The Discursive Dilemma and Public

Collective decisions are ubiquitous in complex democratic societies. Elections, referenda, decisions in legislatures, committees, multimember courts, expert panels, and boards of companies or other organizations are all examples. In such decisions, disagreement is equally ubiquitous. People disagree with each other on many levels. They disagree not only on what choices should be made but also on why those choices should be made. Political theorists have offered different accounts of how collective decisions should be made under conditions of pluralism and when such decisions are legitimate. Obviously, different decision problems may require different decision procedures or different criteria of legitimacy. But, even for a given decision problem, rival accounts of how to solve the problem, which differ on several dimensions, are usually on offer. In this article, I focus on one such dimension: the importance assigned not only to the choices made (the “what” question) but also to the reasons underlying those choices (the “why” question). This dimension can be seen as a spectrum between two extremes: the minimal liberal account at one end and the comprehensive deliberative account at the other. The minimal liberal account emphasizes the “what” question, the comprehensive deliberative account the “why” question. The minimal liberal account holds that collective decisions should be made only on