This article evaluates the idea of “deliberative system”, which is considered an attempt of the deliberative theory to offer some theoretical and practical answers to different constraints related to the deliberative practices in a complex world, characterized by cultural and ethnical pluralisms, and by social inequality. Solutions such as the pluralization of arenas and patterns of communication are introduced by the idea of the deliberative system. However, new limits have arisen that created new analytical challenges. This article responds one of them through three steps: first, the article contextualizes and analyzes the motivations that created the idea of the deliberative system. Second, the article discusses some limits of this idea with a special attention to the possibilities of connections between the arenas and the possibility of scaling up the deliberative practices. Third, the article analyses three connectors that may link different arenas and patterns of communication to deal with the analyzed limits.
Deliberative system; Communication patterns; Scale; Connectors