This book offers a detailed and thorough analysis of what has become the most important democratic theory in the last twenty years in the world: deliberative democracy. What some have called the "deliberative turn", is at least safe to be described as a deep renovation of democratic thinking producing hundreds of theoretical as well as empirical works and publications in several academic fora in the world, predominantly in the Anglo-Saxon ones. In this book we can find a synthesis of the deliberative democratic theoretical model, especially of its republican version, while it also establishes a route for such model’s subsequent institutional design. For this reason, this book is addressed not only to political and legal philosophers, but also to legal and political scientists and practitioners; not only to rulers with sympathy towards the new democratic ideas, but also to the citizens interested in, and committed to, the res publica, the public affairs or the commonwealth.
