Risse's Deliberative Logic and Governance: A Critical engagement

accessible en ligne : http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19460171.2012.759685#.UuY9ArRKHQwInternational audienceOver the last 20 years, 'deliberation' has become both a concept increasingly used by social science and a label for procedures many practitioners have introduced to 're-enchant' democracies. Moving away from normative and political uses of the term and towards theories of public action, the four articles that follow this one pose the question when does deliberation actually take place within governance? Having first set out the contribution of existing publications on deliberation, this introductory article then presents why Thomas Risse's definition - 'a logic of truth seeking or arguing' - is adopted and used throughout the articles that follow to shape and test a single analytical framework. Finally, the piece closes by presenting the individual, empirically grounded, articles that follow. Drawn from a variety of polities and scales of governance, these pieces are all inspired by a deeply sociological approach to public policymaking designed to open up decisions and deliberations to rigorous empirical enquiry