RESC - Book 1 - 5

1.  The Twofold Arbitrariness of Pedagogic Action

"1.  All pedagogic action (PA) is, objectively, symbolic violence insofar as it is the imposition of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary power."

- PAs - can include that of diffuse education, family education, institutionalized education
- Applies to "any social formation, understood as a system of power relations and sense relations between groups or classes"

"1.1  PA is, objectively, symbolic violence: first insofar as the power relations between the groups or classes making up a social formation are the basis of the arbitrary power which is the precondition for the establishment of a relation of pedagogic communication, i.e. for the imposition and inculcation of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary mode of imposition and inculcation (education)."

- PA is symbolic violence (SV) in that:
--  Power relations (PR) between groups or classes (G/C) making up a social formation (SF) are the basis of the arbitrary power (AP), the precondition for the est. of a pedagogic communication relation (PCR).
--  Biological dimension of pedagogic imposition (PI) is not non-existent, but social determinations which specify PCR must be accounted for.

1.1.2  - PA's specifically symbolic effect (SSE) can only be produced when social conditions (SC) for imposition and inculcation are provided

1.1.3 - The PA placed in dominant PA (DPA) position within system of PA's (SPA) is "the one which most fully, thought always indirectly, corresponds to the objective interests (material, symbolic, and, in the respect considered here, pedagogic) of the dominant groups or classes, both by its mode of imposition and by its delimitation of what and on whom, it imposes."

- The structure of power relations (PR) and symbolic relations (SR) between pedagogic agencies define the symbolic strength of a pedagogic agency
- This structure expresses the PR between G/C making up the SF
- "It is through the mediation of this effect of domination by the dominant PA that the different PAs carried on within the different groups or classes objectively and indirectly collaborate in the dominance of the dominant classes."

RESC - Book I - 4

"O.  Every power to exert symbolic violence, i.e. every power which manages to impose meanings and to impose them as legitimate by concealing the power relations with are the basis of its force, adds its own specifically symbolic force to those power relations."

- Gloss 1: To refuse this axiom is to deny the possibility of sociology: all theories built on the basis of other axioms lead to
--  the rooting of symbolic action (SA) in the creative freedom of individuals
--  the annihilation of SA - refusing its autonomy from material conditions of existence (MCE)

Bourdieu and Passeron - Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (RESC)

Book I - Foundations of a Theory of Symbolic Violence  1

Book II - Keeping Order  69

-1 Cultural Capital and Pedagogic Communication  71
-2 The Literate Tradition and Social Conservation  107
-3 Exclusion and Selection  141
-4 Dependence through Independence  177

Legend:

PA - pedagogic action
PAu - pedagogic authority
PW - pedagogic work
SAu - school authority
ES - educational system
WSg - the work of schooling

Fraser - Rethinking the Public Sphere

I shall begin,  in section  one, by juxtaposing  Habermas's  account  of  the  structural  transformation  of  the  public sphere  to  an alternative  account  that can be  pieced  together  from  some
recent  revisionist  historiography. Then,  I shall  identify  four assumptions
underlying  the  bourgeois  conception  of  public  sphere,  as Habermas de-
scribes  it,  which  this  newer  historiography  renders suspect.  Next,  in  the
following  four sections,  I shall examine  each of these assumptions  in turn.
Finally,  in  a  brief  conclusion,  I  shall  draw  together  some  strands  from
these  critical  discussions  that point  toward an alternative,  post-bourgeois
conception  of  the public  sphere.


---

JH's Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
- Notion of the PubS
- crucial concept to clear up confusions regarding the difference between ST.Ap.s and PubArenas of CitDisc/Assoc.
- conflation enabled the effective institutionalization of the socialist vision in authoritarian statist form, instead of Part.Dem. form.
- Within Contem.Fems.
- Pubs - often taken to mean everything outside the domestic/familial sphere
- Conflates ST, official ECO., and Pubs
- Practical consequences of conflation - struggles over women's liberation fail to address potential resubjugation, instead of family, to ST or ECO


JH's PubS
- "designates a theatre in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk.  It is the space in which citizens deliberate about their common affairs, hence, an institutionalized arena of discursive interaction."
- conceptually distinct from ST - site for prod./circulation of discourses
- can be critical of the state
- distinct from ECO
- arena for discursive relations - theatre for debating and deliberating, rather than buying selling


JH's subtitle - "An Inquiry into a Category of a Bourgeois Society"
- aim is to identify the specific conditions which enabled the rise of a specific form of the PubS
- upshot: under distinct condtions, the Welfare state mass democracy - WSMD - old Pubs not feasible


---

According to JH

Idea of PubS - body of private persons assembled to discuss matters of public concern / common interest
- Acquired force in early modern Europe - Bourgeois Pubs - BPubs - to serve as counterweights to absolutist states
- To mediate b/w Soc and ST - hold ST accountable to Soc thru "publicity"
- Thru:
- free access of info. re: ST functioning - subject to PubO
- later - transmission considered general interest to ST via free speech, press, assembly, then Rep.Gov.

- PubS - institutional mechanism for rationalizing of political domination - rendering states accountable to some of the citizenry
- Also referred to specific kind of interaction
- Discussion open to all
- Merely private interests to be inadmissable
- Inequalities of status to be bracketed
- Discussants to deliberate as peers
- Result to be PubO - consensus about the common good


Full Utopian Potential - Never Realized
- Open access - never made good
- Premised on SocO in which ST | Soc
- Allowed for exclusion of private interests
- Undermined when other strata of society included
- The "social question" came to fore - polarization by class struggle
- Street demos and backroom compromises replaced PubDeb
- With WSMD - Soc - ST intertwined
- Publicity - became public relations, manufacture of PubO

