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Gastil, John
http://faculty.washington.edu/jgastil

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994

Office: CMU 331
Phone: 543-4655
E-Mail: jgastil@u.washington.edu

John Gastil, Associate Professor, has taught at the University of Washington since 1998. Gastil teaches courses on small group decision making, political deliberation, and public scholarship. From 1994-1997, Gastil conducted public opinion research at the University of New Mexico Institute for Public Policy. He received his Ph.D. in communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994, and he received a B.A. in political science from Swarthmore College in 1989.

In 1993, Gastil wrote Democracy in Small Groups (New Society Publishers). The book has sold over 4,000 copies and become recommended reading at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, NASA, and numerous non-profits in the United States and abroad. In 2000, he wrote By Popular Demand: Revitalizing Representative Democracy through Deliberative Elections (University of California). This book built upon his previous work by showing how small group discussions can be integrated into the electoral process and public institutions. Gastil is also the co-editor, with Peter Levine, of The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century (Jossey-Bass, 2005), a book that brings together many of the diverse approaches to promoting citizen deliberation.

With the assistance of UW undergraduate students and other colleagues outside the University, Gastil has developed Election Day computer simulation game.

His current research focuses on a wide range of subjects, including the civic impact of jury service, the cultural underpinnings of public opinion, and the different approaches to integrating citizen deliberation into existing institutional, political, and cultural contexts.

Selected Publications

Gastil, J. (in press). Cultivating a deliberative civic culture: The potential value of public deliberation in Mexican municipal governance. In Leticia Santin and Andrew Selee (eds.), Participation and Deliberation in Mexico (prospective title). Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center.

Gastil, J., Black, L., & Moscovitz, K. (in press). Group and individual differences in deliberative experience: A study of ideology, attitude change, and deliberation in small face-to-face groups. Political Communication.

Moy, P., & Gastil, J. (in press). Discussion networks, media use, and deliberative conversation. Political Communication.

Sager, K., & Gastil, J. (in press). The Origins and Consequences of Consensus Decision Making: A Test of the Social Consensus Model. Southern Communication Journal.

Forehand, M., Gastil, J., & Smith, M. A. (2005). Endorsements as voting cues: Heuristic and systematic processing in initiative elections. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34, 2215-2234.

Kahan, D. M., Braman, D., & Gastil, J. (2005). A cultural critique of gun litigation. In T. D. Lytton (Ed.), Suing the Gun Industry: A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts. 105-126

West, M., & Gastil, J. (2004). Deliberation at the Margins: Participant accounts of face-to-face public deliberation at the 1999-2000 world trade protests in Seattle and Prague. Qualitative Research Reports, 5, 1-7.

Gastil, J. (2004). Adult civic education through the National Issues Forums: A study of how adults develop civic skills and dispositions through public deliberation. Adult Education Quarterly, 54, 308-328.

Burkhalter, S., Gastil, J., & Kelshaw, T. (2002). The self-reinforcing model of public deliberation. Communication Theory, 12, 398-422.

Gastil, J., Deess, E. P., & Weiser, P. (2002). Civic awakening in the jury room: A test of the connection between jury deliberation and political participation. Journal of Politics, 64, 585-595.

Gastil, J., Smith, M., & Simmons, C. (2001). There's more than one way to legislate: An integration of representative, direct, and deliberative approaches to democratic governance. University of Colorado Law Review.

Gastil, J. (2000). The political beliefs and orientations of people with disabilities. Social Science Quarterly, 81, 588-603.

Gastil, J., & Dillard, J. P. (1999). Increasing political sophistication through public deliberation. Political Communication, 16, 3-23.

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