On the role of blogging in CitSov’s work, my short answer is that blogging should be integrated into localized deliberation efforts, as a tool for ongoing development of topics for deliberation. This gives the steering committee of community groups that runs the deliberation some data, other than their own constituency interests and biases, for deciding a topic. I am working now on a pilot in a nearby community that hopefully will integrate blogging that way.

The scalability of deliberative institutions really depends, I think, on popular familiarity with deliberative techniques. There’s a huge and very active deliberation “industry” out there, which has grown by helping solve problems — call them civic emergenices, like a downward spiral in community-police relations. The more the deliberation industry can bring deliberation into civic routine, and the less that deliberative tools are seen as useful solely for civic emergencies, the faster something called deliberative democracy can scale up.

I’ll keep looking in. Great to talk.

How exactly do you think blogging will fit into the Citizen Sovereignty project?

I’m the person behind http://www.citsov.org. Google alerts brought this welcome thread (slowly) to my attention.

Jim Fishkin, the originator of deliberative polls, has shown in his repeated social science experiments that the public can master and make decisions on complex issues if people are put in situations where they believe their opinions will matter. The trick is to create political institutions that will bring those situations about. Jim presents one idea for that in his book, Deliberation Day, proposing (seriously) a pre-Election Day national holiday. More ideas and experiments are needed on how to meet the institutional challenge.

There’s a three page intro paper on deliberative polling at citsov.org (link on the left) or at http://citsov.typepad.com/an-intro-to-dps-rev-1.pdf

There’s also a chapter from Deliberation Day: http://citsov.typepad.com/presscommdpdday/bookdownloads/deliberationday.pdf

Last but not least, Jim’s website is http://cdd.stanford.edu/

Who, me?

Seriously, you’re right. I’m talking about radical change to education, communications, media (as Andrew suggested above), probably political and social institutions to boot. And while I know none of it’s going to happen overnight - or even in my lifetime - I think the project at least has merit. But if I’m wrong about the average citizen’s potential, it’s all wasted effort.

OK, flip side question - are you familiar with the idea of deliberative polling at all? This is a total shot in the dark, but some of those pollsters might be interested in making use of your expertise for a deliberative meeting on one of thie issues you mention. And maybe they could help you with ideas for other outreach programs.

And I do read the blog at bioethics.net very regularly, but not having any ins with those folks I don’t really know how to approach them. I’m going to check out NSF and even a few of the grant foundations for now, but I’m open to all suggestions!

I like what you’re saying about people with expertise having a responsibility to help out the rest of us. But it feels like there’s something larger going on. What about the people who don’t soak up information like a sponge? Is there something that we can do to improve the early education process to unlock their hidden sponge potential? And if we can’t. what are the implications?

Have you checked out the blog at bioethics.net? There may be some folks you can get in touch with there who could help out with your project. It definitely sounds like an important one. To a certain extent, it’s one of the things this site wants to accomplish, so I hope you continue to share your expertise here.

(And folks, by all means, go check out hyper-textual ontology!)

I agree completely that this is the right question to ask and it’s been bothering me too. I soak up information like a sponge and there are ballots I leave blank for lack of information. I don’t feel qualified to vote on some topics. My solution? Every single individual is responsible to help educate the others in whatever field they feel they can. I’m currently looking to find funding to help bring scientists and philosophers to give free public lectures on the sorts of tough ethically related scientific questions that we DO vote on - stem cells, abortion, evolution, etc. I’ve never done anything like this, and I hardly know where to start, but I’m feeling the same irksome feeling as you that those people who have it at their disposoal to educate, should.