1991a, 1991b.

10. Study Circles Resource Center and ACCESS 1994.

11. Study Circles Resource Center 1991b: 1, 4.

12. Data on participation are from National Issues Forums 1993. General descriptions of the NIF include Gastil 1994b, Osborn and Osborn 1991, and Pearce and Littlejohn 1997.

13. On the NIF network, see Downing 1996; on NIF history, see Archie 1986 and NIF 1992.

14. McAfee, McKenzie, and Mathews 1990: 4–5.

15. Mathews 1994.

16. National Issues Forums 1992: 23. Useful overviews of the NIF process are also provided by Organizing Your First Forum / Study Circle (National Issues Forums 1990), Pearce and Littlejohn 1997: 169–80, and Gastil and Dillard 1999a.

17. National Issues Forums 1991.

18. National Issues Forums 1996.

19. National Issues Forums 1992: 31–32.

20. Perry 1990: 22.

21. National Issues Forums 1992: 32.

22. National Issues Forums 1990: 14. Also see National Issues Forums 1992.

23. Loyacano 1992: 15. See Gastil 1994b for a summary of qualitative research.

24. Farkas, Friedman, and Bers 1995.

25. Doble and Richardson 1991.

26. Gastil and Dillard 1999a.

27. Gastil 1994b. On conversational dominance, see Burgoon and Hale 1984.

28. This subject came up during conversations with Kettering Foundation staff while I was in residence during October and November 1998.

29. For examples of such programs, see Matt Leighninger, "How Have Study Circles Made an Impact?" Focus on Study Circles 9, 4: 2.

30. Lappe and Dubois 1994: 174.

31. Ibid.: 175–76.

32. According to an October 30, 1998, telephone interview with Consortium President Stephen Littlejohn, the consortium had understood the city lists to be inclusive, but it turned out that they were lists of relatively active Cupertino residents.

33. Pearce and Littlejohn 1997: 209–10; Pearce and Pearce in press. See also Natasha Collins, "Residents Talk Safety, Diversity at Cupertino Town Hall Meeting," Cupertino Courier, October 29, 1998, available at http://metroactive.com/papers/cupertino.courier/11.27.96/meeting.html.

34. Podziba 1998.

35. Higgins 1998: 9.

36. For example, see Gill 1996, a study of informal meetings in a British Columbia tourist town.

37. Briand 1999. I also had the pleasure of seeing one day of the convention in person.

38. On COPS, see Boyte 1989: 87–91, Crimmins 1996: 32–39, and Lappe and Dubois 1994: 60–61, 183–84. Ruth Messenger, a New York public official who had taken part in such "accountability sessions," described the experience this way:

Members of the sponsoring group, which has always done research on the issues at hand, give their visitor specific, detailed, and reasonably terse presentations. The officeholder is then told he or she can have thirty seconds and must begin their response by saying yes or no to a particular question that seeks to learn if they will vote with or against the group. Not only would the "wrong" answer be met with fierce booing but also so would any effort to try to engage in a discussion of the matter without stating a yes or no position…. I usually only went when I knew what the focus was and generally what questions I would be asked and knew I would be comfortable giving the kind of answer that was sought. It did not seem to make any sense to go otherwise…. I also found it irritating that people who were informed on an issue—and knew it had many complex dimensions—had decided that it was not possible for me to discuss those.

(Messenger 1998: 6–7, 9)

39. The argument that public opinion polls have set a new standard for "legitimate" forms of representative public voice is consistent with Susan Herbst’s

40. Citizen Jury is a registered service mark of what is now called the Jefferson Center for New Democratic Processes (http://www.jefferson-center.org). As its founder, Ned Crosby, explains, the center "has no desire to ‘own’ democracy— only to prevent others from perverting a valid method of democracy in order to serve their own ends" (Crosby 1998: 1). Beker and Slaton 1981 describes the televote from the perspective of its creators. For more critical perspectives, see Arterton 1987; Abramson, Arterton, and Orren 1988. On the Granada 500, see MacDonald 1986; Fishkin 1995. On planning cells, see Dienel 1995.

41. Hank Jenkins-Smith and I were the principal investigators of the citizen conference project, and the text that follows is based largely upon our final report. See Gastil and Jenkins-Smith 1997. For assisting with developing the conference design, thanks go to the staff of the New Mexico State Highway and Transportation Department, as well as to Anne Landy and Carol Silva at the University of New Mexico Institute for Public Policy.

