individual liberty as opposed to political activity and involvement, liberal systems limit the citizen’s role to a largely passive and inactive one. By defining citizenship in terms of their ability to shape and influence public legislation, however, deliberative models require and indeed inspire a public of active, politically aware, and educated individuals. It must also be pointed out, finally, that such models can only succeed in creating the highly active and participatory public that they envisage, if they completely replace existing systems. Republican forms that seek to increase the feasibility of deliberative models fail to recognise the fundamental incompatibilities between liberal democracies and citizen-based deliberative systems, and so are incapable of overturning the participatory deficit.
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