According to Revisionist Historiography

JH idealizes LPubS
- Official Pubs - rested on / constituted by exclusions
- especially - gender
- constructed in opposition to salon culture - stigmatized as artificial, effeminate, aristocratic
- republican PubS - as rational, virtuous, manly - masculinist gender constructs built into the very conception of the RPubs
- other exclusions
- soil which nourished LPubS - CSoc
- network of clubs/associations not accessible to all
- the arena for stratum of BMen coming to see themselves as universal class - preparing to assert fitness to govervn.
- distinctive culture of CSoc - process of BClass formation - practices defined emerging elite
- distinguished itself from both aristocracy and popular/plebian strata it aspired to rule
- also helped explains women's exclusion - distinction bw PubPri - key signifiers

Irony - discourse of publicity touting accessibility, along with rationality, suspension of status hierarchies - deployed as a strategy of distinction
- Not fatal to project itself, but does suggest complexity between publicity and status


Other PubS
- JH - will not discuss plebeian PubS - understands it to be ephemeral phenomena during FR, nor the plebiscitary-acclamatory PubS of highly dev. industrial societies.
- Women of various classes /ethnicities - constructed access routes to public political life
- For BWomen - counter-CivSoc of alternative woman-only assocations
- For less privileged women - access thru participation thru support roles of male protest activities
- In absence of formal incorporation through suffrage - variety of ways of accessing PubLife and a multiplicity of public arenas
- view of women's exclusion based on class and gender biased notion of publicity
- implicitly accepts BPubs to be the public

- Never the public
- Always competing counterpublics
- Relations always conflictual - elaborated alternative styles of political behavior, alternative norms of speech
- Emergence of BPubs - never solely defined by struggle against traditional authority and absolutism
- addressed the problem of public containment

In contrast to JH's view - exclusions not merely accidental trappings but constitutive
- Consideration of which - "a gestalt switch that alters the very meaning of the public sphere"
- Not simply an unrealized ideal - a masculinist ideological notion that functioned to legitimate an emergent form of class rule"
- Emergence of PubS - a transformation in the nature of political domination
- Reflects shift from repression to hegemony
- Like repression-based mode of rule - secures ability of one stratum to rule another
- Gramscian lesson - PubS produce consent thru circulation of discourse that construct the common sense, represent the existing order as natural/just.  In mature form, PubS permit most people most of the time to recognize themselves in its discourses - even those ultimately disadvantaged by social construction of consent.

Conclusions? Instrument of domination or utopian ideal
- Perhaps both, actually neither
- The revisionist historiography neither undermines nor vindicates the concept of PubS as such.  Calls into question assumptions central to the BMPubs
1. since inequalities can be bracketed, social equality is not necessary for democracy
2. the proliferation of PubS is a step away from democracy, one single comp. PubS better to multiple publics
3. deliberation should be limited to common good - private interests, issues not acceptable
4. the functioning of DPubS requires separation between CivSoc and ST

1. Accessibility of all to Pubs in JH's account - central meaning of publicity
- Never actually realized -> question what to make of ideal now that it can, conceivably, put into effect
- Only a matter of time before exclusions overcome - ideal remains unaffected
- Issue can't be reduced to determining whether formal exclusions are still in place - look at process of discursive interaction with the formally inclusive arenas
- individuals were to bracket out difference in order to interact as if they were peers
- differences not effectively bracketed - governed by protocols of style and decorum which were markers and correlates of status inequality
- informal impediments to participatory parity
- fem.pol.theorists - deliberation as mask for domination
- transformation of I intor we can easily mask subtle forms of control
- language used for reasoning favors one way of seeing things, discourages others
- subordinate groups are unable to find the right voice or words to express their thoughts, or when they do, discover they are not heard
- Fostering participatory parity
- Not accomplished thru bracketing of differences
- In most case, more appropriate to unbracket inequalities in the sense of explicitly thematizing them
- Bracketing seems to imply that "a public sphere is or can be a space of zero degree culture, so utterly bereft of any specific ethos as to accomodate with perfect neutrality and equal ease interventions expressive of any and every cultural ethos"
- counterfactual nature of assumption - not accidental
- in stratified societies, unequally empowered social groups tend to develop unequally valued cultural styles
- effect is that powerful informal pressures marginalize the contributions of members of subordinated groups
- pressures are amplified by the PolEco of BPubs - media which constitute the material support for the circulation of views are not accessible by subordinated social grpus
- PolEco enforces structurally what culture accomplishes informally


What is at stake - autonomy of specifically Pol institutions in relation to surrounding societal context
- LPolTheory assumes such an autonomy, and the possibility for democracy on basis of socio-economic/sexual structures that generate systemic inequalities
- Weight of circumstance suggest that deliberation as peers - the achievement of rough equality is necessary, rather than the bracketing of inequality, to counter systematically-generated relations of dominance and subordination

2.


- Past-discussion could be regarded as intrapublic relations - relations within a given PubS
- Now - interpublic relations - those among different publics

Habermas's account - singularity of the B conception of PubS - the public arena
- underlying evaluative assumption - institutional confinement of public life to single PubS is positive, desirable SOA
- and so, proliferation of publics represents departure from dem.

If full parity of participation is not possible, what comes closest to that ideal?

- In stratified societies - arrangements that accomodate contestation among a plurality of competing publics better promote participatory parity than one single overarching public
- Not only does a single PubS fail to bracket effects of inequalities, these effects are exacerbated
- subordinated groups have not arenas for deliberation among themselves about their needs, objectives, strategies
- without such venues, which lack the supervision of dominant groups, they would be less likely to find the right voice or words to express their thoughts, are more likely to keep their wants inchoate, and unmask the false 'we'

Subaltern counterpublics
- in past, subordinated social groups have found it advantageous to constitute alternative publics
- parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses - permit formulation of oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, needs
- not always necessarily virtuous - some explicitly anti-democractic, anti-egalitarian, may practice own forms of informal exclusion and marginalization
- "Still, insofar as these counterpublics emerge in response to exclusions within dominant publics, they help expand discursive space"
- Assumptions previously exempt from contestation will have to be publicly argued out

