This article aims to reconstruct the issue of legitimation of democratic orders based on a typology of deliberative consensuses, relating different initial positions by actors to the principles of justification and application of the norms by which they operate. Based on Habermas’ model of the ethics of discourse, the article argues that a democratic order’s legitimacy depends on a "virtuous circle of democracy", defined as the circulation of forms of consensus that are able to avoid the characteristic crises in legitimation for each type of consensus.
democratic theory; consensuses; ethics of discourse
