The Effects of Deliberative Polling in an EU-wide Experiment: Five Mechanisms in Search of an Explanation

Deliberative Polls simulate public opinion in a given policy domain when members of the relevant mass public are better informed about the issues involved. This article reports on the results of a three-day Deliberative Poll, conducted before the June 2009 European Parliament elections, to evaluate the effects of deliberation on a representative sample of EU citizens. Findings show that, compared with a control group, deliberators changed their views significantly on immigration (becoming more liberal), climate change (becoming greener) and the EU itself (becoming more pro-European). Five different explanations of why deliberation appears to work are tested: sampling bias, increased political knowledge, discussion quality, small group social conformity pressure and the influence of other Deliberative Poll actors, but none is satisfactory.</jats:p

Introduction to The Chinese and the Iron Road

Excerpt from The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad, edited by Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, with Hilton Obenzinger and Roland Hs

Deliberative Agenda Setting: Piloting Reform of Direct Democracy in California

Can the people deliberate to set the agenda for direct democracy in large scale states? How might such an institution work? The 2011 California Deliberative Poll piloted a solution to this problem helping to produce proposals that went to the ballot and also to the legislature. The paper reports on how this pilot worked and what it suggests about a possible institution to solve the deliberative agenda setting problem. The legislative proposal passed the legislature but the ballot proposition (Prop 31) failed. However, we show that the proposals actually deliberated on by the people might well have passed if not encumbered by additional elements not deliberated on by the public that drew opposition. The paper ends with an outline of how the process of deliberative agenda setting for the initiative might work, vetting proposals once every two years that could get on the ballot for a greatly reduced cost in signature collections. Adding deliberation to the agenda setting process would allow for a thoughtful and informed public will formation to determine the agenda for direct democracy

The Anti-Bottleneck Principle in Employment Discrimination Law

State legislatures and the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) have moved in parallel in recent years to provide new protections for the employment prospects of some surprising groups: people who are unemployed, people who have poor credit, and people with past criminal convictions. These new protections confound our usual theories of what antidiscrimination law is about. These groups are disanalogous in a variety of respects to groups defined by such characteristics as race, sex, and national origin. But the legislators and regulators enacting these new protections were responding to pervasive problems they observed in the opportunity structure of our society—problems of a particular kind that I call bottlenecks. Essentially, these legal actors judged that poor credit, unemployment, and past criminal convictions were having too outsized an effect on a person’s employment prospects. If many or most employers demand good credit, then good credit becomes a serious bottleneck: a narrow place through which workers must pass to reach a wide range of opportunities on the other side. This Article argues that the anti-bottleneck principle—the principle that the law ought to ameliorate severe bottlenecks in the opportunity structure where it can feasibly do so—is not only a way of understanding these new, cutting-edge protections, but also a way of understanding much of the project of Title VII and our existing body of antidiscrimination law. This Article explores the role the anti-bottleneck principle plays in legislators’ decisions to enact antidiscrimination laws and in decisions by judges and by the EEOC about how to interpret and enforce such laws. The Article argues that the anti-bottleneck idea is at the heart of both disparate treatment law and disparate impact law—and that it should cause us to think differently about the function of disparate impact law. The EEOC lawyers who started down the path that led to Griggs v. Duke Power understood that general ability tests were becoming a major bottleneck in the opportunity structure. By limiting the use of those tests, Griggs ameliorated a bottleneck that had arbitrarily constrained the opportunities of many whites as well as blacks. Finally, turning from the positive to the normative, this Article defends the central—if previously unacknowledged—role that the anti-bottleneck principle plays in our law of equal employment opportunity. It is a profound challenge for any legal system to promote “equal opportunity” in a world of pervasive difference and inequality, where the mechanisms that perpetuate inequality shift over time. The anti-bottleneck principle turns out to be a strong and surprisingly practical response to these challenges

Making Deliberative Democracy Practical: Public Consultation and Dispute Resolution

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Fighting rape culture at Humboldt state university: challenges and growth in student activism

The term Rape Culture is used to describe a culture in which sexualized violence is normalized and encouraged. Resistance to Rape Culture has existed as long as Rape Culture itself. Efforts take on a unique form in institutions of higher education such as Humboldt State University (HSU), in that the organizers of these efforts are often students. I analyzed three efforts to address Rape Culture at HSU with a feminist approach, using participant observation and qualitative interviewing to assess how these programs can be improved for the students organizing them. Take Back the Night is an annual event with a goal of eliminating sexualized violence. Check-It is a bystander intervention program that promotes healthy relationships, consent, and teaches how to intervene when witnessing situations that have a potential for violence. Deconstructing Rape Culture was a project facilitated in the Fall of 2017 as a part of this thesis research. The project used artistic mediums to explore different facets of Rape Culture with a small group of HSU students. I found that participating in organizing against Rape Culture has a positive impact on students, that the presence or absence of, and the nature of, leadership or mentorship impacts student organizing, and that student organizers view intersectionality and inclusivity as an essential part of programming against Rape Culture. From these findings, I recommend that HSU prioritizes the continued funding of spaces that offer students the opportunity to organize, that concerns of student organizers should guide changes to programming against Rape Culture, and that this programming address forms of oppression such as racism, classism, and ableism alongside sexism

The Quest for Justice

A Review of Affirmative Action and Justice: A Philosophical and Constitutional Inquiry by Michel Rosenfel