IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v115y2021i4p1464-1481_23.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Deliberation an Antidote to Extreme Partisan Polarization? Reflections on “America in One Room”

Author

Listed:
  • FISHKIN, JAMES
  • SIU, ALICE
  • DIAMOND, LARRY
  • BRADBURN, NORMAN

Abstract

This paper is positioned at the intersection of two literatures: partisan polarization and deliberative democracy. It analyzes results from a national field experiment in which more than 500 registered voters were brought together from around the country to deliberate in depth over a long weekend on five major issues facing the country. A pre–post control group was also asked the same questions. The deliberators showed large, depolarizing changes in their policy attitudes and large decreases in affective polarization. The paper develops the rationale for hypotheses explaining these decreases and contrasts them with a literature that would have expected the opposite. The paper briefly concludes with a discussion of how elements of this “antidote” can be scaled.

Suggested Citation

  • Fishkin, James & Siu, Alice & Diamond, Larry & Bradburn, Norman, 2021. "Is Deliberation an Antidote to Extreme Partisan Polarization? Reflections on “America in One Room”," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 115(4), pages 1464-1481, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:115:y:2021:i:4:p:1464-1481_23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055421000642/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. James N. Druckman & Donald P. Green & Shanto Iyengar, 2023. "Does Affective Polarization Contribute to Democratic Backsliding in America?," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 708(1), pages 137-163, July.
    2. Sara Wallace Goodman, 2022. "“Good Citizens†in Democratic Hard Times," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 699(1), pages 68-78, January.
    3. Berliner, Daniel, 2023. "Information Processing in Participatory Governance," SocArXiv snerh, Center for Open Science.
    4. Ximeng Fang & Sven Heuser & Lasse S. Stötzer, 2023. "How In-Person Conversations Shape Political Polarization: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Nationwide Initiative," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 270, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    5. Leininger, Julia, 2022. "International democracy promotion in times of autocratization: From supporting to protecting democracy," IDOS Discussion Papers 21/2022, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:115:y:2021:i:4:p:1464-1481_23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.