Abstract

Deliberative democracy is usually understood through the lens of a developmental, progressive narrative. We shall show how this narrative is historically fallacious and effectively obscures the theoretical fault lines within deliberative theory. Setting the narrative straight is thus the first condition to recover the real stakes of the deliberative debate, which has long removed, but never solved, the conflict between procedural and substantive interpretations. This opposition was itself misframed by questionable narratives, hiding the deeper contrast between teleological and deontological understandings of deliberative democracy. The latter represents the only path to formulate a theory that would not be internally contradictory.