American political scientist and communications scholar
James S. Fishkin |
|---|
 Fishkin at the first edition of the Democracy 2050 conference, organized by the Tribu Foundation in Santiago de Chile in 2018 |
| Born | 1948 (age 75–76) |
|---|
| Education | Yale University (BA, PhD); Cambridge University (PhD) |
|---|
| Occupation(s) | Professor, author |
|---|
| Notable work | Deliberative Polling |
|---|
| Title | Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication, Stanford University |
|---|
James S. Fishkin (born 1948) is an American political scientist and communications scholar. He holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication in the Department of Communication at Stanford University, where he serves as a professor of communication and, by courtesy, political science. He also acts as the director of Stanford’s Deliberative Democracy Lab. Fishkin is widely cited for his work on deliberative democracy, with his proposition of Deliberative Polling in 1988 being particularly influential. Together with Robert Luskin, Fishkin's work has led to over 100 deliberative polls in 28 countries.[1]
Career
Fishkin earned his BA and Ph.D. in political science from Yale University, and his second Ph.D. in philosophy from King's College, Cambridge University. He currently leads the Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford University.[2] He has held numerous fellowships, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a visiting fellow commoner role at Trinity College, Cambridge. Fishkin was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014.[1]
Deliberative polling
The deliberative opinion poll, a concept proposed by Fishkin, involves gathering a representative random sample of people to deliberate on a specific issue. Participants are provided with briefing materials, carefully designed to represent all viewpoints in a balanced manner. After a day or more of deliberation, they are asked to register their considered opinions. These decisions have been used in various contexts such as electing candidates in primaries (e.g., in Greece), recommending policy decisions (e.g., in China and Texas), among other applications. It also served as the foundation for "Power and the People," a Channel 4 program on which Fishkin consulted, airing in the UK from 1994 to 1999.
