Deliberative democracy

Deliberative democracy or discursive democracy is a form of democracy in which deliberation is central to decision-making. Deliberative democracy seeks quality over quantity by limiting decision-makers to a representative sample of the population that is given the time and resources to focus on one issue.

It often shows characteristics of both consensus decision-making and majority rule. Deliberative democracy differs from traditional democratic theory in that authentic deliberation, not mere voting and decision by majority, is the primary source of legitimacy for the law that is produced. Deliberative democracy is related to consultative democracy, in which public consultation with citizens is central to democratic processes.

The distance between deliberative democracy and the concepts of representative democracy and direct democracy is debatable. While some practitioners and theorists use deliberative democracy to describe elected bodies whose members propose and enact legislation, Hélène Landemore and others use deliberative democracy to refer to decision-making by randomly-selected lay citizens each with equal power.

Deliberative democracy has a long history of practice and theory, which can be traced back to ancient times. It received academic attention in the 1990s, and implementations since 2010. Joseph M. Bessette has been credited with coining the term in his 1980 work Deliberative Democracy: The Majority Principle in Republican Government.