Abstract

This chapter delves into debates about time and democratic deliberation. Deliberative democrats have developed sequential models but tend to think of time mainly as a background variable. Critics have drawn attention to the inadequacy of deliberation in accelerated society but, in so doing, have conflated arguments about the pace of democratic deliberation with arguments about its durational time. Democratic deliberation may be slow and inconclusive, but one aspect does not necessarily entail the other. It is against this backdrop that the chapter sheds light on a diachronic reading of fallibilism in order to advance a more favorable reading of inconclusiveness.