On Deliberative Democracy

Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 304 pp. In the last fifteen years a new theory of democracy has emerged on the academic scene, the theory of deliberative democracy. It has by now become one of the major positions in democratic theory. The central idea of deliberative democracy is that the basis of democratic legitimacy is the public deliberation of citizens. This idea should be seen in contrast to the idea that democratic legitimacy issues from the mere aggregation of preferences. According to the theory of deliberative democracy, the preferences of citizens cannot be seen as given, they are rather transformed in the political process, ideally in a public process of deliberation among free and equal citizens. The will of the people, thus, is not found in the private and self-regarding expression of preferences or interests (as on the aggregative model), rather citizens must justify their political claims to one another in public deliberation and form their common opinion and will