That’s the question I ponder in a new essay published in Zócalo Public Square, an online magazine that circulates ideas around the globe. The gist of my argument is that had there been a CIR-style Review held in Britain in advance of the vote, and had the Review’s one-page analysis been widely circulated, it probably would have reduced the misconceptions about the EU and the benefits of leaving it. It’s impossible to know what...

Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC, equivalent to BBC in the UK) did a 20-minute story on a citizens’ jury in Melbourne and drew on the experience of the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review as a point of comparison. I (John Gastil) provided commentary on the Oregon case, which serves as an example of how citizen deliberation can get built into government institutions. The Melbourne citizens’ jury came up with recommendations...

A recent essay posted at CNN used the Oregon CIR as an example of a new kind of deliberative politics. The authors, Chad Raphael and Christopher Karpowitz, have a whole theory about what makes public engagement effective in their new book, Democracy, Deliberation, and Civic Forums. This CNN essay note that the success of forums like the CIR has been seen across the country, in varied forms. Noting the way South Floridians have addressed climate...