Le arene deliberative

Deliberative arenas In many countries around the world, a sizeable heritage of public decision-making experiences has been developed that are, or try to be, at the same time, deliberative and democratic. Though there are many differences among them, they display a set of features surprisingly similar. In these cases, true deliberative arenas are set up in which all those who are directly affected take part in a col-lective decision-making process based on the use of arguments. This articles examines seven characters of the deliberative are-nas, makes some hypothesis about the reasons of their diffusion, analyzes the tensions between deliberative arenas and representa-tive institutions, and, finally, discusses the relationship between deliberative arenas and social capital. Though this phenomenon is absolutely marginal in contemporary democracies, it is worth of attention, as it is continually growing and it appears as one of the possible responses to the crisis of representative democracy and sheds some light on the nature of the new processes of governance.