Mark Pennington - "Democracy and the Deliberative Conceit"

Mark Pennington is Reader in Public Policy and Political Economy at Queen Mary, University of London. He has written *Rescuing Social Capital from Social Democracy* (with John Meadowcroft) and *Planning and the Political Market: Public Choice and the Politics of Government Failure.* His most recent work, *Towards the Minimal State,* will be published soon.

Dr Pennington discusses the theories of deliberative democracy, including the work of Jurgen Habermas. He argues from a Hayekian perspective that the case against the social democratic state rests with the superior capacity of markets to extend communicative rationality beyond the realm of verbal discourse. Deliberative democrats privilege discourse above other more successful forms of communication and expression instantiated in free market institutions.