The paper aims at identifying, back in the Theory of Communicative Action, an explanation for the ambiguous accounts of the State detected along the different versions of the theory of deliberative democracy. By the means of a theoretical critique, it is realized that deliberationism implies political practices not only distinct but reciprocally antagonistic. It is proposed that the indefinition over the precise meaning of deliberative democracy is a consequence of this theory´s Habermasian grounds. In the philosophy of Habermas, the lifeworld is rationalized to create the state, but is also colonized or destroyed by this system. This antinomy implies a political theory to which the state may be both a space for mere informal influence reasons that come from the public sphere as its opposite, as an apparatus aimed to establish participatory forums.
Deliberative Democracy; Theory of Communicative Action; Jürgen Habermas; Joshua Cohen