Decision and deliberation are two central elements in democracy. What defines democracy if not who deliberates and who decides? This book presents us with a theoretical study of deliberation and decision, enriched with empirical experiences, with meticulous and detailed observations, of an anthropological spirit, taken from the most varied contexts and periods. Its uniqueness and its greatest contribution lie in the approach to both issues, deliberation and decision, in an articulated way. As the author points out, the Social Sciences seem to have accepted a division of labor with respect to these concepts: philosophers are concerned with the deliberation, separated from the result, of decision-making procedures, particularly within the framework of the current of studies on deliberative democracy that has grown a lot in recent years; and economists and political scientists are concerned with decision, but generally understood as a choice between given preferences, based on approaches in which there is no room for deliberation, because this would imply that positions are transformed in the process of exchange.