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

383Civil Society and the Political Public Spherebinding decisions that, their legality notwithstanding, the actorsconsider illegitimate in the light of valid constitutional principles.Acts of civil disobedience are directed simultaneously to twoaddressees. On the one hand, they appeal to officeholders andparliamentary representatives to reopen formally concluded politicaldeliberations so that their decisions may possibly be revised inview of the continuing public criticism. On the other hand, theyappeal "to the sense of justice of the majority of the community,"as Rawls puts it,7H and thus to the critical judgment of a public ofcitizens that is to be mobilized with exceptional means. Independentlyof the current object of controversy, civil disobedience isalso always an implicit appeal to connect organized political willformationwith the communicative processes ofthe public sphere.The message of this subtext is aimed at a political system that, asconstitutionally organized, may not detach itself from civil societyand make itself independent vis-a-vis the periphery. Civil disobediencethereby refers to its own origins in a civil society that in crisissituations actualizes the normative contents of constitutional democracyin the medium of public opinion and summons it againstthe systemic inertia of institutional politics.This selfreferential character is emphasized in the definition thatCohen and Arato have proposed, drawing on considerations raisedby Rawls, Dworkin, and me:Civil disobedience involves illegal acts, usually on the part of collectiveactors, that are public, principled, and symbolic in character, involveprimarily nonviolent means of protest, and appeal to the capacity forreason and the sense of justice of the populace. The aim of civil disobedienceis to persuade public opinion in civil and political society . .. thata particular law or policy is illegitimate and a change is warranted.Collective actors involved in civil disobedience invoke the utopian principlesof constitutional democracies, appealing to the ideas offundamentalrights or democratic legitimacy. Civil disobedience is thus a means forreasserting the link between civil and political society . . . , when legalattempts at exerting the influence of the former on the latter have failedand other avenues have been exhausted.79This interpretation of civil disobedience manifests the self-consciousnessof a civil society confident that at least in a crisis it canincrease the pressure of a mobilized public on the political system