democratic institutional arrangements that rely solely or even primarily on electoral mechanisms, that is, on ways of aggregating individual interests or preferences. They regularly complain that aggregation is, in various ways, inadequate to the task of producing normatively binding political outcomes. They insist that aggregation needs to be supplemented and perhaps entirely supplanted by institutional arrangements that embody and enhance demo-cratic deliberation." John Dewey nicely articulates this position.“Majority rule” by itself, he observes,“is as foolish as its critics charge it with being. Butitis never merely majority rule.” This is because the “counting ofheads compels prior recourse to methods of discussion, consultation and persuasion.” So, Dewey explains, if we are dissatisfied with democratic institutions, the remedy is not simply extended, or even refined aggregative democracy but, rather, more and better democratic deliberation.“The essential need, in other words, is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public."