Assessing the Diversity of Deliberative Capacity of Democratic Polities and the Factors that Contribute to it

The paper will establish the case for the empirical assessment of democratic states from a deliberative systems perspective. The ‘systemic turn’ in deliberative theory has successfully advanced the idea of deliberative democracy as a polity-wide activity. We argue that there is a need to further develop the application of such concept to the democratic assessment on the level of the nation-state, potentially as an alternative to existing approaches, rather than a supplement. We outline the many methodological challenges, which are not insurmountable so long as there is sufficient conceptual clarity and faithful translation of normatively-grounded concepts into measures. Moreover, we argue that such an assessment should distinguish between observation of deliberative capacity and the institutions and practices that contribute to that capacity in recognition that there may be different paths to achieving such capacity.