Michael Neblo, assistant professor, political science, received the prestigious 2011 Heinz I. Eulau prize for best article published in the American Political Science Review. Neblo’s paper,Who Wants to Deliberate – And Why?, was singled out for moving the important literature on deliberative democracy forward in a civil and exciting way. The annual award is reserved for submissions of the highest quality manuscripts and recognizes scholarly excellence in political science.

Conventional wisdom suggests that average citizens hate politics, loathe hyper-partisan gridlock, balk at voting even in presidential election years and are, incidentally, woefully ill-informed. Given that, the thinking goes, it's reasonable to conclude that citizens want less, not more, involvement in politics. But that widely accepted theory does not survive empirical scrutiny, Neblo and a team of researchers found. Rather than rejecting political discourse, most people express strong interest in deliberating with real politicians, the team found. Further, when citizens are offered the chance to discuss political issues with their legislators, significant numbers do.

The view of the American public as desperate to avoid politics is "deeply misleading," Neblo wrote.

Neblo’s team includes Kevin Esterling of the University of California, Riverside, Ryan Kennedy at the University of Houston, David Lazer of Northeastern University and Harvard University, and Anand Sokhey of CU-Boulder.

The work of Neblo and his team was funded by a grant from the Digital Government Program of the National Science Foundation.

http://polisci.osu.edu/faculty/mneblo/papers/NebloEtAlAPSRfin.pdf