Deliberative Democracy

John Dryzek & Selen Ayirtman & Simon Niemeyer & Bora Kanra & Ricardo Mendonca & Penelope Marshall & Kathryn Kelly & Melissa Lovell

Deliberative democracy places communication rather than voting or aggregation of preferences at the center of democracy, although it remains a matter of some contention what sorts of communications count as deliberative, who should deliberate, where deliberation should occur, and what relationship deliberation should have to voting and aggregation of citizen preferences. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, this approach dominates democratic theory, and it is very influential in political practice. The term deliberative democracy was first used by Joseph Bessette in 1980 in an interpretation of the U.S. constitution that emphasizes its specification and protection of deliberative spaces, in Congress or a broader public. However, the concept's roots reach back to the polis of ancient Athens and associated Aristotelian notions of government by active citizens arguing in terms of the public good. In the eighteenth century, radicals such as JeanJacques Rousseau and conservatives such as Edmund Burke could endorse ...

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