Public Sphere

The public sphere is the political arena where citizens discuss issues of common concern. Besides participation in the electoral process, citizens' contribution to public debate represents one of the main avenues open to them to influence the process of democratic decision making. For this reason, an accessible public sphere characterized by robust discussion is considered to be an indispensable element of modern democratic politics.

Given that discussion in the public sphere focuses on issues of general interest, it is less individualistic and less personal than discussions in the private realm. At the same time, public discussion is less rigidly structured than deliberation in such organized political arenas as governments, which have formal rules of order and set membership requirements. Loosely structured, public debate is governed by the laxer standards of general political civility. Formal requirements regulating participation are also absent; ideally anyone concerned with an issue should be able to voice an opinion. Public debate results neither in legislation nor in administrative rules; these remain the purview of government and the state respectively. Instead, public debate generates influence. By mobilizing opinion in the public sphere, citizens have the opportunity to convince their representatives and state officials of the need to take action on an issue or to voice their opposition to government action in a specific policy area. In this way, citizens influence the process of political decision making; they do not directly make the decisions.

While public sphere has spatial connotations, it possesses no precise location. Debate can take place in venues as varied as public squares, political conventions, and the virtual space of the media, including, of course, the Internet. Some argue that the public sphere is also increasingly transnational. Political perspectives that transcend a national frame of reference now frequently characterize public debate. Also public participation has expanded beyond members of the nation-state to include international nongovernmental organizations and representatives of international institutions.

Although consensus exists regarding the public sphere's democratic significance, widespread disagreement persists concerning the rationality of public opinion and its desired scope. Scholars who stress democracy's deliberative quality consider the rational potential of public debate to be high. Thus, they argue that public discussion should play as large a role in political decision making as possible. Others who work with the various permutations of postmodern democratic thought deny that public debate can generate a rational political consensus. Instead, the public sphere is best thought of as an arena of agonistic competition regarding identities and political positions. To the extent that such competition contributes to the dynamism of democracy, it should be encouraged. Finally, a third group argues that the rationality of public debate is limited to finding a balance between competing interest groups. It cannot hope to achieve rational agreement on controversial issues. Given this limited potential and because citizens never possess the policy knowledge of experts, debate in the public sphere should play a relatively minor political role.