Opinione o indagine pubblica? Concetti e esperimenti di democrazia deliberativa

The article deals with two concepts of deliberative democracy. One regards it as a means to build and express individual preferences or opinions. The other regards it as a means to perform public inquir-ies. Their different backgrounds are addressed. Lack of clarity about the choice between these concepts and its implications impinges up-on the use and study of deliberative democracy. Issues and goals can be labelled in a same way but their understanding may be quite dif-ferent. Insight comes from two Italian citizens’ juries. Discrepancies in their design and implementation can be traced back to the adop-tion of different concepts of deliberation. Yet discussions show re-markable similarities. The article focuses on the treatment of issues of uncertainty and fairness, the role of authority and a «bridging ef-fect» between various aspects of the topic at stake. In the absence of a suitable research design, interpretation of such results is conjectur-al. The fruitfulness of the empirical study of deliberative democracy depends on a careful description of theoretical assumptions and op-erationalisation of the subsequent questions.