Deliberative Democracy and Public Sphere Typology (original) (raw)
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Journal of Sociological Research, 2012
The aim of this paper is to present the theoretical model and the major crit ical discourses about the category of the public sphere, and its centrality in the formu lation of deliberat ive democracy, both from the new settings and transformations of the conception of politics in Habermas' writings, as well as fro m the debate on deliberative democracy unleashed in confrontation and beyond to the political tradit ions of liberalis m and republicanism. In the early '90s, Habermas introduces important changes in the investigations on the public sphere and democracy, reshaping the relationship between system and lifewo rld in an offensive emphasis on systemic dimension translated into terms of deliberative procedural polit ics or deliberative democracy. However, despite the different ways of understanding the power circu lation among civ il society, public sphere and polit ical and ad min istrative system, many theorists have questioned the basic assumptions of the Habermasian ...
Habermas's Search for the Public Sphere
European Journal of Social Theory, 2001
Given powerful globalizing processes under way, the topic of how to conceptualize the modern public sphere is becoming increasingly urgent. Amidst the array of alternatives, the efforts of Jürgen Habermas to attempt to balance out the two main conceptual requirements of this idea, a universalistic construction of the principle of shared interests and a sensitivity to the fact of modern pluralism, might seem a particularly promising option. In order to reconstruct the main motivations of, and to determine a set of criteria of assessment for, Habermas's ongoing attempt to outline a theory of the public sphere adequate to the conditions of the present, the article turns first to a discussion of the seminal formulations of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. I suggest that the later writings are only partially successful in their attempt to redress some of the main conceptual difficulties that emerge in this early account.
The Normativity of Habermas’s Public Sphere from the Vantage Point of Its Evolution
Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Philosophica. Ethica-Aesthetica-Practica, 2019
The paper argues that the original normativity that provides the basis for Habermas’s model of the public sphere remains untouched at its core, despite having undergone some corrective alterations since the time of its first unveiling in the 1960s. This normative core is derived from two individual claims, historically articulated in the eighteenth-century’s “golden age” of reason and liberty as both sacred and self-evident: (1) the individual right to an unrestrained disposal of one’s private property; and (2) the individual right to formulate one’s opinion in the course of public debate. Habermas perceives the public sphere anchored to these two fundamental freedoms/rights as an arena of interactive opinion exchange with the capacity to solidly and reliably generate sound reason and public rationality. Despite its historical and cultural attachments to the bourgeois culture as its classical setting, Habermas’s model of the public sphere, due to its universal normativity, maintains...
Habermasian deliberative democracy nuance: An enquiry
Deliberative theory of democracy or discursive democracy is distinct albeit inextricable from the concept of communicative rationality. Habermas employs this outlook in the advancement of other spine facets that institute his theory of deliberative democracy. For him, communication is a core medium for resolving many of the social malaise. The intricate issue of pursuit in this disquisition is that Habermas' deliberative democracy is exclusivist, thus, posing further encumbrances in its realization of the mutual good. The approach utilized in the pursuit of conceivable panaceas to this convoluted matter was hermeneutics. We are here to first and foremost accentuate Habermas' theory of deliberative democracy and later on proffer a critique to it. It is interesting to engage with Habermas on the tenets of democracy and strive to construe the rationale as to why he opts to attenuate or parallel democracy to communication that wears a procedural stance. In the same mode of thought, he treats other human realms from a communicative standpoint. The core domains that he employs the power of communication to develop are human rights and popular sovereignty, legitimacy, and ethics. In setting out to comprehend the link between his concept of human rights and popular sovereignty, he notes that these two realities are co-original, to denote that, they might have been con-created or they are concomitant so to mention, thus, one might not profoundly deem one exclusive of the other. The findings of the paper were: Habermas borrows his concept of popular sovereignty from Rousseau's worldview of the social contract. Moreover, Habermas utilizes deliberation to shape his perspective of law. For him, the laws can only be promulgated via deliberation, whereby, the members of the society actively take part in the varied sorts of debates that are to transpire within the gamut of the public sphere. What of those who are privated of the faculty of speech? Eventually, he tackles matters appertaining to discourse ethics, which ought to be informed by the public discourse(s). There is a common thread that cuts across these three central pillars of Habermas' theory of deliberative democracy, the faculty of communication, which for him, communication gives the impression of being the source and the summit of moulding the society.
