ABSTRACT
The movement towards deliberative democracy has many proponents among American political scientists (cf. Bohman and Rehg 1997), but there is one outstanding spokesman in Europe, the German social philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who has also located the idea of deliberative democracy in a broad analytical frame of reference of societal development, rather than relating it solely to democratic theory. He contends that the project of modernity may be seen as unfi nished (Habermas 1990) and that, through communicative action, an ongoing normative rationalization is possible (Habermas 1984/1987). The theory of communicative action, further developed into a model for deliberative democracy and a discourse theory of law and democracy, is a theory of social integration (Habermas 1996).
