抄録
This article aims to survey democratic theories and thereby discuss the relationship between deliberative democracy and public choice. There have been various democratic theories, however, Schumpeterian, or aggregative, democracy has been the predominant theory. This theory assumes that democracy is equated to elections through which fixed preferences of actors who behave to maximize their own interests are aggregated. Yet, since the 1990s, deliberative democracy has been the most potent competitor theory against aggregative democracy. Under the assumption of deliberative democracy, actors may change their own preferences through deliberation by which they persuade others by considering others' preferences and society. In short, aggregative and deliberative democracies do not share the same assumption. In public choice, there are many studies on aggregative democracy, while few on deliberative democracy exist because the assumption of actors and decision process does not neatly fit with public choice. However, some studies on deliberation employ public choice methods, especially the game-theoretic approach. Yet, there is a heated debate as to whether the game - theoretic studies (implicitly public choice) on deliberation are appropriate. Is it impossible to study deliberative democracy in public choice? This article discusses the future direction of the relationship between deliberative democracy and public choice.
