Deliberation and protest: revealing the deliberative potential of protest movements in Turkey and Brazil

This chapter argues that deliberative democracy is not antithetical to conflicts and agonism generated by protests. In fact, protests are understood as an integral part of public deliberation, especially when the latter is understood in terms of a broad public conversation that occurs in multiple sites of communication. In order to develop this argument, the chapter discusses the deliberative dimension of recent demonstrations in Turkey and in Brazil, exploring (1) the way they were organized; (2) how they were carried out; and (3) their public consequences. In doing so, the chapter contributes to the field of policy studies by showing that there is much more to deliberative policy making than what happens in structured forums, and by arguing that a deliberative turn in politics will not lead to a tamed society that either avoids or suppresses its intrinsic conflicts.