ABSTRACT
Public deliberation is so much at the heart of thinking on democratic politics and policy that democracy has been called a system of government by discussion (Majone, 1993). Political parties, the citizens, the legislature, the executive, the court, the media, interest groups and independent experts all engage in a continuous process of debate and reciprocal persuasion. Each stage of deliberation has its own organ and its own independent function. Public deliberation has, however, been carefully institutionalized in modern (parliamentary) democracies. The fundamental idea of democratic legitimacy is that political power is ultimately the power of the public, namely the power of free and equal citizens as a collective body (Rawls, 1993, pp. 136, 217). From a normative perspective it follows that the citizens must be regarded not only as the addressees but also as the authors of the laws that constitute their polity (Gerstenberg, 1997, p. 344).
