Communicative Power in Habermas's Theory of Democracy

More documents

Recommendations

Info

European Journal of Political Theory 3(4)component of the lifeworld’. 30 In this way, the public sphere remains open tocommunication from the lifeworld contexts of communicative action and thediscourse of those who are potentially affected by political decisions. The vitalityof the public sphere, therefore, depends upon the continued contributions ofindividuals and associations.2. Capacities442The normative demands of deliberative politics can only be met by the open communicativestructure of a public sphere which must itself be ‘kept intact by anenergetic civil society’. 31 Formal freedoms of speech, assembly, and associationmake this possible, but civil society must maintain certain capacities in order torealize the normative demands of this model. The ‘critical function’ of publicspheres are only maintained by political actors themselves, which reveals the ‘selfreferentialcharacter of communication in civil society’.Some actors in civil society merely make use of the available public sphere.Others raise issues relevant to society as a whole while also attempting to reinforcethe public sphere itself. ‘Whatever the manifest content of their public utterances,the performative meaning of such public discourse at the same time actualizes thefunction of an undistorted political public sphere as such.’ 32 Such actors are alwaysalso fortifying the public sphere itself as a critical space for the further developmentof ‘new social movements’ and ‘subcultural counterpublics’.The formal decision-making sphere is ‘strong’ in its authorized capacity to actbut has only a weak capacity to detect on its own the kinds of problems thatrequire political action. The public sphere fulfills this role with its closer relationshipto the sphere of the private lives of citizens. In this way, it is a ‘warningsystem with sensors that, though unspecified, are sensitive throughout society’. 33This metaphorical reference to ‘sensors’ refers to the flexibility and multifunctionalityof ordinary language, which, for this task, is superior to the ‘specialcodes’ of functional systems. The normative requirements of deliberation cannotbe met by the ‘special codes’ of functional systems, which are directed by instrumentalrationality and have a limited capacity for expressing the normativedemands of citizens. Thus, while the public sphere plays an essential role inthe political process as a network of ‘sensors’, the rational treatment of politicalquestions (and the legitimacy of political decisions) goes beyond just the detectionof problems. The success of deliberative politics depends upon the capacity ofthe public sphere to identify and then convincingly thematize the identifiedproblems. The only way to get the political system to take notice is through aninfluential problematization of issues. Otherwise, institutions within the core ofthe political system are unlikely to take up issues that require political action.The influential thematization of issues in the public sphere is ideally constitutedby processes of rational opinion-formation. Such processes are rationalinsofar as they are discursively generated and thus internally related to the
Flynn: Communicative Power in Habermas’s Theory of Democracyprocedural conditions of communicative rationality. Rather than an aggregationof individual opinions, the structure of public opinion is generated by a ‘sharedpractice of communication’:Agreement on issues and contributions develops only as the result of more or less exhaustivecontroversy in which proposals, information, and reasons can be more or less rationallydealt with. In general terms, the discursive level of opinion-formation and the ‘quality’ ofthe outcome vary with this ‘more or less’ in the ‘rational’ processing of ‘exhaustive’proposals, information, and reasons. 34In the model of deliberative politics, the locus for the normative demand that theaddressees of the law also be its authors ultimately lies in the interplay betweenformal deliberative bodies and the informal public sphere. Again, we see that thediscourse-theoretic model requires more of politics than the classical liberalmodel of aggregation of interests. Like the republican model, it requires deliberationbut does not require deliberation that aims toward ethical consensus.But if ‘the discursive level of public debates constitutes the most importantvariable’ in deliberative politics, this would also seem to require citizens to actcommunicatively when deliberating about political issues. 35 The proceduralaspects of Habermas’s model are not restricted to the formally regulated proceduresof democratic institutions. Rather, they are internally related to the proceduraldemands of communicative rationality. This can be described as a normativerequirement because citizens always have the option of acting strategically. Ofcentral importance is that citizens take a communicative attitude in their deliberations.Indeed, this is one area where Habermas needs to further elaborate on thecommunicative orientation that his model requires of citizens. This is a strongnormative requirement given that members of modern democracies tend to takeup the client or consumer role more often than that of citizen. 363. Outcomes and EffectsThe outcomes and effects of the communication within the public sphere includethe generation of normative reasons, public opinion, and influence (I deal with thegeneration of communicative power primarily in the next section). As we haveseen, this notion of ‘public opinion’ should not be confused with the idea of theaggregation of individual pre-deliberative opinions, but is already connected tothe idea of ‘good reasons’ generated by deliberating citizens in an open, egalitarianprocess. The production of the best reasons, by citizens themselves, isessential. The quality of public opinion depends upon the degree to which citizens’proposals and the flow of information and reasons are being more or lessrationally dealt with. But from a normative point of view, it is not wholly clearwhether procedural criteria alone can guarantee rational outcomes. To complicatematters further, Habermas also introduces the notion of ‘influence’, which heborrows from Parsons. ‘“Influence” feeds on the resource of mutual understanding,but it is based on advancing trust in beliefs that are not currently tested.’ 37443
Page 1: articleCommunicative Power inHaberm
Page 5 and 6: Flynn: Communicative Power in Haber
Page 9: Flynn: Communicative Power in Haber

Communicative Power in Habermas's Theory of Democracy

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?