Deliberation and Political Sophistication.

In this paper I advocate and explicate a deliberative conception of opinion and vote quality. I begin with a critical review of traditional approaches to opinion quality and political sophistication focusing on their underlying assumptions about ideal democratic governance and citizenship. The bulk of the critique offered stems from a thought-experiment designed to explore the likely character of politics in the United States if every citizen were a political sophisticate by these traditional standards. As an alternative, I then explore the same hypothetical scenario under counterpart assumptions drawn from deliberative democratic theory. In doing so, I compare the two scenarios directly on three dimensions. These dimensions include: policy development and stability, legitimacy of outcomes, and incentives for political participation. Based on this comparison, I contend that a deliberative approach to opinion and vote quality is preferable to those traditionally deployed in our field, and conclude with a discussion of ways in which deliberative qualities of opinion may be measured and analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]