42. I was the moderator for each of the citizen conferences

43. Telephone interview with James Kozak, November 9, 1998. On the press coverage of the conferences, see Gastil and Jenkins-Smith 1997. Some of the coverage focused on the fact that public officials would pay citizens to participate in public meetings—an admittedly ironic feature of this modern democratic process. See, e.g., the transcript of the Osgood File, "Government of New Mexico Paying Its Citizens $200 a Day to Attend Public Forums on Transportation Issues," July 4, 1997, available in Lexis-Nexis and in Gastil and Jenkins-Smith 1997.

44. For general information on citizen juries, see Crosby 1995, 1998; Smith and Wales 1999.

45. The description of the jury is taken from the final report, Citizens Jury on Hog Farming (January 1996), compiled by St. Olaf College and available from the Jefferson Center for New Democratic Processes, Minneapolis.

46. Pauline Schreiber, "Citizens Jury Rejects Feedlot Size Limits," Faribault Daily News, November 10, 1995.

47. "Citizens Jury an Important Group to at Least Listen To," Faribault Daily News, November 11, 1995. After a Citizens Jury on traffic congestion pricing in which jurors moved away from a proposed pricing mechanism, editorials in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune made similar statements about the jury’s effort and intelligence, yet rejected the jury’s main recommendation. For more information on that jury, see the Jefferson Center’s 1995 Report on Traffic Congestion Pricing.

48. Crosby 1998

49. Ibid. For more information on the efforts of Crosby and others to hold public forums on elections, see the Citizens Election Forum website (http://www.citizens-forum.org) and http://www.healthydemocracy.org.

50. Fishkin 1991: 93; Fishkin 1995: 43. Deliberative Polling is a trademark used by the Center for Deliberative Polling (http://www.la.utexas.edu/research/delpol/cdpindex.html).

51. On the philosophical underpinnings of the NIC, see Fishkin 1991, 1995. On the selection of participants, see Bradburn 1996. Published criticisms of the idea and the implementation of the NIC include Mitofsky 1996; Flavin and Dougherty 1996. Some critics of American public life, however, support for the idea of deliberative polling (e.g., Eliasoph 1998).

52. For a summary of my observations, see Gastil 1996.

53. On political communication networks, see Knoke 1990.

54. Hart and Jarvis 1999: 12.

55. Mitofsky 1996.

56. In interviews with participants at the NIC, I heard stories about strong initial skepticism. One woman I interviewed said she was not convinced that the convention was real until she stepped off her airplane in Austin; she said she was prepared to turn back then and there if anything looked suspicious (Gastil 1996). Tom Smith (1999) reports that 80 percent of the final pool of participants had such reservations, so I suspect that such doubts were decisive for nonparticipants. If events like the NIC became commonplace, participating might become no more mysterious than serving on a jury.

57. Daniel Merkle’s (1996) tables show only modest demographic differences between attendees and the population, except that the attendees were somewhat more politically active and involved than the general population. For an extended discussion of the representativeness of the NIC, see Fishkin and Luskin 1999.

58. Merkle 1996 views these changes as a sign that deliberation had little effect. Beyond the "half empty, half full" debate, it is fair to say that the question is not how many attitudes changed, but whether the changes revealed an important pattern.

59. The full results of the NIC poll are still available at http://www.pbs.org/ nic. Also see Fishkin and Luskin 1999. Luskin, Fishkin, and Jowell 1997 found similar attitude changes and educational effects in other deliberative polls. Gastil and Jenkins-Smith 1998 also found learning effects at public meetings about radiation at Los Alamos National Laboratory. See also Gastil and Dillard 1999b; Pelletier et al. 1999.

60. Rasinski, Bradburn, and Lauen 1999.

61. Tom Smith 1999: 57–58.

62. See Merkle 1996: 614; Fishkin and Luskin 1999.

63. Fishkin and Luskin 1999 mentions NIC spin-offs in the form of statewide polls and forums in Maine, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

64. Leighninger and McCoy 1998: 188

65. This reflects a more general problem with writings on deliberation. As Christiane Olivio argues, most theorists promoting civil society "also maintain that citizen participation and deliberation in civil society really advance democratic ideals when they influence the official public sphere of the state. Yet how democratic activity in civil society and the state are to be connected remains unclear in their work" (Olivio 1998: 246). For this reason, she undertook a study of "round table" forums in Germany, although she found these to have the same problem as the deliberative forums described herein. Unintegrated into existing political institutions, the round tables had very limited influence on