I found an interesting text today: The European Economic and Social Committee: towards deliberative democracy via a functional assembly: “The importance of deliberation in democracy has been especially brought to the attention of political theorists by Jürgen Habermas. His discursive democracy is a discourse-based model instead of an interest-based model of democracy. Democracy revolves around transformation rather than simply aggregation of preferences.” It’s been a while since I read Habermas, it may be time to re-read him.
According to Jon Elster, deliberation means “decision making by means of arguments offered by and to participants who are committed to the values of rationality and impartiality”.