Since the 1990s the deliberative ideal has come to play a central role in contemporary democratic theory. More recently, however, another trend has emerged: deliberative democracy has ceased to be a purely theoretical approach to become the regulatory ideal of concrete institutional solutions. As a result of this shift, the main problems facing deliberative democracy today are, on the one hand, those of its institutionalisation, and, on the other hand, those of its articulation with other democratic mechanisms of a non-deliberative nature. As to the first of these problems, this article critically addresses the way in which deliberative democracy has been institutionalized, discussing the perils of depoliticization and of dissolution of the emancipatory potential of deliberative democracy that such an institutionalisation might entail. As to the relationship between deliberation and other democratic mechanisms such as negotiation or aggregation of individual preferences, in opposition to which deliberative democracy had originally been defined, we argue that the future of deliberative democracy depends on renouncing that original antagonism. Instead, deliberation should engage in a complementary relationship - albeit not passive, but active - with these other essential constitutive elements of democratic political life.
deliberative democracy; preferences; institutionalization; mini-publics; political representation