ABSTRACT
John Dryzek's essay touches upon a variety of issues and it contains - explicitly and implicitly - a number of claims, many of which invite a critical response. Within the space limits appropriate for a comment, though, a selection must be made. I want to focus my remarks on the issue that, as indicated in its title, is not only central to his present paper but that, to my reading, concerns a principal claim that he has made in some other recent contributions (cf. Dryzek, 2000; 2001) as well, namely his emphasis on discourse and deliberation as 'alternative sources of order', by contrast to constitutions and rules as ordering devices, and his suggestion that 'deliberative democracy' represents a superior alternative to 'liberal constitutionalism' .
