Unpacking Deliberation

Abstract

This chapter sets out a series of issues in the concept of deliberation, distinguishing it from the deliberative quality more generally. It starts by resisting the recent tendency to inflate the concept of deliberation in response to critics; instead, it advances a narrow although more ‘cultural’ definition, one that concedes that deliberation is just one communicative mode in a democracy, and not always the most important one, dependent on goals and contexts. Rejecting an ‘ideal institutions’ approach, it shows how different goals—epistemic and emancipatory goals among them—alter the balance between appropriate communicative modes; then turns to contextual differences to show how the very meaning of a communicative act can change, especially in settings with large power imbalances. Our resulting definition is thus sensitive to dynamics, a ‘shape-shifting’ account that stresses contingency, performance, and distribution of deliberative acts.