Deliberative Democracy and the Problem of its Practical Implementation

Deliberative democracy holds that, for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by deliberation among decision-makers. This means that democratic decision cannot be merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting. Thus, citizens may change their initial opinions and preferences as a result of the reflection induced by deliberative communication and by taking into account other people’s opinions. The aim of this paper is to outline the view of deliberative democracy developed by Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson as well as to address some of the concerns raised by the critics regarding its practical implementation