History of the public sphere

In his earliest book on the subject, the Structural transformations, Habermas claimed that in the late 18. and early 19. century an infrastructure existed that enabled reasonable exchange of opinions between citizens, leading to the formation of public opinion that held political authorities accountable. Infrastructure needs to be understood in both the literal (coffee houses and salons, in which debates took place, and the press, which enabled the circulation of information) and metaphorical sense (norms regulating the exchange of ideas, demanding truthfulness, reasonableness, respectfulness etc. and skills needed to engage in deliberation). What happened during the course of the 19. century according to H., was that a "bureaucracy of society", that is political parties and interest groups, formed between the publics of civil society and the state and gradually excluded the publics from decision making. Therefore his position at the time was that creating internal publicity inside the "bureaucracy of society" was crucial for the resurrection of the public sphere. This formulation of the problem is illuminating, yet H. only sketched it at this point and did not pursue it further, his later works dealing with the role of deliberation for democracy, most notably Theory of communicative action and Between facts and norms, go in a different direction.

The initial formulation of the problem is even more interesting if we combine it with critiques of the historical accuracy of Structural transformations. The most pertinent of these is that H. ignores the exclusion of the working class and women, which would according to the immanent criteria of the public sphere (being "public" in the sense of universal access is one of its indispensable demands) mean that a public sphere did not exist at the time H. claims it did. The historical evidence against H.'s claim is overwhelming, but we must ask ourselves what this means for the idea of the public sphere. More precisely the question is whether, since H. extrapolated the idea from flawed historical circumstances, the idea itself is marred with the same flaw. I would argue that it is not. Part of the argument for such a position can be found in one of my earlier posts and I will not repeat it here. Furthermore, as I have also argued in another post, attempts at reconceptualization that sprang from the critique of historical accuracy ended up giving concessions to history, instead of holding history accountable to its own ideals. What I therefore propose is to look at how the idea(l) of the public sphere has manifested itself in different historical circumstances. We can distinguish three phases that correspond to changes in the "bureaucracy of society":

1) The classical liberal model. This is the model H. described. In this situation a very limited number of people - the male bourgeoisie - engage in deliberation to secure their interest against both the political state of the aristocracy and the proletarian masses, as well as against their own wives. Since large masses are permanently excluded from the acquisition of property and property is needed to enter into citizenship, exclusion is constitutive of this phase, hence a public sphere, measured by its own immanent criteria, does not exist. Political parties are mostly quite loose organisations without much hierarchical structure, originating either from civil society or from coalitions of representatives in parliament. On the side of the excluded processes of opinion and will formation are also taking place - for example in what Negt and Cluge call a proletarian public sphere - but are either ignored by the state or even persecuted. The Union of communists, for which Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto, for example disbanded after a substantial number of its members were incarcerated.

2) The class struggle model. These two diverging worlds met when the masses acquired political rights and class struggle has moved from the factories and streets to parliament. Now the structure of parliament changes to incorporate the basic antagonism of capitalist society. Organisations of civil society are connected to political parties and parties can rely on a stable voting base, identifiable by social class. Only in this phase can we talk about a public sphere, since there are no identifiable groups that are eo ipso excluded from deliberative processes. The public sphere has two levels: on one side processes of opinion and will formation take place in civil society and opinions are channelled upwards until they reach the parliament via political parties. Deliberation in parliaments enables the different hierarchies that are otherwise not linked via deliberation (unions and employers usually engage in negotiations, not deliberation) to enter into a communicative exchange.

3) The mass society model. This phase is characterised by the political system becoming autopoietic - if we borrow a term from Niklas Luhmann. Political parties have severed their ties to civil society and their function and mode of operation has changed dramatically. They are no longer mouthpieces of identifiable social groups, but are similar to brands, in that they simplify voter choice. In the same process political programs have been unified, it is impossible to notice any substantial differences between them. It is therefore logical that parliament is no longer so much a deliberative body as it is the stage for a public relations spectacle. To prove the fact that parliament as a deliberative body is redundant, formulation of policies - the quintessential activity of classical parliaments - is being outsourced to think tanks. The political caste relates to the masses in two ways: it launches topics and personalities via the mass media, to which it has privileged access, and then uses public opinion polling to probe the distribution of private opinions on these topics and the ratings of personalities. The bourgeoisie and the political system have once again forged an alliance, which can be seen in the fact that functions of the political system are being outsourced to private bodies and global decision making is delegated to bodies like the WTO, IMF and World bank, which can most accurately be described in the words of Marx and Engels as "committee[s] regulating the common affairs of the global bourgeoisie." We are witnessing a thorough rebourgeoisation of the public sphere.