Studies in Social and Political Thought, 2004
Many contemporary political theorists agree that a public sphere of informal citizen deliberation is central to strong democracy. An increasing amount of empirical work is taking place that attempts to critically evaluate the extent to which everyday communication is advancing such a sphere. However, this work is hampered by poorly specified public sphere criteria. In this paper I draw on Habermas' theory of communicative rationality to detail a set of normative conditions of public sphere discourse adequate for critical analysis. Habermas argues that his formal pragmatic analysis of everyday communication illuminates a number of idealizing presuppositions of communicative rationality. From these presuppositions I delineate six public sphere conditions. These conditions include the reasoned exchange of problematic validity claims, reflexivity, ideal role taking, sincerity, formal inclusion and discursive equality, and autonomy from state and corporate power. I do not attempt here to answer possible critiques of these conditions. Instead, I simply focus upon providing a detailed conceptualisation of the Habermasian public sphere for the critical evaluation of everyday communicative practices, a conceptualisation that remains open to further development through subsequent reflection upon public discourse.
Contesting Consensus: Rereading Habermas on the Public Sphere
Constellations 3, no. 3 (January 1997): 377–400.
Communicative reason is of course a rocking hullbut it does not go under in the sea of contingencies, even if shuddering in high seas is the only mode in which it 'copes' with these contingencies.
A critical study of communicative rationality in Habermas's public sphere
2011
This interdisciplinary research examines the public sphere as a communicativelyconstructed realm and challenges Habermas's model of public sphere communication based on the "public use of reason"/communicative rationality. It questions the model's counterfactual normativity and its emancipatory potential in revisiting core concepts such as reason, power and consensus, while also considering social complexity, the media and counterpublics. This research is theoretical but informed by the quest for empirical relevance. Using critical hermeneutic methods, the thesis critically reconstructs Habermas's theories of the public sphere and of communicative rationality, as these were developed and revised throughout his works, in order to lay the foundations for second-and thirdorder critique. The main critics considered in revisiting Habermas's public sphere model are: Niklas Luhmann (functionalism and social systems), Michel Foucault (historical materialism, theory of power and rejection of universal norms), Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib (critical feminism, identity politics), Thomas McCarthy (critique of rationalism and normativity), James Bohman (social complexity) and Colin Grant (postsystemic communication studies). Drawing on these, the thesis proposes a renewed public sphere model consisting of systems and emergent publics, while rethinking communicative reason and power in conditions of overcomplexity (Bohman). Lastly, it redefines normativity in an empirically plausible light, connected to emergent communication practices. iii DEDICATION To my parents and to Rodney. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1-Introduction 1.0 Research Scope 1.1 Thesis Outline Chapter 2-Habermas's Model of the Public Sphere: A Hermeneutic Reconstruction of his Theoretical Premises 2.0 Introductory remarks 2.1 The Initial Model: A Bourgeois Public Sphere 2.1.1 Initial Scope 2.1.2 Initial Method 2.1.3 'Public' and 'publicity' 2.1.4 The Greek Model and the Initial Question 2.1.5 Representative publicity 2.1.6 The Bourgeois and the Genesis of the Public Sphere 2.2 The Basic Blueprint 2.2.1 The Initial Demarcation 2.2.2 People's Public Use of Reason 2.2.3 Institutions of the Early Bourgeois Public Sphere 2.2.4 Role of the Bourgeois Family in the Evolution of the Bourgeois Public Sphere 2.2.5 The Public Sphere in the World of Letters in Relation to the Public Sphere in the Political Realm 2.3 Socio-structural transformation of the Bourgeois Public Sphere 2.3.1 The Gradual Merging of Public and Private Spheres 2.3.2 Refeudalisation of Society 2.3.3 The Disengagement of the Social Sphere and the Intimate Sphere 2.3.4 From a Culture-Debating to a Culture Consuming Public 2.3.5 The Impact of the Mass Media 2.4 Political Functions of the Bourgeois Public Sphere 2.4.1 Contestation of Authority 2.4.2 Public Opinion: Defining 'public' and 'opinion' 2.4.3 Public Opinion as 'Fiction' 2.4.4 Public Opinion as a Political Function of the Public Sphere 2.4.5 Civil Society as the Sphere of Private Autonomy vii 2.4.6 Legitimation and Legitimacy 2.5 Functional Transformation of the (Bourgeois) Public Sphere 2.5.1 The Commercialisation of the Press and the Manufacturing of News 2.
The Theory of Public Sphere: an Analysis and Critique of the Habermasian Model
This paper attempts a critical discussion on the Habermasian model of Public sphere. The concept of the public sphere has become a key term in social science literature since it was introduced by German scholar Jurgen Habermas as a philosophically and sociologically pertinent concept. The public sphere refers to the discursive space that exists in modern societies between the state and society. It deals with a domain that is generally related to civil society, but goes beyond it to refer to the wider category of the public. The public sphere comes into existence with the formation of civil society and the forms of associational politics to which it led. However, Habermasian model, although widely praised and accepted by many, is not without its criticisms. The second section of the paper makes an effort to bring together some of the major criticisms of the model as postulated mainly by feminist scholars.