ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the question of deliberation in the constitution-making processes and emphasizes the questions of inclusion, political equality, and the deliberative setting, which are the basic norms of deliberative democracy, rather than on normative issues surrounding the concept. It explores the levels of deliberation in the constitution-making processes of the world's largest democracies, India and the United States. The chapter also explores the constitution-making/re-writing processes of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in several other countries, so as to place the issue in perspective, drawing lessons for deliberative democracy and constitution-making. Deliberative theorists are in agreement that ordinary citizens should have the opportunity to take part in political deliberation, but they disagree over how many citizens should actually do so. The norm of political equality ensures that all participants are not only free to speak but have the same opportunity to do so and that all affected individuals are included on equal terms in the decision-making process.
