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Writers on the practice of deliberation usually take their cues about what deliberation ought to be from the theoretical literature, sometimes adding elements from their own experience. In this chapter, the authors begin with a review of the evolution of deliberative democratic theory. The deliberative democracy theory has passed through three stages: early theory, a period of criticism, and recent theoretical formulations. To identify the norms implied in contemporary deliberative practice, the authors collect tapes of ten small group deliberations on public issues from six organizations in the United States. The organizations provided the tapes on the basis that the tapes would be analyzed for an inductive study of deliberative norms. The deliberations captured on tape differed from one another in a number of ways, including the method of participant selection, the diversity of participants, whether the groups stood alone or …