Creating better heuristics for the presidential primary: The citizen assembly

Political Science Quarterly

Volumn 125, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 233-253

  Gerken, Heather K ^a   Rand, Douglas B ^b  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b YALE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77955067014     PISSN: 00323195     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-165X.2010.tb00674.x     Document Type: Article

References (90)

1. James S. Fishkin, "The Case for a National Caucus," The Atlantic, Monthly, August 1988: 16-18.
2. James S. Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991).
3. Baker v. Carr, 369 United States Reports 186, 270 (1962) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).
4. See, for example, Ethan J. Leib, Deliberative Democracy in America: A Proposal for a Popular Branch of Government (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004).
5. Kevin O'Leary, Saving Democracy: A Plan for Real Representation in America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).
6. See, for example, Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation.
7. Dennis F. Thompson, "Who Should Govern Who Governs? The Role of Citizens in Reforming the Electoral System," in Mark E. Warren and Hilary Pearse, eds., Designing Deliberative Democracy: The British Columbia Citizens' Assembly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), chap. 1.
8. Fishkin mentions this possibility in passing in the afterword to his first book, Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation, 115 n. 2.
9. he also describes more generically the ways in which the results of a deliberative poll might influence voters' opinions.
10. Ibid. 4-5, 81, 95.
11. but the book largely focuses on the deliberative dimensions of Fishkin's proposal, and his later work has focused almost entirely on the internal dynamics of deliberation and strategies for encouraging deliberation within the electorate as a whole; more importantly, the political scientists who focus on heuristics, party ID, and the problem of low-information voters generally do not seem to have absorbed Fishkin's original insight.
12. but see Fred Cutler, Richard Johnston, R. Kenneth Carty, André Blais, and Patrick Fournier, "Deliberation, Information, and Trust 2008. The British Citizens' Assembly as Agenda Setter," in Warren and Pearse, eds., Designing Deliberative Democracy, chap. 8.
13. Leib, Deliberative Democracy in America.
14. Thompson, "Who Should Govern".
15. Mark E. Warren, "Citizen Representatives," in Warren and Pearse, eds., Designing Deliberative Democracy, chap. 2.
16. Michael R. James, "Descriptive Representation in the British Columbia Citizens Assembly," in Warren and Pearse, eds., Designing Deliberative Democracy, chap. 5.
17. Mark Brown, "Citizen Panels and the Concept of Representation," The Journal of Political Philosophy 14 (June 2006): 203-225.
18. Useful surveys include Emmett H. Buell, Jr. and William G. Mayer, eds., Enduring Controversies in Presidential Nominating Politics (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004).
19. William G. Mayer, ed., In Pursuit of the White House 2000: How We Choose Presidential Nominees (New York: Chatham House Publishers, 2000).
20. Symposium, "Reforming the Presidential Nominating Process," PS: Political Science & Politics 42 (January 2009): 27-80.
21. Bruce Ackerman, The Rise and Fall of the American Public (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2010), chap 1.
22. David Schleicher, "What if Europe Held an Election and No One Cared," accessed at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id51525015, 12 April 2010.
23. See, for example, Samuel L. Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
24. For early work in what is now a vast literature, see, for example, John Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in American (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
25. Bernard R. Berelson, et al., Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in Presidential Campaigns (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1954).
26. Angus Campbell, et al., The American Voter (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
27. V.O. Key, Jr. and Frank Munger "Social Determinism and Electoral Decisions: The Case of Indiana," in D. Burdick and A. Brodbeck, eds., American Voting Behavior (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1959), 250-281.
