| The goal of this dissertation is to expand democratic theory, by comparing and contrasting two of the most important contemporary paradigms of democratic thought: the theory of deliberative democracy and the theory of populist democracy. The dissertation asserts that the deliberative democratic theory does not discuss the issue of power as thoroughly as it should, and that it does not treat the matter of inclusion and exclusion with the seriousness that it deserves. The dissertation proposes that populist mobilization is a necessary corrective to the shortcomings of deliberative democracy. Finally, the dissertation explores ways in which deliberation and mobilization can be institutionalized in ways that are conducive to more democratization. The authors examined in the course of this dissertation are: Jurgen Habermas, John Rawls, Mark Warren, Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, Kurt Wayland and Torcuato Di Tella, among others. |