Not an argument for separatism
- the concept of a counterpublic - against separatism because it assumes an orientation that is publicist
- publics are by definition not enclaves - although these are often involuntarily enclaved
- to interact as a member of a public is to disseminate one's discourse into an ever widening arena
- members understand themselves as part of a wider public - counterfactual body "the public at large"

Dual character of counterpublics
- function as spaces of withdrawal and regroupment
- function as bases and training grounds for agitational activities directed toward wider publics
- Dialectic between these two functions -  emancipatory potential resides
- enables subaltern counterpublics partially to offset, not wholly to eradicate the unjust participatory privileges enjoyed by members of dominant social groups in stratified societies

Contestation between publics
- supposes inter-public interaction
- Ely - Pubs in stratified societies - "'the structured setting where cultural and ideological contest or negotiation among a variety of publics takes place'"
- PubSs
- PubSs situtated ina single structured setting that advantages some and not others
- discursive contestation likey to be form of deliberation


In egalitarian societies
- absence of class, racial and gender DoL doesn't mean absence of cultural differnces

Public discourse and social identities
- PubS not merely arenas for discursive opinion formation
- arenas for the formation and enactment of social identities
- participation is not the ability to state propositional contents that are neutral with respect to forms of expression
- participation - the ability to speak in one's own voice - simultaneously constructing and expressive one's cultural identity thorugh idiom and style

PubS - culturally specific institutions
- institutions may be seen as culturally specific rhetorical lenses - filter and alter utterances they frame
- can accomodate some expressive modes, not others
- institutionalization of one PubS - filtering diverse rhetorical and stylistic norms through single, overarching lens
- effectively privlege the norms of one cultural group - requiring assimilation for participation

Inter-public, comprehensive public interaction
- wider debate required for issues which affect everyone
- question as to whether participants would share enough in way of values, expressive norms, protocols to enable deliberation
- not impossible in principle, more plausible if we accept complexity of identities
- even starkly different identities may share common strands
- in conditions of equality, porousness, outer-directedness, open-endedness of PubS could promote inter-cultural comm.
- plurality of POVs presupposed in Pubs, internal differences allowed, discouragement of reified blocs
- unbounded character / publicist orientation of publis - allows for the fact that people participate in more than one public, memberships may partially overlap


3.

Scope of publicity in relation to privacy - object of contestation

Publicity can mean
- state-related; accessible to all; of concern to all; pertaining to common good, shared interest
- each aspect has corresponding notion of privacy
- private can also mean - pertaining to private property, pertaining to domestic, personal, sexual life

-pertaining to common good
- ambiguous - observer's POV - what has objective affect on all or participants' POV - what is recognized as being a matter of common concern by participants
- if idea of PubS is meant to describe an arena of collective self-determination - appeal to observer perspective to delimit its proper boundaries doesn't sit well
- while only participants can decide what's of concern, no guarantee that there will be agreement
- no naturally given, a priori boundaries
- publicity as common good/shared interest - civic republican model
- stresses people reasoning together to promote common good which transcends mere sum of individual preferences
- common good created or disocvered, participants transformed from private individuals to public-spirited collectivity, capable of acting together in the common interest
- private interests either have no place in deliberation, or are merely a starting point of deliberation
- in contrast to LPubs - doesn't assume people's preferences, interests, identities are given exogenously in advance
- these are as much outcomes as antecedents of public deliberation
- critical edge of CRPubs - conflates ideas of deliberation and common good - assumes that del. is framed from standpoint of a "we" - claims of self-interest and group interest are out of order
- less powerful are less able to discover that the sense of we doesn't adequately include them
- common good may be the outcome, as the possibility that differences are real - outcome can't be presumed in advance
- even in egalitarian societies, conflicts of interests may be real, which holds all the more for societies in which the systemic profit of some comes with the systemic detriment of others
- prima facie reason to suspect postulation of a common good


Other meanings of private - pertaining to the market or the family
- Such distinctions exclude issues of debate by personalizing/familializing or economizing them
- Enclaves certain matters - shields them from public debate / contestation - usually to disadvantage of subordinates


4.

Two possible interpretations of the need for separation of ST from CivSoc to make it effective

1. to insist on the need for classical liberal distinction - privacy is meant the privately-ordered capitalist economy
- dismissed with arguments above w/:
- laissez-faire capitalism doesn't foster socio-economic equality
- separation impedes deliberation, rather than enables it


2. civ.soc. - NGAssociations - neither economic or adminstrative
- JH - LPubS - body of private person assembled to form a public - private here meaning non-state officials
- participation in non-state capacity
- doesn't result in decisions - rather eventuates in PubO - deMa that transpires elsewhere
- serves as counterweight to the ST
- extragovernmental quality - independence, autonomy, L of PubO
- weak public
- in BPubS - expansion of PubS authority to include deMa as well as OF - threatens autonomy of PubO
- lack of distinction bw the two - loss of critical discursive check
- major structural transformation - the dev. of Parliament as a PubS within the ST
- strong public - encompass both OF and deMa
- blurs separation of CivSoc and ST
- democratic advance - force of PubO becomes stronger when body representing it is empowered to transform O into De

Relation bw StPub and WePub
- possible proliferation of StPub - as self-managing institutions
- creation of sites of direct / quasi-direct dem.
- leaves open relation of InternalPubs and ExternalPubs - what about those indirectly affected or that have a stake in their decisions

Strict division bw ST and CivSoc - makes impossible questioning of different arrangements
- whether strong internal pub requires balancing by strong external pub, supplemented with smaller weaker pub
- how should the rules for interaction / coordination among these be determined


Tasks of Critical Theory
1. should render visible ways which social inequality taints deliberation
2. show how inequality affects relations among publics - how publics are differentially empowered / segmented /enclaved / subordinated
3. show how labeling of private limits problems and approaches which can be contested
4. show how overly weak character of some pubs denudes PubO of practical force

Fraser - Rethinking Recognition

I want to argue here that we need a way of rethinking the politics of recognition in a way that can help to solve, or at least mitigate, the problems of displacement and reification. This means conceptualizing struggles for recognition so that they can be integrated with struggles for redistribution, rather than displacing and undermining them. It also means developing an account of recognition that can accommodate the full complexity of social identities, instead of one that promotes reification and separatism. Here, I propose such a rethinking of recognition.

