Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

_2 6 _9 _________ ____________________________ _Judiciary and Legislaturein the interest of society, where the government is represented asan apparatus of public administration, society as a system of marketand labor relations among private persons. Here politics (in thesense of the citizens' political will-formation) has the function ofclustering together and pushing through private interests againstan administration specialized in the employment of political powerfor collective goals. On the republican view, however, politicsinvolves more than just this mediating function; it should beconstitutive for the social process as a whole. "Politics" is conceivedas the reflexive form of substantial ethical life-as the medium inwhich the members of more or less naturally emergent solidarycommunities become aware of their dependence on one anotherand, acting with full deliberation, further shape and developexisting relations of reciprocal recognition into an association of·free and equal citizens. With this, the liberal architectonic of stateand society undergoes an important change: in addition to thehierarchical requirements of the state and the decentralized requirementsof the market-that is, besides administrative powerand individual interests-solidarity and the orientation to the commongood appear as a third source of social integration. In fact, thishorizontal political will-formation aimed at mutual understandingor communicatively achieved consensus is even supposed to enjoypriority, both in a genetic and a normative sense. An autonomousbasis in civil society, a basis independent of public administrationand private market relations, is a precondition for civic self-determination.This basis preserves political communication from beingswallowed up by the state apparatus or assimilated to marketstructures. In the republican conception, the political public sphereacquires, along with its base in civil society, a strategic significance;it should secure the autonomy and integrating force of the citizens'communicative practices. 56 The uncoupling of political communicationfrom the socioeconomic realm is necessary for the feedbackrelation that couples administrative power to the communicativepower emerging from political opinion- and will-formation. Thesecompeting approaches have several consequences for an assessmentof the political process.First, the concepts of citizenship differ. According to the liberal view,the status of citizens is defined primarily by negative rights against