1. ^aUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. E-mail: jsteiner@email.unc.edu
2. ^bUniversity of Bern, Untere Wart 30, 3600 Thun, Switzerland

Abstract

Sartori (1970) warned a long time ago of the danger of concept stretching for effective and cumulative theory building. Such concept stretching has happened with regard to deliberation, which has become a very faddish term. For theoretically well-founded empirical research it is better conceptually to distinguish clearly between strategic bargaining and deliberation, although in the empirical political world the two concepts are usually heavily intertwined.