Drake, Anna Marie2024-08-132024-08-1320032003https://hdl.handle.net/1828/17648Normative deliberative theories stress the importance of procedural justice, purport to include all people as equals, and aim to address the problem that marginalized groups pose for democracy. However, normative deliberative theories cannot guarantee that deliberative groups will recognize all normatively acceptable public reasons. When deliberative groups fail to recognize public reasons, they unjustly exclude groups. Members of the marginalized group that deliberants exclude may form protest groups. Because theories of deliberative democracy do not discuss political protest and because marginalized groups form protest groups, theories of deliberative democracy fail to deal adequately with marginalized groups. In order to resolve the tension between communicative democratic theory and political protest, I propose that communicative democrats adopt a dissent-as­ difference approach. Dissent-as-difference theory treats legitimate political protest in the same way as communicative democratic theory treats difference and recognizes the democratic legitimacy of the type of marginalized groups that form protest groups.129 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis