Viewing the Public Sphere With Influentials and Citizens

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.

This article will identify issues and contemporary concerns within critical theory surrounding Jürgen Habermas’ concept of the public sphere, and draft alternatives for a more viable and just model for informal social dialogue and discourse. I argue that the model of the public sphere is flawed for two reasons; first, it is untrue to its own claims regarding universal accessibility, and second, its theoretical unattainability and lack of reflection upon actual democracies renders the model irrelevant. Without considering societal practices and human behaviour, the model of the public sphere is subject to the all-too-familiar trap of theorizing over hypothetical utopian scenarios. Is it worth our time to construct a socio-political model that is socially and politically unviable? As it stands, the public sphere can be fantasized, but not attained, and as such it becomes irrelevant.

This paper investigates communication in public bodies in Italy. Communication practices in public bodies could be considered a process enhancing transparency, visibility, accountability, and citizens’ participation. But in another perspective they might be a means of public control made by political marketing, something influencing both the media and the public visibility of government activity. The boundaries between the two perspectives are often fluid and overlapping. In this research on communication practitioners employed in Italian public local bodies, we have highlighted some questions both on the different organizational positions and the self representations of their role in public bodies. In fine we suggest some questions about a moral entrepreneur’s role of communicators in contemporary public spheres.

The rhetoric of dialogue is sometimes adopted rather uncritically in academic, organizational, and policy circles. Too often that rhetoric is deployed with little understanding of the variety of principles and practices enacted in dialogic communication. How can dialogue be conceptualized and distinguished from other forms of communication? On what assumptions is it based? How is communication understood? What does it take to facilitate it? What kinds of processes make it possible? What ideas about democracy underpin it? What kind of changes in academic and policy-making cultures does it call for? This booklet seeks to speak to people involved in creating public forums for meaningful conversations. In particular, I have taken as imaginary readers those practitioners and students that I have had the fortune to work with. If, with pragmatist and deliberative thinkers, we agree that communication is the very fabric of democratic life, then pondering over the quality of communication in public forums becomes critical. Thinking about dialogic communication encourages us to interrogate our public engagement work, the role our research institutions should play in society, and the ways in which we can develop collective capacity to deal with complex problems.

Text in Portuguese. Abstract in English. TITLE: Online Campaigns, Political Participation and the Public Sphere: The Case of the Open Government Plan in the 2010 Brazilian Elections..ABSTRACT: This paper aims at examining the online political discussions which took place on the website Proposta Serra , an open government plan initiative launched by the Brazilian Social Democracy Party´s candidate José Serra during the 2010 Brazilian presidential elections. The Proposta Serra´s purpose was to engage voters and campaing agents in political discussions in order to create a collaborative government plan. The project´s website reproduces some of the features of social network sites, such as public or semi-public profiles, photo albums and blogs. The Proposta Serra s singular characteristic was to give voters the opportunity to create thematic online forums turned to debate issues such as agriculture, housing, urban and rural public infra-structure and education. Through content analysis, we evaluated the deliberative quality of (N=200) messages exchanged by the participants in 4 different forums. Five analytical categories taken from the current online deliberation literature were used: Reciprocity, Reflexivity, Respect, Justification and Information. The results show high ratings of deliberation in the political discussions, demonstrating the forums´ usefulness to promote qualified cognitive exchanges. However, the lack of transparency in the selection process of voters suggestions decreased significantly the user sense of political efficacy

Politics, Philosophy & Economics

It is widely believed that open and public speech is at the heart of the democratic ideal. Public discourse is instrumentally epistemically valuable for identifying good policies, as well as necessary for resisting domination (e.g. by vocally challenging decision-makers, demanding public justifications, and using democratic speech to hold leaders accountable). But in our highly polarized and socially fragmented political environment, an increasingly pressing question is: Do actual democratic societies live up to the ideal of inclusive public speech? In this essay, I explore Maxime Lepoutre's defense of discursive democracy from the challenge of defective public discourse. I argue that political ignorance, dogmatism, and social fragmentation present more formidable challenges to discursive democracy than Lepoutre acknowledges.

2006

2017

European Journal of Political Research, 2021

This article offers the first empirical and cross-national analysis of citizens' views about the democratic importance of the public sphere. We first identify three normative functions that public spheres are expected to perform in representative democracies: they provide voice to alternative perspectives, they empower citizens to criticise political authorities and they disseminate information on matters of public interest. We then argue that citizens develop differentiated views about the importance of these democratic functions, depending on (1) their ability to influence political decisions through public debate, and (2) the extent to which voice, critique and information address democratic problems they particularly care about. Drawing on Wave 6 of the European Social Survey, the statistical analysis indicates that citizens in most European countries consider the public sphere very important for democracy, especially its role as a supplier of reliable information. However, certain groups tend to care more about different aspects of the public sphere. More educated citizens are more likely to assign greater importance to all three functions. Members of cultural and sexual minorities are more likely to emphasise the importance of giving voice to alternative perspectives, while citizens dissatisfied with the government are more likely to prioritise public criticism and access to reliable information. Finally, in countries with more democratic public spheres, differences based on education and minority status are wider, while differences based on government satisfaction disappear. These findings support the claim that citizens care more about the public sphere when they can effectively influence political decision making through public debate or when the public sphere addresses democratic problems that are especially important to them. Moreover, our results indicate that citizens see some of the functions that public spheres perform as core aspects of democracy, comparable in importance to free and fair elections and the rule of law. The article thus advances an empirically grounded defence of the centrality of public debate for democracy.