ABSTRACT
The most infl uential feature of Jürgen Habermas’ wide-ranging contributions to political theory is his attempt to formulate a socially critical as well as empirically plausible conception of deliberative democracy. Both his earliest contribution to political theory, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), and his more recent Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (1996), defend an ambitious deliberative model of political legitimacy, according to which normatively acceptable decisions are only those which meet with the agreement of affected parties in possession of far-reaching possibilities to subject them to critical debate. Not surprisingly, Habermas and those infl uenced by him have worked hard to outline the proper philosophical presuppositions of the basic intuition that only freewheeling argumentation can both justify the exercise of coercive state power and contribute to its reasonable character. In addition, they have taken important steps towards describing the appropriate institutional moorings of a vibrant deliberative democracy,1 while struggling to demonstrate why deliberative democracy, when properly conceived, is the rightful intellectual heir of the early Frankfurt School.2 Habermas’ account of deliberative democracy is not only normatively distinct from competing liberal and communitarian models,3 but it also purports to pose a more credible challenge to the social inequalities and injustices of contemporary capitalist society. In addition, Habermas and his followers repeatedly insist that their version of deliberative democracy remains realistic. It not only acknowledges the fact of modern social complexity, but we can even begin to see a rough outline of its proper operations in the otherwise depressing realities of present-day political practice.4 Although maintaining a critical perspective of the status quo, it avoids a methodologically fl awed juxtaposition of the “ought” to the “is,” thereby offering relatively constructive guidance for those seeking to advance overdue radical reforms of the liberal democratic status quo.