28. See, for example, Richard R. Lau and David P. Redlawsk, "Voting Correctly," American Political Science Review 91 (September 1997): 585-598.
29. Arthur Lupia, "Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections," American Political Science Review 88 (March 1994): 63-76.
30. Arthur Lupia, "Dumber than Chimps? An Assessment of Direct Democracy Voters," in Larry Sabato et al., eds., Dangerous Democracy? The Battle over Ballot Initiatives in America (New York: Royman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001), 66.
31. Popkin, The Reasoning Voter.
32. Berelson, et al., Voting, 321.
33. Scott Keeter and Cliff Zukin, Uninformed Choice: The Failure of the New Presidential Nominating System (New York: Praeger, 1983).
34. Fred Cutler, "The Simplest Shortcut of All: Sociodemographic Characteristics and Electoral Choice," Journal of Politics 64 (May 2002): 466-490.
35. Jeffrey W. Koch, "Do Citizens Apply Gender Stereotypes to Infer Candidates' Ideological Orientations?" The Journal of Politics 62 (May 2000): 414-429.
36. Arthur T. Hadley, The Invisible Primary (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975).
37. See, for example, Marty Cohen, et al., The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
38. John Aldrich, "The Invisible Primary and Its Effects on Democratic Choice," PS: Political Science & Politics 42 (January 2009): 33-44.
39. Wayne P. Steger, "Who Wins Nominations and Why? An Updated Forecast of the Presidential Primary Vote," Political Research Quarterly 60 (March 2007): 91-99.
40. Steger, "Who Wins Nominations," 98-99.
41. Keeter and Zukin, Uninformed Choice, 174 ("The system is not well structured to reward the 'best' candidates, regardless of whether 'best' is defined as the most skillful, the smartest, the most honest, or the ones most attuned to the wishes of their party's members").
42. for an overview, see William G. Mayer and Andrew E. Bush, The Frontloading Problem in Presidential Nominations (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), chap. 4.
43. Mayer and Bush, The Frontloading Problem, chap. 4.
44. Aldrich, "The Invisible Primary," 33.
45. Steger, "Who Wins Nominations," 98.
46. James Davies argues that the two states "exert a disproportionate influence-indeed almost decisive influence-in the presidential nominating process."
47. James W. Davies, "The Case Against the Current Primary-Centered System," in Robert E. Diclerico and James W. Davies, eds., Choosing Our Choices: Debating the Presidential Nominating Process (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000), 27-50, at 39. Still, wins in Iowa or New Hampshire are by no means a guarantee of success, in large part due to the role the media play in framing those victories.
48. Larry Bartels, Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).
49. Nelson Polsby and Aaron Wildavesky, Presidential Elections: Strategies and Structures of American Politics, 12th ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008), chap. 4.
50. Keeter and Zukin, Uninformed Choice, 172-174.
51. Emmett H. Buell, Jr., "Rise of the Primary-Dominated Process," in Buell and Mayer, eds., Enduring Controversies, 192-208, at 203.
52. Todd Donovan and Rob Hunsaker, "Beyond Expectations: Effects of Early Elections in U.S. Presidential Nomination Contests," PS: Political Science & Politics 42 (January 2009): 45-52.
53. For a contrary view, see Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Peverill Squire, "Iowa: The Most Representative State?" PS: Political Science & Politics 42 (January 2009): 39-44.
54. William G. Mayer, "An Incremental Approach to Presidential Nomination Reform," PS: Political Science & Politics 42 (January 2009): 65-69.
55. For an excellent discussion of these and other issues as they relate to Iowa, see Christopher C.Hull, Grassroots Rules: How the Iowa Caucus Helps Elect American Presidents (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).
56. Cutler, "Deliberation, Information, and Trust," 186.
57. Thompson, "Who Should Govern," 48.
58. Thanks to Michael Ellis for these two examples.
59. Keeter and Zukin, Uninformed Choice.
60. Cf. Amy Guttman and Dennis Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
61. Ian Shapiro, The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004) chaps. 1 and 2.
