Search

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the validity of the contention that, over the past few decades, the public sphere has undergone a new structural transformation. To this end, the analysis focuses on Habermas's recent inquiry into the causes and consequences of an allegedly 'new' or 'further' [erneuten] structural transformation of the political public sphere. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part considers the central arguments in support of the 'new structural transformation of the public sphere' thesis, shedding light on its historical, political, economic, technological, and sociological aspects. The second part offers some reflections on the most important limitations and shortcomings of Habermas's account, especially with regard to key social developments in the early twenty-first century. The paper concludes by positing that, although the constitution of the contemporary public sphere is marked by major—and, in several respects, unprecedented—structural transformations, their significance should not be overstated, not least due to the enduring role of critical capacity in highly differentiated societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main thesis of my article is that populism is a side effect of liberal democracy and a reliable indicator of the relationship between liberal democracy and its polar opposite-illiberal majoritarianism. As long as liberal democracy prevails over illiberal majoritarianism, populism remains dormant. Populism rises and becomes conspicuous only if some manifestations of illiberal majoritarianism or illiberal elitism reached a critical point in terms of number and impact. More exactly, populism becomes active when there are too few reasonable and effective responses to the growing illiberal majoritarianism. Illustrating the defence mechanism of compensation, the rise of populism correlates with a cluster of exaggerated or overdone reactions to some actions inspired by illiberal majoritarianism. These reactions vary sharply from one society to another according to (a) the specific challenges of illiberal majoritarianism, (b) the reactivity of people who bear the liberal democratic values and (c) the credibility enjoyed by the mainstream liberal democratic forces. In brief, although populism is everywhere a cluster of reactions, it always takes distinct forms confirming its status of chameleonistic phenomenon. In order to develop my thesis, I outlined a constitutive model of liberal democracy presenting its main attractors, in other words, its organizing principles: inclusiveness, political equality, political participation, predominance of concurrent majority, the containment and predictability of the government power and the enforcement of the non-aggression principle. Furthermore, I put the attractors of liberal democracy in contrast to some recent state of affairs in Euro-Atlantic space for illustrating my assertion that today illiberal majoritarianism tends to prevail over liberal democracy. In the third step, I argued that the countless definitions of populism only emphasize different symptoms of the rise of populism, depending on the particular circumstances in which society evolves. Finally, substantiated the claim that populism and populists can and should be integrated into the democratic political system, in particular into the democratic public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study includes an examination of the concept of public sphere, as is it grounded in the work Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (1962), the specification of the main changes and nuances by which Habermas has realized the "deepening" of the "normative grounding of the critical theory of society" in his subsequent works, especially in Faktizität und Geltung (1992), and the outlining of the applicability degree of Habermas' deliberative model of public sphere in the "post-national political realm" of the European Union. The assumption of this approach is that the Habermas' normative model of public sphere, through its criticaldeliberative dimension, indicates means of democratic legitimation which are applicable to the representative institutions of European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]