---

Recent political developments have led to the change of the nature of political struggles, from those demanding redistribution to those which aim for recognition.

Problem of displacement - questions of recog. have not supplemented redistributive strugges, but have rather replaced them.
Problem of reification - questions of recogn. have not led to promote respectful interaction, but rather have encouraged separatism, intolerance, authoritarianism, and the dramatic simplication and reificaiton of group identities.


--

Identity model
>Hegel
- identity constructed dialogically, through process of mutual recognition
- recognition designates an ideal reciprocal relation between subjects
- each sees the other as equal and separate
- constitutive for subjectivity - requires recognition by and of another subject
- necessary for a sense of self - without which one suffers a distortion of one's relation to one's self

- Proponents of identity model of recognition
- To belong to devalued group is to be misrecognized by dom. culture
- Encounters with stigmatized gaze of culturally dom. other - internalize negative self-images, prevented from dev. healthy identity of their own
- Aim is for members to reject such images and join collectively to produce self-affirming culture of their own.

BUT! such equations of pol. of recogn. with id pol. encourages the reification of group identities


Displacing Redistribution

-   Identity model posits misrecognition as free-floating harm
- Currents
c1. Ignore dist., focus on culture exclusively
c2. Appreciate seriousness of maldist.

c.1
- roots of injustice located in demeaning representations, not socially grounded
- free-floating discourses, not inst.zed significations and norms
- obsfuscate connections - strip them of social-structural underpinnings, equate it with distorted identity


c.2
- appreciates link between cultural and economic injustice, but regards the latter as being det. by the former
- maldistribution is a secondary effect of cultural hierarchies
class oppression is the result of classism

- merely the reverse of vulgar economism
- if 'purely culture' society existed - eco. inequality would be seamlessly fused with cultural hierarchy
- resolution of the latter would resolve the former
- in market based society - eco. mechanisms of dist. partially decoupled from cultural patterns of value and prestige
- neither wholly constrained by culture not subordinated to it


Reification of Identity

- Stressing need to elaborate, display authentic, self-affirming, self-generated collective identity
- places moral pressure on ind. members to conform to given group culture
- dissidence and experimentation are discouraged
- Result is simplified group-identity, denies complexity of lives, multiplicity of identifications, cross-pulls
- Serves as vehicle for misrecognition  - obscures the politics of cultural identification, struggles within group for the authority to represent it

- Denies own Hegelian premises
- Implicitly denies dialogical identity formation, valorizes monologism
- Makes cultural identity auto-generated, auto-description
- Denies others are justified in viewing subjects from outside, dissenting form self-interpretation

Misrecognition as Status Subordination

Recognition as a question of social status
- what is lacking recog. is not specific group identity - the status of ind. group members as full partners in social interaction
- not misrecognition of identity leading to its deformation - but social subordination is the issue
- overcome by establishing misrecognized party as full member of society

Examination of inst. patterns of cultural value
- effects on the relative standing of social actors
- when such patterns constitute actors as peers - reciprocal recognition and status equality
- when such patterns constitute actors as inferior, excluded, wholly other, simply invisible  - misrecognition and status subordination

Misrecognition
- not psychic deformation, free-standing cultural harm
- institutionalized relation of public subordination
- not simply looked down upon but denied status of full partner in social interaction
- not through feel floating representations - but rather thru institutionalized patterns
- the workings of social institutions that regulate interaction according to party-impeding cultural norms
ex. marriage laws - exclude same-sex partnerships are illegitimate, perverse
social-welfare policies - stigmatize single motehrs as sexually irresponsible scroungers
policing practices - associate certain races with criminality
- interactions are regulated by patterns that constitute certain categories are normative and other as deficient, inferior

In complex, differentiated societies
- values are institutionalized in a plurality of sites, in qualitatively different modes
- core of injustice remains the same - some social actors are consituted as less than full members
- overcoming subordination - calls for the deinstitutionalization of patterns of cultural value which impede parity, replace them with those that foster it

Ex. institutionalization of heterosexism
- root of injustice in marriage law which institutes these values
- redress requires deinstitutionalizationg
- "one way would be to grant the same recognition to gay and lesbian unions as heterosexual unions currently enjoy"
- either by decoupling marriage with entitlements, or by expanding marriage
- in principle, both would promote sexual parity and redress this instance of misrecognition

Enabling Parity
- may require unburdening subordinated parties with excessive distinctness, or acknowledging unaccounted for distinctiveness
- or focus being shifted to dominant groups, which have falsely been parading as universal
- desconstruct the terms in which attributed differences are elaborated
- doesn't accord a priori privilege to approaches which valorize group specificity
- "allows in principle for what we might call universalist recognition, and deconstructive recognition, as well as for the affirmative recognition of difference"


Addressing Maldistribution

Equal participation is also impeded when some actors lack the necessary resources to interact with others as peers
- Two dimensions of social justice - recognition and distribution (at least) - refer to distinct aspect of the social order
- Recognition - refers to the constitution by socially entrenched patterns of cultural value of defined categories of social actors
- Distribution - refers to the economic structure of society - constitution by property regimes, labor markets, of economically defined categories of actors, classes, distinguished by differential endowment of resources

Maldistribution - economic structure of society deprives actors of the resources needed for full participation
- Subordination is ecomic, rather than based on status  and is rooted in the structural features of the economic system



Larger Social Frame
- Encompasses both social and economic forms of social ordering
- Two forms are interimbricated in all societies - in capitalist soc., neither is reducible to the other
- Relative decoupling of economic dimension - as in marketized areas in which strategic action predominates, from cultural dimension - as in non-marketized arenas in which value-regulated interaction predominates

