James S. Fishkin

James S. Fishkin works on the theory and practice of deliberative democracy as well as on theories of distributive justice. He 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. Fishkin has been a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge as well as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and a Guggenheim Fellow. At Stanford he will also direct the new Center for Deliberative Democracy located in the Communication Department. He is best known for developing Deliberative Polling-a practice of public consultation that employs random samples of the citizenry to explore how opinions would change if they were more informed. Professor Fishkin and his collaborators have conducted Deliberative Polls in the US, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Bulgaria and other countries. While Deliberative Polling events are typically televised, face to face discussions, he has recently conducted the first online version in collaboration with the Political Communication Lab at Stanford and MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.