Deliberative Democracy and The Case for Depoliticising Government

The ideal of deliberative democracy now makes an appearance in almost every forum of discussion about government. Perhaps it is the alliteration that accounts for the success, perhaps the vague note of profundity that the idea strikes. Or perhaps the reason is that encoded in the notion of deliberative democracy is a very important value that none of the other formulae of government appraisal – not, for example, the language of rights, or justice, or efficiency, or freedom – capture quite so well. I tend to this more optimistic reading and I hope that I can do something in this paper to display the critical importance and utility of the idea.