Uncoupling is only relative
- Two dimensions interact causally with each other
- Distribution issues have recognition subtexts, and vice versa
- Result can be vicious circle of subordination - status order and economic structure interpenetrate and reinforce each other

Summary:
With attention to distribution, avoids short-circuting the complexity of links between status order and economic structure
- not all economic injustice can be overcome by recognition alone
Avoids reifying group identities
- avoids hypostatizing culture and substituting indentity-engineering for social change
- by refusing to privilege remedies which valorize existing group identities, avoids essentializing current configurations, foreclosing change
By emphasizing participation parity
- avoids authoritarian monologism of politics of authenticity - submits claims for recognition to democratic processes of public justification

Kalyvas - Politics of Autonoy and the Challenge of Deliberation

< Habermas <
- Against relativism of disenchanted world
- Discourse principle - extracts inescapable presuppostions of speech -> rational and universal principles to est. norm. superiority of del.dem.
- Principle of Democratic Legitimacy -> Political translation / sublimated form of ideal speech situation

< Castoriadis >
- quasi-transcendental biological formation
- Reduces 'ought' to 'is'
- Deterministic / reductionist grip of ensemblistic-identiary ontology
- Turn to natural ground - secure extrasocial basis

< Habermas
- Pol. Aut. - rational testing of validity of norms, not their creation
- Focus on opinion-formation -> conception of democracy is decisionless
- H' DD - heteronomous rep. lib. oligarchy
- Reason rules over will, pol. system over public sphere

Decisionism

< Schmitt <
- Sovereign decision cannot be juridically explained
- Grounds both norm and order
- An absolute beginning out of normative nothingness

< Weber <
- Decision as the experience of the impossible - the striving to achieve the impossible

* Dem. should be seen as the collective experience of a struggle to reach the impossible fullness of autonomy.

Castoriadis
<< Incompleteness of dem., arbitrariness, contingency
- tragic regime
- Regime of historical risk
< No use of decisionism -> Kairos
- Part of a theory of political freedom and collective autonomy
<< Power of multitude to shatter the inst. structures of heteronomy and dom IN effective will of the actual political subjects
<< If radical rupture is possible - > because we will it
<< No rigid foundation of anything
- NOT arbitrary
- ' Will to autonomy' - aspiration that surpasses peculiarities of personal const.
- will -  the possibility for a human being to make the results of reflective processes enter into the relays that condition acts
- will - the reflexive dimension of what we as imaging beings are
- will -  a reflective capacity to intervene in one's own self-constitution
- will -  sensitive intentional redirection, thought gester of ordering and shaping
- dem. will - explicit self-inst. of society - moment of rational will-formaiton
- Occurs after process of confrontation of views, clarification, elaboration
- without such preparation, mystification and negation of dem.
- dem. will -  associated with original imagination, creative capacities for radical ruptures and ontological genesis
- will of the human being is also imagination - positing as an entity that which is not
- ontological creation
- instituting will - cannot be conditioned or constrained by existing legal system
- Source of instituted society - maintains itself out of const.power
< Dem. decisionism - sovereign collectivity as a whole has power to inst. society
- not thru command and domination
- creative instituting associative power of positing new laws, rules, values

Politics
Castoriadis
<< the explicit and reflecitve struggle among competing collecitve entities over the appropriation of greater amounts of the creative form-giving power to intervene in areas of social life open to modification and the inst. of their particular values
Habermas
< theory of continuity, incremental change
Castoriadis
< focus on discontinuities, ruptures, radical transfomations
< dem. as the regime in which individuals participate in creation of insts. and significations that best facilitate individual autonomy, effective particiatpion
<< Liberal states - procedures designed/deployed to protect strutures of domination
<< propose a different set of procedural arrangements which allow for consolidation of dem. identity thru effective particiation

Review - BFN - Regh, Bohman

The  counterintuitive  concept  of  ‘subjectless  communication’  is  central  to
Habermas’  attempt  to  preserve  an  account  of  ideal  democratic  deliberation
without  recourse  to  a  unitary  popular  will.  Our  aim  in  this  essay  is  both  to
explicate  and  to  develop  further  this  concept  of  deliberation  as  a  way  of
preserving  the core ideas of  radical democracy.  First, we  situate  the problem  by
elaborating the theory of discourse that provides Habermas with a more complex
account of deliberation than found in civic republicanism  (section  I).  One can then
understand  the  concept  of  ‘subjectless communication’  as  introducing  further
dimensions of  social complexity within the process of  democratic deliberation and
decision-making  (section II). We  then  argue  that Habermas’  strongly  epistemic
interpretation  of  this model engenders difficulties in  dealing with contemporary
value  pluralism  (section  III). These  difficulties motivate  a  weaker  epistemic
conception  of  deliberative  democracy  that  allows  more  room  for  ongoing
disagreement  and  compromise  (section IV).  Revising  the  democratic  epistemic
ideals  themselves makes  them  more  plausible  than Habermas’ own  strategy of
accommodating  strong  ideals  of  consensus  to the  ‘unavoidable complexity’  of
modern  society. In conclusion, we formulate a weaker version of  the democratic
principle and suggest its benefits for the empirical analysis of  current institutions
(section V). We  argue  that  such  a  weaker  version  of  the  democratic  ideal  of
agreement remains consistently cognitivist and at the same time provides a better
tool  for  criticizing  the  failures  of  actual  democratic  arrangements  to  promote
public deliberation

Review - BFN - Rosenfeld

In complex pluralist and multicultural societies
- successful social integration depends on LAW's predictability and justice
- requirements incompatible
- predictability requires the reduction of complexity - stabilize expectations
- as regulation becomes more encompassing, more finely tuned calibrations are necessary between equalities and inequalities
- norms become more contested as communal conceptions of religion, morals and law breakdown into antagonistic visions

BFN

Breakdown in bonds among religion - ethics - law
--> difficult to see what makes law legitimate

In pluralist society, no common religion or ethics
--> law holds polity together

Law - obeyed because of sanctions
- But sanctions insufficient - without belief in legitimacy

Legitimacy of Law - Self-imposed
- appealing answer, not clearly/consistently supported by empirics.

