Deliberative Democracy: Methods, Models and Social Justice

Damiano Palano, Valentina Paze, and Stefano Petrucciani discuss Antonio Floridia's latest work Un'idea deliberativa della demicrazia. Genealogia e principi. The three authors critically analyze the book from different perspectives. In particular, Palano focuses his contribution on the relationship between participatory and deliberative democracy, showing differences and similarity between these two ideas of democracy, both useful to question the presumed "realism" of "democratic elitism". Also Paze discusses - and questions - this very differences; moreover, she argues that in the contemporary world the model of deliberative democracy plays a normative role rather than a descriptive one. Petrucciani puts the book in dialogue with Habermas's "ideal speech situation" and to the critiques moved to that concept; he highlights the cultural, social and economic requirements for an authentic democracy.