Deliberative Democracy and Democratic Reform: Entry Points for the Public Voice

Deliberative democracy by the people themselves is a distinctive form of democratic practice. It can be distinguished from deliberative democracy practiced by elites or representatives as well as from other forms of democracy that do not emphasize deliberation. Designs for systematic deliberation can also be distinguished from everyday talk, some of which is deliberative and some of which is not, some of which is representative and some of which is not. In this paper I explore ways in which designs for systematic deliberation by the people themselves can be realized and then inserted into our current democratic institutions. The idea is to explore possible entry points in our political system for deliberative democratic designs involving ordinary citizens where those designs satisfy claims that the deliberation is balanced, informative and representative.