This article takes a critical look at how democracy is practiced today. It reflects on democracy in modern times, when the boundaries imposed by the bureaucratic state indicate the possibility of a productive development of deliberative democracy. It then observe in theory the discursive practice and its democratic potential so as to reveal to what extent the strategic direction of actions in allegedly democratic discursive spaces compromises the meaning of participatory equality. To illustrate its theoretical approach, it presents an empirical analysis of the case of Economic and Social Development Council (CDES) a forum composed by civil society and government representatives created in the beginning of the Lula administration in order to improve the participation of society in state issues. Even though the adoption of this model has represented an advance, when the democratic context is analyzed through the discourse theory there are new analytical references of the contradictions in which the democratic practice is established in these kinds of forums. The CDES case reveals a paradox: although some procedures characterize deliberative democracy, strategic orientation is recurrent.
Brazilian public administration; deliberative democracy; communicative action theory