Jon Elster is Robert K. Merton Professor of Social Science at Columbia University, New York and Professeur Honoraire at the Collège de France. He is the author or editor of thirty-four books, most recently Agir contre soi: la faiblesse de volonté (2007), Le désintéressement: traité critique de l'homme économique (2009), Alexis de Tocqueville: The First Social Scientist (Cambridge, 2009), L'irrationalité (2010) and Securities against Misrule: Juries, Assemblies, Elections (Cambridge, 2013).

It is sometimes assumed that voting is the central mechanism for political decision-making. The contributors to this volume focus on an alternative mechanism, that is decision by discussion or deliberation. The original contributions include case studies based on historical and current instances of deliberative democracy, normative discussion of the merits of deliberation compared to other models of collective decision-making, and studies of the conditions under which it tends to improve the quality of decisions. This volume is characterized by a realistic approach to the issue of deliberative democracy. Rather than assuming that deliberative democracy is always ideal, the authors critically probe its limits and weaknesses as well as its strengths.