"Deliberative democracy" refers to a body of related political philosophies and practices. The basic idea is that political outcomes should result from a kind of fair, equal, open, well-reasoned, and organized discussion among the people subject to those decisions.
“Deliberation” connotes an orderly, reason-guided process. Deliberative democrats tend endorse a demanding ideal of how political deliberation ought to go. So, for example, Habermas says deliberators should observe the following rules:
1. Speakers must be consistent—they must not contradict themselves.
2. Speakers must treat like cases alike.
3. Speakers should use terms and language in a consistent way, to make sure they are all referring to the same things. (No equivocating or switching definitions in ways that would interfere with communication.)
4. Speakers must be sincere—they must assert only what they believe.
5. Speakers must provide reasons for introducing a subject or topic into the discussion.
6. Everyone who is competent to speak should be allowed into the discussion.
7. Speakers are to be allowed to discuss any topic, assert whatever they like, and express any needs—so long as they are sincere.
8. No one may coerce or manipulate another speaker.
Deliberative democrats spend a great deal of time discussing theories of how deliberation should go. Some craft laboratory or field experiments attempting to induce real people to deliberate; they hope to create models and mechanisms for deciding actual law.
It occurred to me today that deliberative democrats should not merely focus on what happens during deliberation, but on culture at large. After all, it is extremely difficult to isolate and compartmentalize deliberation from the rest of life. Outside of the deliberative laboratory, people are browbeaten by peers and enemies into believing--or saying they believe--this or that. They attach themselves to political causes and claim to affirm political policies, but do so for largely non-ideological and non-interest-based reasons, including the need to fit in with peer groups and others who share their identity. They are pushed to believe some things and also pushed not even to consider others, in order to avoid bullying and shame. They can turn on their TV and see public figures engaging in disgraceful, epistemically corrupt behaviors. Their see that newspapers of all ideologies regularly lie or write misleading headlines with the goal of inducing others to believe convenient falsehoods. It seems unlikely that a person can be subject to all these pressures, all this bullying, and all these perverse epistemic practices outside the deliberative forum, and yet then walk into deliberation, free themselves from it, and proceed as deliberative democrats wish.
Indeed, that's one reason I was so critical of deliberative democracy in Against Democracy. The empirics overwhelmingly show that attempts to instantiate it backfire; attempting to instantiate deliberative democracy is far more likely to corrupt and stultify us than to produce the process deliberative democrats want.
Perhaps deliberative democrats do argue for this point for these reasons somewhere, and I've just missed it.