ABSTRACT
Individuals may make collective decisions through a number of mechanisms such as deliberation, negotiation and choice,2 which may in turn be judged by different criteria - efficiency, fairness, acceptance, and legitimacy. The theoretical thinking on deliberative democracy is normally subsumed under Discourse Theory,3 where
I Reprinted with permission of Sage Publication Ltd from Anne van Aaken, Deliberative Institutional Economics, in Philosophy & Social Criticism 28 (4), 2002. I would like to thank Horst Hegmann, Christian Kirchner, Matthias Meyer, Philip Pettit, Stefan Voigt, Michael Wohlgemuth for valuable comments.
