 While Habermas’s account resembles Rawls’s liberal approach in many ways, its distinctive deliberative strand has also influenced democracy-based accounts, which defend the justification and role of civil disobedience on the basis of its contribution to democracy. Deliberative democrats (Markovits 2005; Smith 2013, ch. 1–3), republican democrats (Arendt 1972), and radical democrats (Celikates 2014, 2016) focus on the potential of civil disobedience to enhance democratic legitimacy and to constitute in itself a form of democratic empowerment. Agents engaged in civil disobedience can enhance democratic legitimacy in a number of ways, including by putting a heretofore-neglected issue on the political agenda and raising awareness about its stakes; contributing to and informing democratic deliberation; highlighting the outsize influence of powerful players and the exclusionary effects of certain processes of public deliberation, and working to make the latter more inclusive. Civil disobedience does not only aim to invigorate democratic sovereignty, but also can constitute a form of democratic empowerment in itself – an exercise of political agency that is especially meaningful for marginalized groups. Through civil disobedience, individuals discover and realize their power. They work together and forge bonds of solidarity. They engage in democratic politics. Theorists’ examples to illustrate democratic civil disobedience include: the Occupy Movement, pro-democracy movements around the world, anti-globalization and anti-austerity protests, climate justice activism, and Campesino movements for land redistribution and agrarian reform. Many activists further enact within their movement the norms and values that guide their struggles, for instance through radical inclusion, direct democratic decision-making, aspiration to consensus, and leaderless organizational structures. Some theorists insist on the need to align the means of protest with its aims, by deploying only persuasive, non-violent forms of protest that reflect democratic ideals (Habermas 1997, 383–4; M. Cooke 2016), while others contend that civil disobedience can be confrontational and coercive without betraying its democratic aims (Smith 2021; Fung 2005, 409).