Hope for Democracy

Concerned citizens across the globe fear that democratic institutions are failing them. Citizens feel shut out of politics and worry that politicians are no longer responsive to their interests. In Hope for Democracy, John Gastil and Katherine R. Knobloch introduce new tools for tamping down hyper-partisanship and placing citizens at the heart of the democratic process. They showcase the Citizens' Initiative Review, which convenes a demographically-balanced random sample of citizens to study statewide ballot measures. Citizen panelists interrogate advocates, opponents, and experts, then write an analysis that distills their findings for voters. Gastil and Knobloch reveal how this process has helped voters better understand the policy issues placed on their ballots. Placed in the larger context of deliberative democratic reforms, Hope for Democracy shows how citizens and public officials can work together to bring more rationality and empathy into modern politics.

"Concerned citizens across the globe fear that democracy is failing them, but civic reformers are crafting new tools that bring back into politics the wider public and its capacity for reason. This book spotlights one such innovation-the Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR). Each review gathers a random sample of twenty voters to study a statewide ballot measure. These citizen panelists interrogate advocates, opponents, and experts and distill what they learn into a one-page analysis for the official Voters' Pamphlet. The Oregon government permanently established the CIR in 2011, and reformers have tested it in locations across the United States and Europe. This book introduces the citizen activists responsible for the development of the CIR, as well as key participants at the inaugural CIR whose experiences changed their lives. Along with these stories, this book provides evidence of the CIR's impact on voters, who not only make better decisions as a result of reading the citizen analysis but also change the way they understand their role in government. The CIR fits into a larger set of deliberative reforms occurring around the world and into a long history of democratic experiments that stretch back through the American revolution to ancient Athens. The book weaves together historical vignettes, contemporary research, and personal narratives to show how citizens, civic reformers, and politicians can work together to revitalize modern democracy"--