In an era where citizens of liberal democracies are becoming increasingly disillusioned, dissatisfied and disenfranchised by the dominant political institutions and decision-making processes in these polities, new ideas of how to deepen democracy, re-engage citizens and enhance decision-making legitimacy are required. This book suggests that a combination of deliberative democracy and associational democracy is both a normatively desirable and an empirically plausible solution to the complex problems that are present in contemporary societies--as well as being compatible with many recent trends in governance. Author Stephen Elstub argues that by combining deliberative with associational democracy, the weaknesses of each model alone are compensated by the other, allowing the key strengths of each to manifest themselves. And he goes further by offering a detailed set of original, institutional requirements for liberal democracies that, if adopted, will enable a deliberative and associational democracy to be realised in practice.

Deliberative democracy is the darling of democratic theory and political theory more generally, and generates international interest. In this book, a number of leading democratic theorists address the key issues that surround the theory and practice of deliberative democracy. They outline the problems faced by deliberative democracy in the context of the available empirical evidence, survey potential solutions and put forward new and innovative ideas to resolve these issues.

Deliberative democracy has been one of the main games in contemporary political theory for two decades, growing enormously in size and importance in political science and many other disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy takes stock of deliberative democracy as a research field, in philosophy, in various research programmes in the social sciences and law, and in political practice around the globe. It provides a concise history of deliberative ideals in political thought and discusses their philosophical origins. The Handbook locates deliberation in political systems with different spaces, publics, and venues, including parliaments, courts, governance networks, protests, mini-publics, old and new media, and everyday talk. It engages with practical applications, mapping deliberation as a reform movement and as a device for conflict resolution, documenting the practice and study of deliberative democracy around the world and in global governance.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Deliberative democracy is a diverse and rapidly growing field of research. But how can deliberative democracy be studied? Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy provides a unique collection of over 30 methods to study deliberative democracy. Written in an accessible style, it provides guidance for scholars and students on how to conduct rigorous and creative research on the public sphere, structured forums, and political institutions. Each chapter introduces a particular method, elaborates its utility in deliberative democracy research, and provides guidance on its application, as well as illustrations from previous studies. This book celebrates the methodological pluralism in the field, and hopes to inspire scholars to undertake methodologically robust, intellectually creative, and politically relevant empirical research.

Democracy has changed considerably in recent years to the extent that our contemporary understanding differs greatly from long-held democratic values. In this collection, renowned democratic theorists from Noam Chomsky to Francis Fukuyama give their thoughts on 'new democratic theory' and its implications for the study and practice of democracy.

This textbook offers a comprehensive overview of the most prominent theories, concepts and debates in environmental political thinking. In doing so, Robert Garner – an esteemed scholar in the field – offers a foundation from which readers can better tackle perennially thorny questions such as what environmental cost can we bear for development, what do we mean by terms such as 'sustainability', and how might we reconcile competing interests and influences in the political sphere. Garner concludes his introductory account by exploring the idea of a sustainable future and how society must be structured in order to achieve it, encouraging readers to consider the theoretical when considering the all-too important reality. This text is designed for those studying environmental and green political thought, as well as readers keen to understand the development of environmental political thought over recent generations.

Public deliberation and group discussion can strengthen the foundations of civil society, even when the groups engaged in debate share a history of animosity. Scholars have begun to study the dialogue sustaining these conversations, especially its power to unite and divide groups and individuals. The twenty-four essays in this collection analyze public exchanges and the nature of sustained dialogue within the context of race relations, social justice, ethnic conflicts, public-safety issues, public management, community design, and family therapy. They particularly focus on college campuses and the networks of organizations and actors that have found success there. Open discussion may seem like an idealistic if not foolhardy gesture in such milieus, yet in fact the practice proves crucial to establishing and reinforcing civic harmony.

In this pathbreaking work, the author integrates questions of justice and stability through a model of deliberative democracy in the plural polity. "Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity" provides a realistic but critical reform agenda that can animate struggles for justice in an enormously diverse world.

Deliberative Democracy and the Environment makes an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between democratic and green political theory.

Constitutionalising Secession proceeds from the question, 'What, if anything, does the law have to say about a secession crisis?' But rather than approaching secession through the optic of political or nationalist institutional accommodation, this book focuses on the underpinnings to a constitutional order as a law-making community, underpinnings laid bare by secession pressures. Relying on the corrosive effects of secession, it explores the deep structure of a constitutional order and the motive forces creating and sustaining that order. A core idea is that the normativity of law is best understood, through a constitutional optic, as an integrative, associative force. Constitutionalising Secession critically analyses conceptions of constitutional order implicit in the leading models of secession, and takes as a leading case-study the judicial and legislative response to secession in Canada. The book therefore develops a concept of constitutionalism and law-making - 'associative constitutionalism' - to describe their deep structure as a continuing, integrative process of association. This model of a dynamic process of value formation can address both the association and the disassociation of constitutional systems.