Reconstructive theory
- starts with existing intuitions, institutions, practices
- with help of counterfactual devices
- could fill gap left by empirical inquiry - supplement / organize them into coherent whole

Counterfactuals (CFD)
- demarcate gap between reconstructed picture and prevailing practices
- gap - space for either a critique or a reflective equilibrium, a considered vindication of the status quo
- ex. Smith's conception of the functioning of market - can be basis of critique of actual markets or support them - greater proximity to counterfactual than any plausible alternative


JH's reconstructive theory of law
- begins with search for CFDs that permit depictions of dictates of contemporary law as being genuinely self-imposed
- CFDs must be impartial between competing conceptions of the good
- Rejects social contract and Kantian morality as CFDs
- Hobbesian contract - does depict law as being self-imposed, but based on the morally arbitrary will of individual contractors
- Kantian morality - in describing individuals' as autonomously willing the duties flowing from categorical imperatives based on premise that individuals should be treated as ends, does make law self-imposed and morally based, but in discussing matters at that level of abstraction, inclinations, subjective interests and socio-political institutions are unaddressed, and is based on Kant's solitary reflection - monological.
- Rawls - appears to rely on intersubjective process but again is basically monological, and is not impartial in the way that abstract relations among individuals are depicted.

JH's CFD
- dialogic and consistent with MPOV
- move from contract to consensus, process-based conception of argumentation based on distinction between StratA and Comm.A

Strat.A
- Inds. interact with self-interest as guide, others viewed as potential means for own ends
- Inequalities in bargaining power, information, rhetorical skills - results not likely in equal interest of all, nor in the interest of the whole

Comm.A
- MUO
- Model: idealized comm. of scientists gathered to ascertain truth of scientific hypothesis
- Norm. constraints on discussion - each given equalO to present arguments, persuasion only by force of argument that better comports with scientific norms of R
- Comm.A - dialogue among actors oriented toward reaching understanding concerning rightness of norms under consideration.
- entails voluntary submission to normative constraints embedded in discursive practice itself
- L only action norms upon which all those possibly affected would agree together to embrace on basis of good reasons

Procedural criterion for NV
- DP requires contested NVC to be settled thru Comm.A.
- Requires mutual recognition among all Comm.Actors. - consideration of all interests, as preconditions to reaching of consensus on norms in the equal interest of all affected
- CFD - means to test whether laws would command consensus of all possibly affected


Suitable as either - critical reconstructive theory or construction of reflective equilibrium
- Latter - if one can plausibly argue that notwithstanding actual contingencies - particular law would have obtained consensus of all possibly affected


Tension between constitutional rights and majoritarian legislative will
- unreflected in JH's proceduralist paradigm
- paradigm - constructs an image of contemporary society and explains how constitutional democracy and basic rights fit into that picture
- competing paradigms - liberal-bourgeois and soc.wel.

JH's approach for theory of V law
- all those within sweep of modern law should recognize each other as free and equal persons, endowed with inherent dignity
- justice requires that legal equality - similar treatment of similar cases - should be reconciled with factual equality - consideration of only relevant identities and relevant differences in lawmaking
- in calling for reconciliation of legal and factual equality -  stresses that all are equal under the law and law should treat all as equals
- Dworkin - distinguishes between equal treatment - to each the same thing, and treating persons as equals - possessors of the same inherent worth and dignity

F(x) aspect of law
- LW can not provide comp. norm. justification for different existing modes of social interaction
- Interactions increasingly mediated thru autonomous Ss
- "normatively rich lifeworld becomes ever more impotent, normatively poor and largely self-referential systems encroach upon greater expanses of social space"
- law as only legitimate means for society-wide normative integration - hinge b/w S and LW

Filling seemingly unbridgeable gap
- Rejects solutions which entail the elimination or downplaying of either of the two poles
- Luhman - self-enclosed, self-referential sub-systems that operate independently of one another
- Idea that the economy or the state could be co-opted to conform with pre-ordained set of externally generated commands

Law as bridge
- For S, Law is not simply an external constraint - structural sine qua non of S - without law penalizing interference with rights, no functioning market economy
- law not the motor of market functioning - without it, economy could not be socially institutionalized
- law can function as both pillar and external constraint - narrow the domain of application left open to market forces
- For LW, law could provide links between strangers lacking ethically-rooted norms to regulate interactions

Paradigm of law should reconcile legal and factual equality, and bridge gap that splits LW and S in way that secures S and supplements out of LW.

LPar
- formal conception of law
- justice reduced to equal distribution of rights
- maybe justified if one believes that free market economy can provide adequate measure of factual equality
- division between private and public, corresponds to division between rights and democratic participation
- economic activities sufficiently apart from rest of ISub endeavors - bridge unnecessary
Problems
1. formal law of property and contract - have given way to goal-driven alternatives
2. free market doesn't provide adequate measure of factual equality

SocWelP
- geared toward achieving factual equality and levelling disproportionate inequalities in material conditions
- depends on massive admin. ST's bureacracy.
- formal law displaced by goal-oriented bureacratic policies and regulations
- justice reduced to distributive justice
Problems.
1. material well-being can only be obtained by being reduced to a client of state
Autonomy and dignity are traded in for basic welfare entitlements
Basic decisions are left in hands of experts - increasing inequalites of information  between ruling elites and admin. masses
2. no clear boundaries between private and public, S and LW, rights and dem


HParadigm
- aim is to restore personal autonomy and dignity without abandoning quest for factual equality under material conditions characteristic of modern welfare state
- animated by DP
- starts out from picture of equal consociates under law - autonomous, reciprocally recognizant of each other's dignity
- consociates would regard as L any law of which they were both authors and addresses
- "if a law can be reconstructed through the discourse principle counterfactual as being genuinely self-imposed pursuant to a consensus among all those who come under its sweep, then any rational actor must acknowledge its normative validity"
- Rights and democracy - internally linked
- without discursively redeemed rights - comm. actors could not sustain the level of reciprocal recognition that must go hand in hand with genuinely reached consensus
- without pop. dem., not only basis of consensus undermined, mutual recognition would be curtailed.


