Deliberative polling and public consultation

At the heart of any notion of democracy is some element of public input into the policy-making process. Inputs can take the form of direct democracy or parliamentary democracy or both. Parliamentary democracy is a form of representative democracy, in which the electorate determines who its representatives are; the majority party or coalition forms the government; and the government decides public policies. Historically, British democracy has been representative democracy. Direct democracy is manifest in a referendum or an initiative, in which electors vote directly for or against adopting a policy. Institutions of direct democracy are prominent in Switzerland and in American states such as California, but they have been very unusual in the past in Britain. Tony Blair has made the promotion of more popular inputs in public policy a leading feature of his approach to government, for example endorsing the idea of national referendums on electoral systems and on joining the European Monetary Union. But the distribution of votes in elections and referendums is not necessarily a good indicator of public preferences. One obvious source of error is low turnout: voters and non-voters may differ significantly in their preferences. A more fundamental difficulty is the amount of knowledge and thought underlying the votes that are cast. Substantial scholarly research has produced an overwhelming consensus on the obvious: most people know very little and have thought very little about most policy issues. 1 While there is disagreement about how much the lack of information and interest affects people's views, it is possible that voting preferences would be noticeably different if everyone was more knowledgeable about, attentive to and reflective about the issues involved. Even if every voter were fully informed and deliberated about major public policies, there is the possibility that no party reflects all their views. In a two-party system in which a red and a blue party compete for control of government, a voter who prefers yellow may be unrepresented. Furthermore, when several issues are important, a voter may prefer the policy of different parties on different issues. Public opinion polls have become a kind of advisory input to policy-making between elections, but much the same objections can be made to the results of public opinion polls highlighted in the media. There can be difficulties in recruiting a representative sample because some groups are hard to locate or unwilling to be interviewed, as in the British general election …