Deliberative democracy stage four

The paper reflects critically on the meaning and relevance of a study on some examples of deliberative processes in Italy, placing them in the context of theoretical reflections and empirical analyses, institutional designs and concrete applications of deliberative democracy. The study points to a direction of research that is likely to grow in the next years together with, and as a consequence of, the spread of deliberative processes in advanced democracies: let’s call it a fourth stage of studies in deliberative democracy, a wave that raises issues which do not cast away but reframe those addressed in the past.