Timothy Regan interviewt James Fishkin, de politicoloog van Stanford University. Fishkin is de drijvende kracht achter 'America in One Room', een bijeenkomst van 526 gelote Amerikaanse kiezers, die in september 2019 drie dagen bijeenkwamen in Texas om over vijf belangrijke politieke onderwerpen te praten. De gesprekken vonden plaats in veertig groepen van twaalf à vijftien mensen, en werd afgewisseld met plenaire sessies waarin alle deelnemers vragen konden stellen aan deskundigen.
Fishkin:
'So much of our democracy is diminished by the fact that it's a form of audience democracy, but democracy needs to be discursive, it needs to be participatory, with discussion. It is the discussion that gives the energy to the process.'
'Of the 49 proposals 27 of them were highly polarized. (...) Now, the interesting thing that happend over all, is that of those 27 highly polarized items, in 26 of them the people who felt most extreme moved closer together.'
'The empathy is very important. The root of the word deliberation is weighing. If you only weigh one side and not the other, it's going to be unbalanced, and you are going to have a distorted opinion.'
'If you face the people face to face, this is just that little bit of self-censorship that permits civilization.'
Podcast:
The Heart of Democracy is Alive and Well
KPFA (Berkeley, Californië), Talk-It-Out Radio, 31 mei 2020
(58 minuten)
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