Faculty Fellow Profile: Robert M. Fishman

Robert M. Fishman's 2004 book Democracy's Voices: Social Ties and the Quality of Public Life (Cornell University Press) takes up a fascinating paradox of the Spanish case: Why does the democracy's public sphere elicit disappointment and disengagement despite the country's much admired transition from authoritarianism to democracy?

In Democracy's Voices, the professor of sociology and Kellogg Faculty Fellow, explores the factors that shape the quality of democracy in Spain, including the conversation between labor and intellectuals. At the core of his book are several questions that should fascinate sociologists and comparative political scientists: How do we identify, explain and understand the effectiveness of public discourse in a democracy?

"The question," writes Fishman, "is not whether a society has encountered a specific solution to the challenges of public policy and social justice but whether it affords citizens an engaging public arena within which they may contemplate, discuss if they wish, and ultimately choose among competing views, alternatives, and proposals. " I take as a given that free and competitive democratic elections, and the accompanying legal guarantees of freedom, are necessary for political actors to construct a lively public sphere, but the basic institutional framework of contemporary democracy is no guarantee that a society will attain that goal."