Much has been said about the disenchantment that people have with democratic politics. Many have voiced their concerns about the excessive influence of money or special interests, or the role of the media, or partisanship, or lack of accountability, or the cumbersome and even corrupt nature of the workings of legislatures, or politicians' breaching promises or deceiving the public. People may differ on their diagnoses or may place different emphases on the factors responsible for democratic degradation. But everyone seems to agree that democratic societies need to promote deliberation, participation, and civic education. Whatever else we can do to improve our democratic practices, surely facilitating access to deliberative fora so that citizens can debate, confront one anothers' ideas, and thus ultimately move toward the political truth, or at least increase our chances of enacting wise public policies, is primordial.

This book dissents. It offers a sustained critique of theories of deliberative democracy. Its theme is that public political deliberation will inevitably display certain patterns of error that we call discourse failure. As we developed our thoughts, we realized that our theory of discourse failure would not serve its polemical purposes unless we defended its assumptions about epistemic and instrumental rationality. Why do people say the false things they say in political contexts? Do they believe those things? And, if they don't believe them (if they know better), why do they persist in publicly displaying them?