Proceduralist Paradigm
- L and binds LW and S
- Legal support for Ss - discursive validation - casts these as being self-imposed, and constrains them thru process of discursively redeemed law
- Normatively supplements LW output - consensual in nature, not prone to being inconsistent with ethical norms embedded in LW
- Discursively redeemed law provides normative layer upon which all interactions are grounded
- Legal and factual equality reconciled
- similar cases receiving similar treatment - follows from dialogical consensus on what reciprocal recognition requires
- discovering relevant identities and differences necessary to conform law to factual equality - left to deliberations of comm.actors


CFD as critical theory or reflective equilibrium - depends on
1. ability to establish sufficient but not excessive contrast with prevailing circumstances
2. potential for suggesting ways for resolving existing conflicts and inconsistencies

JH's model
- underscores difference between collective generation of norms and their use to every actors best advantage
- contrasts with prevailing practice - tracks an ideal which would provide logical solution to conflicts/inconsistencies
- in contrast to monological models or dogmatic unitary collective ones, postulates ISub model for settling normative questions

Review - BFN - Michelman

Question:  How can disenchanted internally differentiated, pluralized LWs be socially integrated?
Answer: laws.

Fact-like - giveness by which they stablized expectations - help sustain an order of freedom
Norm-like - claim to approvability by everyone - if not in terms of contents, at least in grounds or the processes from which they sprang

- Capable of conducting into everyday life experience of the great/open society a trace of the integrative force of civic friendship based on agreement in reason

L of law must reside in virtue by which law exerts upon all within range of its coercive potential a rational claim to acceptance as right
- V conferring - laws are legitimate if they might claim the agreement of all citizens in a discursive process equally open to
- only actual discourse can sustain presumption of fair results -

Discourse itself must be legally constituted
- LLeg.O - reflexive in regard to the process of institutionalization
- Recursive -  if L laws must come from legally constituted dem.pro. - must themselves be product of conceptually prior procedural event - itself framed by legal laws
"The idea of the rule of law sets in motion a spiraling self-application of law"

Infinite regress
- arises from very idea of country's population governing itself by and under law


Constitutionalism - the ideal of there being always necessarily in play at least two ranks of law
- "ordinary" law - everyday political acts of legislation, admin, adjuc.
- "higher" law - above ordinary - constitutional essentials - prescriptions for the inst. forms of ordinary doings of gov.
- secondary - recognition rule for law making

DoL - claim that liberals must justify political government - easier to do at secondary level of recognition rules rather than based on primary levels of intervention of government into SocL
- justification must mean consent - at least in principle - by everyone affected
- DoL allows for direct justification on the higher scheme of const. essentials - ordinary acts justified derivately

Caters to striving for justifcation of government in face of "inauspicious social conditions"
- social immensity, complexity, anonymity, irreducible plurality, conflict of considered opinions
- allows the possibility of country-wide agreement on political merit

Problem
- "the people in the raw [...] are and must always remain strangers to the law"
- only under already existing const. legal provisions - can a "people" exist or conceivably legislate anything.
- dem.gov. must have ultimately constitutive, demo-generative law

Positivism v Rationalism
- positivism - Constitution does provide the rule of legal recognition in that populace do treat it as such
- rationalism - Constitution is the ultimate law in that it aptly applies to American circumstance the  true, abstract principles of political justice and right

JH rejects both of these
- both depart from only justification of government to modern legal-democratic sensibilities - the grounding of operative law in critically self-conscious, discursive processes directed to universal reasonable agreement

Hasty rejection
- Himself teaches that a set of abstract principles of right can be dervied as the very preconditions of dem.dis.
- Such derivation is the ultimate normative ground of const. law - necessary condition of legal validity down the line
- Yet - legimation can't be assumed short of actual submissability  of pending derivations to the critical corrective rigors of actual dem. discourses

At all times, individuals must have access to forums that
1. address the correct question for constitutional law making - of proceduralist derviation of regulative norms for politics
2. are conducted under regulation thus derived

- Citizens themselves must decide how rights that give DP legal shape must be fashioned
- Make originary use of civic autonomy - constitutes itself in a performatively self-referential manner

Infinite regress: Where can this originary constitutive moment be found? Granting that it is necessary, how may it be possible?
- JH's critique of Rawls - grounds law in the conditions stipulated by a philosopher - beyond the grounds of democratic agreement and revision

JH proposes "to deal with the regress not by stopping it but by finding for it a kind of institutional space that can contain it unstopped"
- not in parliamentary bodies - must have already been constituted by still ungrounded constitution

- "locales of democractic discourse from which there issued not packets of positive laws but rather streams of public opinion"
- focused enough to be likely to influence the workings of poistive-law making
- prelegislaitve forum - "the regress of democratic deliberation could recirculate endlessly"
- would operate on most recent legally enacted iterations of proceduralistically constructed norms of public discourse - themselves submitted to critical re-examination, then beam results towards representative assemblies empowered to legislate

- "Legitimate law would thus 'reproduce itself' by 'constitutionally regulated circulation of power"
- the legal establishment of civ.soc. as proto-legislative const. organ - "a kind of standing constitutional preconvention of the people"

Two-stage conception of law making
- reciprocatingly concurrent formal and informatl democratic-discursive arenas
- informal opinion formation - open and fluid structures of civil society to which everyone has access from the base of autonomy - both private and civic - incapable of enacting laws - capable of inspiring them - exerts subjectless influence on informal ones - influence carried by public opinion vectors
- formal democratic will formation - determinately structued representative assemblies - debate and enactment possible, over remaining disagreement


There can be no subject for the sovereignty of people - gives the false appearance of sanctity
- subjectless but intersubjective reduction of popular sovereignty preserves in practice a trace of the counterfactual idea

How much of a difference is there between JH and Rawls?
- regulative ideas for the critical appraisal / reform of contemporary manifestations of const. dem.

