Table Of ContentToward
wiser
Public
JudgmenT
EditEd by
daniel Yankelovich
will Friedman
and
Toward Wiser Public Judgment
Toward
Wiser
Public
Judgment
Daniel Yankelovich and
Will Friedman, Editors
Vanderbilt University Press
nashville
© 2010 by Public Agenda
Published by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2010
This book is printed on acid-free paper made
from 30% post-consumer recycled content.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Toward wiser public judgment / Daniel Yankelovich
and Will Friedman, editors.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8265-1738-8 (cloth edition : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8265-1739-5 (pbk. edition : alk. paper)
1. Political participation—United States.
2. Public opinion—United States.
3. Education—United States.
4. Educational change—United States.
I. Yankelovich, Daniel. II. Friedman, Will.
JK1764.T69 2010
323'.042—dc22
2010020353
Contents
Foreword, by Sterling Speirn vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction
How Americans Make Up Their Minds:
The Dynamics of the Public’s Learning Curve
and Its Meaning for American Public Life 1
Daniel Yankelovich and Will Friedman
Part I. The Concept of Public Judgment
1 How to Achieve Sounder Public Judgment 11
Daniel Yankelovich
2 Further Reflections: A Dialogue between
Dan Yankelovich and Will Friedman 33
Part II. Applications
3 The Experience of the National Issues Forums 51
Keith Melville and Robert J. Kingston
4 Thirty-Five Years of Working on Public
Judgment at Public Agenda 73
Alison Kadlec and Will Friedman
5 Moving Beyond Polls and Focus Groups 110
Steven A. Rosell and Heidi Gantwerk
Part III. Exploring Next Steps
6 Coming to Public Judgment: Strengthening
Impacts, Exploring National Possibilities 131
Will Friedman
Notes 157
Contributors 167
Index 169
vi
Foreword
In fields ranging from technology, medicine, and science to business, com-
munication, and culture, we see dynamic and rapid change. Nevertheless,
in the midst of such promise and ingenuity, we reach the end of the first
decade of the twenty-first century facing a growing number of troubling and
systemic issues that we have come to label as “intractable.” To name three in
the United States, the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of our edu-
cational systems, our health and health care systems, and even our economic
and financial systems are matters of grave concern.
As stewards of financial fortunes devoted to making things better, pri-
vate foundations are encouraged to look for the root causes that underlie the
conditions we seek to ameliorate. As a key source of funding our socie ty’s
pluralistic research and development agenda, we look for opportunities
where our financial investments can spur innovation, usually targeting the
capacity of civil society to experiment with new approaches to solving social
and economic problems. In Toward Wiser Public Judgment, the authors pre-
sent a straightforward case: that our most difficult common problems will
only become manageable when we turn our powers of reinvention on the
public problem-solving process itself.
We can begin by framing the central contemporary question of our
politics not by using the familiar dichotomy of rights versus responsibilities,
but by asking what skills and settings best enable us to make hard collective
choices. Put another way, embracing the value of helping people help them-
selves in more than individual or familial contexts, how do we increase the
capacity of groups of democratic actors to tackle intractable problems, come
to shared and deeply held judgments, and make hard choices that reflect
the common good? This book not only provides insights and analysis but
also reports on more than two decades of the practical application of “next-
vii
viii Toward Wiser Public Judgment
generation” approaches that show great promise in fostering wiser and more
enduring public judgments.
The call to support more civic entrepreneurs in their efforts to create the
conditions and opportunities for ordinary people to reengage in the critical
work of democratic deliberation speaks forcefully to several critical issues of
our day. With growing concern over the fate of newspapers and journalism,
this book establishes a deeper context for the role information plays in the
formation of public judgment. With increasing concern over the role and
performance of our elected officials at local, state, and national levels, it de-
fines effective leadership anew, demonstrating how empowered leaders play
an essential role in the formation of public judgment.
A recent newspaper headline sums up the crisis of democracy that we
face today: “Mood of the voters—all outrage, no action.”1 Outrage without
action leads only to resentment and a susceptibility to quick fixes that never
truly resolve complex, long-standing problems. We need a fresh approach.
The American philosopher John Dewey said that “democracy has to be born
anew every generation,” and he regarded the essence of democracy as how
a community collectively learns, how it generates and uses something he
called social intelligence. Toward Wiser Public Judgment shows how the pro-
cess of coming to public judgment can confront head-on the all too natural
inclination we have for wishful thinking and easy answers. What’s miss-
ing are new approaches to deliberation and dialogue focusing on values and
choices, and taking seriously how individuals—ordinary people in a democ-
racy—have socially, emotionally, cognitively, and historically solved their
collective problems.
Those of us who focus most of our efforts on supporting the volun-
tary actions and associations of the nonprofit, independent sector often cite
the observations of the French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville, who in the
nineteenth century marveled at the ability of Americans to form voluntary
associations in the sphere of private, civil society. What we must also re-
member is Tocqueville’s insight that this capacity to organize—and the
skills, trust, and experiences that enable and produce this capacity—are all
derived from a politics that results in real public problem solving. The genius
he observed was that what Americans learn from politics, they take to all
the associations of civic life. “It is within political associations,” Tocqueville
observed, “that Americans of all conditions, of all minds, and of all ages get
the general taste for association daily and familiarize themselves with its
use.” The result is a society of joiners and active citizens: “There [in politi-
cal associations] they see each other in great number, speak to each other,
understand each other, and in common become animated for all sorts of
Foreword ix
undertakings. Afterwards, they carry into civil life the notions they have
acquired and make them serve a thousand uses.”2
Toward Wiser Public Judgment is a call to action for a renewal of the
authentic and effective public engagement essential to making sound public
choices and public policies in the critical years before us.
Sterling Speirn, President
The W. K. Kellogg Foundation
