Pluralism and deliberative democracy

The term ‘pluralism’ features prominently in many accounts of deliberative democracy. Usually, it is taken to describe the fact that people hold different values and beliefs, and hence arrive at different conclusions about how we ought to live. Accordingly, a central question in the theory of deliberative democracy is how we should respond to the fact that people not only differ but also disagree. As one might expect, deliberative democrats have offered a range of different answers to this fundamental question. We begin this chapter by discussing one such answer.