Deliberation and Anti-Deliberation in the Western Balkans - Prospects for Deliberative Democracy in the Age of Democratic Backsliding

This open access book examines deliberative and anti-deliberative practices in post-conflict contexts marked by democratic backsliding. It compares how deliberative ideals are upheld and violated across different deliberative domains, including parliaments, citizens’ assemblies, social media and interactions between local and international actors. The authors identify anti-deliberation as the active violation of deliberative norms through exclusion, manipulation and domination, along with weaponisation of difference. The expansion of anti-deliberation restricts the space for good-quality deliberation and accelerates democratic backsliding. This edited collection is useful to scholars of democracy, deliberation and communication with its novel comparative perspective on the quality of deliberation, to policy-makers and civil society with its lessons for supporting deliberation, and to international peace-builders working on democratisation and reversing democratic backsliding.