This chapter deals with the origins and the building-process of the theoretical field of deliberative democracy (which took place over a very specific period between 1980 and 1993). This history was far from linear: Deliberative Democracy came out of a complex process in which different conceptual elements were gradually elaborated, changed and reworked. The theoretical field was built through several independent approaches. We can pinpoint five different stages: a phase of transition and theoretical innovation compared to the models of participatory democracy that characterized the sixties and seventies; the first formulations and insights, in the early eighties; the constituent phase proper in the late eighties; the phase of articulation of a deliberative field and its overlapping with other intellectual traditions; and finally the consolidation of the philosophical foundations of deliberative democracy, mainly thanks to Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls, with their works of the early nineties.
This article considers the systemic effects of the electoral reform approved by the centre-right in December 2005, and the factors that led to the crisis of the Prodi government, highlighting the way in which the issue of electoral reform and the likelihood of an electoral referendum contributed decisively to the breakdown of the fragile coalition maintaining the Prodi government in office. The article then analyses the ‘game’ surrounding possible electoral reforms, examining the interweaving of the preferences and vetoes of the various political actors, showing how these were influenced by the strategic aims of each actor and by the process of re-structuring of the party system. Finally, the new configuration of the political supply as it took shape in the run up to the 2008 general election is analysed, showing how this new format derives from the actors’ strategic adaptation to the electoral rules in force, and how the election may signal the end of a period of Italian politics marked by ‘fragmented bipolarity’.
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