62. and Bryan Garsten, Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
63. For evidence that voters take such questions into account, see Abramson, et al., "'Sophisticated' Voting in the 1988 Presidential Primaries," American Political Science Review 86 (March 1992): 55-69.
64. Alexander Hamilton, "The Mode of Electing the President," in The Federalist Papers, No. 86, accessed at http://thomas.loc.gov/home/fedpapers/fed_68.html, 8 February 2010.
65. Peter John Rhodes, The Athenian Boule (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1972).
66. Warren and Pearse, eds., Designing Deliberative Democracy, 21.
67. Lawrence LeDuc, Heather Bastedo, and Catherine Baquero, "The Quiet Referendum: Why Electoral Reform Failed in Ontario" (Canadian Political Science Association, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, 4-6 June 2008), accessed at http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2008/LeDuc.pdf, 11 April 2010.
68. "One Vote Offering More Choice: The Electoral System Civic Forum's Recommendations," 14 December 2006, accessed at http://www.burgerforumkiesstelsel.nl, 6 March 2009 (on file with authors).
69. Citizens' Parliament Final Report, 9 February 2009, accessed at http://www.citizensparliament.org.au, 8 February 2010.
70. "When Citizens Decide: The Challenges of Large Scale Public Engagement" (conference proceedings, University of British Columbia Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1-2 May 2008), quotation accessed at http://s213242494.onlinehome.us/CitizensAssembly/News%20Digest/Issues/08-06-28.htm, 8 February 2010, was reported by J.H. Snider.
71. Fishkin, "The Case for a National Caucus."
72. Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation.
73. James S. Fishkin and Robert C. Luskin, "Bringing Deliberation to the Democratic Dialogue," in Maxwell McCombs and Amy Reynolds, eds., The Poll with a Human Face: The National Issues Convention Experiment in Political Communication (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1999), chap. 1.
74. Daniel M. Merkle, "Review: The National Issues Convention Deliberative Poll," The Public Opinion Quarterly 60 (Winter 1996): 588-619.
75. Warren J. Mitofsky, "It's Not Deliberative and It's Not a Poll," Public Perspective 7 (December 1995-January 1996): 4-6.
76. John G. Adair, "The Hawthorne Effect Is a Common Artifact in Social Research," The Public Perspective 7 (December 1995-January 1996): 14-16.
77. Commission on Federal Election Reform, "Building Confidence in U.S. Elections," accessed at http://www1.american.edu/ia/cfer, 8 February 2010.
78. Iraq Study Group, "The Iraq Study Group Report," accessed at http://www.usip.org/iraq-studygroup/the-isg-report, 8 February 2010.
79. Mitofsky, "It's Not Deliberative."
80. American Judicature Society, "Judicial Selection in the States: Appellate and General Jurisdiction Courts," 2009, accessed at http://www.ajs.org, 8 February 2010.
81. American Judicature Society, Handbook for Judicial Nominating Commissioners, 2d ed., 2004, accessed at http://www.ajs.org, 8 February 2010.
82. FairVote, "Primaries: Open and Closed," February 2008, accessed at http://archive.fairvote.org/?page51801, 8 February 2010.
83. Clemons v. U.S. Dept. of Commerce (N.D. Miss. 17 September 2009), accessed at http://www.apportionment.us, 8 February 2010.
84. Heather K. Gerken, "The Double-Edged Sword of Independence: Inoculating Electoral Reform Commissions Against Everyday Politics," Election Law Journal 6 (April 2007): 184-201.
85. Todd Donovan and Rob Hunsaker, "Beyond Expectations: Effects of Early Elections in U.S. Presidential Nomination Contests," PS: Political Science & Politics 42 (January 2009): 45-52.
86. O'Leary, Saving Democracy.
87. Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin, Deliberation Day (New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 2004).
88. American Political Science Association, Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: A Report of the Committee on Political Parties, American Political Science Review 44 (September 1950).
89. That appears to be what happened in British Columbia. Cutler, et al., "Deliberation, Information, and Trust."
90. Heather K. Gerken, The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System is Failing and How to Fix It (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).