Misgivings on Deliberative Democracy: Revisiting the Deliberative Framework

Abstract In the last few years, the Deliberative Framework has become the main model in the consolidation of democratic processes. Deliberative theorists argue that deliberation helps to promote the democratic level of our societies, and they have good reasons to support this view. This article, however, is critical with some of these claims, questioning the widespread assumption of an existing connection between deliberation and democracy. With this objective in mind, we will examine the following three questions: Who deliberates? Under what conditions does deliberation take place? What is the content of deliberation? Once the potential repressive components of deliberation are made clear, we try to reach some normative considerations regarding how to promote certain mechanisms of deliberation that are in fact more in line with deliberative emancipation ideas and, as such, better assertions for promoting democracy.