By Popular Demand: Revitalizing Representative Democracy Through Deliberative Elections.

• Author: Feller, Wende Vyborney
• Position: Book Reviews

By Popular Demand: Revitalizing Representative Democracy Through Deliberative Elections. By John Gastil. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000; pp. 275. $48.00; paper $18.95.

"This time has so thoroughly disgusted me with politics ... that I don't feel like there's much use in trying to vote again." "There's so little to choose between the two, I'm not going to vote." "Our politics smell to heaven...elections are dirty and unscrupulous, and our better citizens don't dare mix in them." (Lynd and Lynd 420-1) These cynical citizens are speaking not of the 2000 Presidential election, but of small-town politics shortly after Progressive reforms dismantled party machines and broadened the franchise. In the Lynds' Middletown study, 87% of high school students said it was untrue that "Voters can rely on statements of fact made by candidates in campaign speeches" (419). A 1998 study, cited in John Gastil's controversial book, By Popular Demand, found that 88% of surveyed voters agreed that, "Government leaders tell us what they think will get them elected, not what they really think" (64). The more things change, the more things stay the same. Or do they?

In By Popular Demand, Gastil argues that things have changed--for the worse--and that we must change our political system significantly if we are to remedy a critical disconnection between popular will and elected officials' actions. Gastil recommends incorporating something like the Jefferson Center's citizens juries into the electoral system as a channel for bringing an authentic public voice to legislators.

Gastil marshals impressive statistics to demonstrate that Americans vote in small numbers, based on shallow information, with little faith in the people we elect. A nation in which fewer than 50% of those eligible vote, 70% of voters believe that the government is run for the benefit of special interests, and more than 30% have very little confidence in the federal government (62-67) sounds like a dismal home for democracy.

What Gastil omits is that this has all happened before. Voter turnout for the 1920 Presidential election hit a low of 49%, leading to public concern about whether "enough of the right sort of people" were participating in politics (McGerr 186-7). The root problems identified by 1920s civic education proponents should sound familiar: excessive campaign spending, campaign financing dominated by wealthy business interests, mass media twisting facts into...