DEMOCRAZIA DELIBERATIVA E SFERA PUBBLICA: ELEMENTI DI ANALISI

Abstract Since the last three decades of the XX century, a new democratic paradigm has emerged in the context of political theory, both in the European and North-American scientific community. The deliberative origins of democracy, according to the Athenian model of participation through deliberation and discourse, have come back to the fore of democratic theory. Since its habermasian theoretical foundations in the contemporary political theory, this concept has catalyzed the normative and empirical debate in democratic theory. The rediscovery of “discourse” as the normative core of democracy, has emphasized the centrality of the Public Sphere among democratic institutions. According to all that, this article firstly deals with the main characteristics of the new democratic paradigm of “deliberative democracy”, secondly it tries to assess origins, functions, and transformations of the Public Sphere, considered as the main institutional site for free and open public discourse.