Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-7pwfn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-15T12:08:24.721Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Genealogy of Deliberative Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Stephen Elstub and
Jean-Paul Gagnon
Stephen Elstub*
Affiliation:
University of the West Scotland
Jean-Paul Gagnon*
Affiliation:
University of Canberra
*
Stephen.Elstub@uws.ac.uk
Jean-Paul.Gagnon@canberra.edu.au
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Editors' introduction to the interview: Stephen Elstub articulates that deliberative democracy, as a theory, can be seen as having gone through various distinct generations. The first generation was a period where the normative values and the justifications for deliberative democracy were set out. This prompted criticism from difference democrats who saw the exclusion of other forms of communication by the reification of reason in deliberation as a serious shortcoming of the theory. This in part prompted the growth of the second generation of deliberative democracy, which began to focus more on the theory's operability. These theorizations, from the mostly 1990s and early 2000s, have led to the third generation of the theory—one embodied by the empirical turn. Elstub uses this genealogy as a foundation from which to argue that the current focus of deliberative democracy is on implementing deliberative systems rather than only deliberative institutions and this could potentially represent a fourth generation of deliberative democracy.

Keywords

associational democracydeliberative democracydemocratic theoryIris Marion YoungJohn DryzekJohn RawlsJürgen Habermas

Information

Type
Discussion
Information
Democratic Theory , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , June 2015, pp. 100 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Democratic Theory 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 2011. “Introductory Note on the Concept of Democracy.” Pp. 1–5 in Democracy in What State?, ed. Agamben, Giorgio, Badiou, Alain, Bensaid, Daniel, Brown, Wendy, Nancy, Jean-Luc, Rancière, Jacques, Ross, Kristin, and Zizek, Slavoj. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bächtiger, André, Niemeyer, Simon, Neblo, Michael, Steiner, Jürg, and Marco, R. Steenbergen. 2010. “Disentangling Diversity in Deliberative Democracy: Competing Theories, the Blind-spots, and Complementarities.” Journal of Political Philosophy 18: 32–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beetham, David, ed. 1994. Defining and Measuring Democracy. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Bohman, James. 1996. Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Bohman, James, and William Rehg, eds. 1997. Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryzek, John. 1994. Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy and Political Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dryzek, John. 2002. Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryzek, John. 2006. Deliberative Global Politics: Discourse and Democracy in a Divided World. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Dryzek, John. 2010. Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199562947.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryzek, John. 2013. The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dryzek, John, and Patrick, Dunleavy. 2009. Theories of the Democratic State. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elstub, Stephen. 2006. “A Double-Edged Sword: The Increasing Diversity of Deliberative Democracy.” Contemporary Politics 12 (3): 301–319.10.1080/13569770601086204CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elstub, Stephen. 2008. Towards a Deliberative and Associational Democracy. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Elstub, Stephen. 2010a. “Democracy in Theory and Practice.” Representation 46 (3): 255–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elstub, Stephen. 2010b. “Linking Micro Deliberative Democracy and Decision Making: Trade-Offs between Theory and Practice in a Partisan Citizen Forum.” Representation 46 (3): 309–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elstub, Stephen. 2010c. “The Third Generation of Deliberative Democracy.” Political Studies Review 8 (3): 291–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elstub, Stephen. 2012. “Governing Modern Societies: Towards Participatory Governance.” Acta Politica 47 (2): 221–224.10.1057/ap.2011.30CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elstub, Stephen. In press, forthcoming 2014. “Deliberative Pragmatic Equilibrium Review: A Framework for Comparing Multi-level Institutional Devices and their Enactment of Deliberative Democracy in the UK.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elstub, Stephen, and Peter McLaverty, P. eds. 2014. Deliberative Democracy: Issues and Cases. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishkin, James, and Robert, C. Luskin. 2005. “Experimenting with a Democratic Ideal: Deliberative Polling and Public Opinion.” Acta Politica 40: 284–298.10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500121CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishkin, James. 2009. When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fung, Archon. 2007. “Democratic theory and political science: A pragmatic method of constructive engagement.” American Political Science Review, 101 (3): 443–58.10.1017/S000305540707030XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gagnon, Jean-Paul. 2013. Evolutionary Basic Democracy: A Critical Overture. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallie, Walter Bryce. 1956. “Essentially Contested Concepts.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56: 167–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodin, R. 2005. “Sequencing deliberative moments.” Acta Politica 40: 182–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutmann, Amy, and Dennis, Thompson. 1996. Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. 1985a. Philosophical-Political Profiles. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. 1985b. The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. 1991. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Held, David. 2014. “Questions on the New Democratic Theory.” Pp. 72–84 in Democratic Theorists in Conversation: Turns in Contemporary Thought, Gagnon, Jean-Paul. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hendriks, Carolyn. 2006. “Integrated Deliberation: Reconciling Civil Society's Dual Role in Deliberative Democracy.” Political Studies 54 (3): 486–508.10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00612.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1781. The Critique of Pure Reason. Leipzig, Germany: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. (1788) 1898. The Critique of Practical Reason. London: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1790. Critique of Judgement. Berlin: Lagarde und Friedrich.Google Scholar
Keane, John. 2009. The Life and Death of Democracy. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Mansbridge, Jane, and Parkinson, John, eds. 2013. Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McLaverty, Peter, and Darren, Halpin. 2008. “Deliberative Drift: The Emergence of Deliberation in the Policy Process.” International Political Science Review 29 (2): 197–214.10.1177/0192512107085612CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niemeyer, Simon, and John, Dryzek. 2007. “The Ends of Deliberation: Meta-consensus and Inter-subjective Rationality as Ideal Outcomes.” Swiss Political Science Review 13 (4): 497–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owen, David and Graham, Smith. 2013. “Two Types of Deliberative System.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 29–September 1, 2013.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1999. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, John. 2001. The Law of People: With “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, John. 2005. Political Liberalism: Expanded Edition. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Sanders, Lynn. 1997. “Against Deliberation.” Political Theory 25 (3): 347–377.10.1177/0090591797025003002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saward, Michael. 1998. The Terms of Democracy. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Saward, Michael. 2002. Democracy. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Saward, Michael. 2003. “Enacting Democracy.” Political Studies 51 (1): 161–179.10.1111/1467-9248.00418CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saward, Michael. 2009. “Authorisation and Authenticity: Representation and the Unelected.” The Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (1): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saward, Michael. 2010. The Representative Claim. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579389.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saward, Michael. 2011. “Slow Theory: Taking Time over Transnational Democratic Representation.” Ethics & Global Politics 4 (1): 1–18.10.3402/egp.v4i1.6416CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steenbergen, Marco R. Bächtiger, Andre, Spörndli, Markus and Steiner, Jürg. 2003. “Measuring Political Deliberation: A Discourse Quality Index.” Comparative European Politics 1: 21–48.10.1057/palgrave.cep.6110002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weale, Albert. 2007. Democracy. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. 10.1007/978-0-230-37378-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar