Research into the deliberative dimensions of democracy has been remarkably productive over the last decade or so, spawning new insights into how deliberation functions within the many political venues that constitute contemporary democracies. Normative theories of deliberative democracy have justified and sometimes inspired a wide range of new institutional developments, from citizen juries, stakeholder meetings, deliberative polling, and deliberative forums to the Freedom of Information legislation that enhances public deliberation (Chambers, 2003, Gastil and Levine, 2005, Parkinson, 2006). The key claim of deliberative theories of democracy is simple and compelling: deliberative approaches to collective decisions under conditions of conflict produce better decisions than those resulting from alternative means of conducting politics: coercion, traditional deference, or markets. The decisions resulting from deliberation are likely to be more legitimate, more reasonable, more informed, more effective, and more politically viable (Cohen, 1996, Habermas, 1996, Gutmann and Thompson, 1996, Bohman, 1998).