Genre: Information/Explanation

Deliberation, single-peakedness, and the possibility of meaningful democracy: evidence from deliberative polls List, Christian and Luskin, Robert C. and Fishkin, James S. and McLean, Iain (2006) Deliberation, single-peakedness, and the possibility of meaningful democracy: evidence from deliberative polls. PSPE working papers, 01-2006. Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. Abstract Majority cycling and related social choice paradoxes are often thought to threaten the meaningfulness of democracy. But deliberation can prevent majority cycles -- not by inducing unanimity, which is unrealistic, but by bringing preferences closer to single-peakedness. We present the first empirical test of this hypothesis, using data from Deliberative Polls. Comparing preferences before and after deliberation, we find increases in proximity to single-peakedness. The increases are greater for lower versus higher salience issues and for individuals who seem to have deliberated more versus less effectively. They are not merely a byproduct of increased substantive agreement (which in fact does not generally increase). Our results both refine and support the idea that deliberation, by increasing proximity to single-peakedness, provides an escape from the problem of majority cycling.