Review - BFN - Chriss

"Colonization of LW" - impersonal media, $ and P, infiltrate LW
- Distort COMM. Practices
- F(x) integration - guided by instrumental / technical R

Up through TCA - view of the LAW ambivalent
- LAW  - tools of emancipation - principle of dem. self-gov combated autocratic / monarchical gov
- but after initial emancipatory thrust - law's prominence grew out of need to adjudicate conflict between members of disparate citizenry.
- LAW as micro-manager  - replacement of social solidarity formerly forged thru uncodified norms of COMM. ACTS. and R
- concern with SOC-WEL ST - pressures towards S incursions into LW
- greater range of rights - enforcement of which encroach into LW - individualizing legal claims.
- enforced thru. bureaucracies - impersonal central organizations
- settled under auspices of civil law - monetary compensation

In BFN, law as "social institution that arises out of the common will of a people who, before establishing themselves as legal consociates, are already a communication community held together by a linguistic bond."
- law - the instantiation of the primordial condition of LW actors who come together freely to regulate conditions of their common life

Law as social fact
- draws upon state's monopoly on P to compel citizens to align their conduct to the prescriptions of law
- self-referential system that because of its F in the eyes of the citizenry can evoke respect for the law beyond sheer compliance


In contrast to other critical theories of democracy - which view that value-creating power as being held by elites
- JH appears to be embracing normative theories of democracy - that views values as being the created by the consensus of citizens coming together to decide their fate collectively through representation


Habermas' tightrope
- between republican and liberal models of democracy
- proceduralist theory of democracy - stronger normative connotations that those in liberal model, weaker than those in the republican model

- "ultimate grounds of democracy must be founded not on the peculiar form that deliberations in the public sphere take, but on the unthematized institutionalization of procedures and conditions of communication that ultimately leads to thematized issues of democratic opinion-and will-formation"


On surface - indefensible
- JH wants to analyze implementation of dem.pro. w/o lapsing into reifying tendencies of theories which view creation of these dem.pro. as emanating from above - rather than activities of real, flesh-and-blood human beings


Implementation of this model - not possible
- BUT there is underside to the realities of inequality  and differential power - hidden from participants themselves
- contains PSups of CommA and tacit injuction of DP


Ontological priority of DP
- Against philosophy of consciousness
- higher-level intersubjectivity of processes of reaching understanding that take place thru dem.pro.


Subjectless communications, relatively
- form arenas at both LW and S levels, in which ROWF take place
- idea owed to Parsons - conceptualization of the generalized media of interchange - $ and P
- Soc.L not zero-sum game - tableau of inflationary / de trends that range from oppressive totalitarianism to relatively free and open civ.dem.


Summary of entire argument:

"Once one gives up the philosophy  of the subject, one needs neither to
concentrate  sovereignty  concretely  in  the  people  nor  to  banish  it  in
anonymous  constitutional  structures and powers. The 'self' of the self-
organizing  legal  community  disappears  in  the  subjectless  forms  of
communication  that regulate  the flow of discursive opinion-  and will-
formation in such a way that their fallible results enjoy the presumption
of being reasonable"
- self of the self-organizing legal community disappears in the forms of comm. that regulate DOPW in a way that fallible results enjoy the presumption of being reasonable


JH's aim - to thematize what has heretofore been unthematized
- the role of R and DP - evidence that such practices are indeed operating in the real world

BUT he appears to discard emphasis on distinctions bw Rs
- law is based on instrumental / technical reason - limited to adjudicating conflict - case law
- law is NOT a theory of society - huge gaps in law's understanding of the ontology of social action and social life


IF JH is right
- ongoing textualization of SocL can viewed unproblematically - logical derivative of internal assumptions of dem. itself
- if all law abiding citizens are equal under law - and all citizens can participate through rights
- then there should be legal clarity regarding the dimensions across which citizen's rights can be assured
- this leads to process whereby persons' status sets are formally connected to protections of the subs. law apppropriate to that particular inst.

Ex. Sexual harrasment
- textualization of rules of behavior - seems to presuppose that heretofore unarticulated rules of behavior have somehow fallen into disrepair
- move away from Enlightenment's mind/body dualism - equates physical and mental harm - and is in the interest of "the livelihood and continuing legitimacy of any text"
- broader process of institutionalization

Much of social life involves battles over knowledge claims
- SocL as a pluarlity of actors negotiating the conditions of their existenc
- Institutions legitimate and affirm their existnec by producing official texts - providing monologic interpretation of a particular area of social life
- inst. - quasi-symbolic forms of understanding - in the face of multiple meaning and polysymbolic interpretation
- survive by ordering taken-for-granted knowled of essential segments of human activity

Text work to freeze world - into official sanctioned version of reality that is nothing more than textualization of that reality
- the attempt to capture social reality thru formalization reflects not only tendency toward arbitrariness - huge holes that exist in law's ability to make sense of the world
- law can be understood as a system imperative - intruding upon LW actitvity, and textualization of life as the colonization fot the LW
- Leading pathology of modernity - gradual infiltration of law in to LW activity
- informal understandings of life give way to formal rules codified in law - LW becomes increasingly impoverished

BFN - Chapter 8

..359

PubS - comm. structure rooted in LW thru association network of Civ.Soc
PPubs - sounding board for problems to be processed by Pol.Sys

Pubs - warning system w/ sensors, sensitive, unspecialized

Must amplify the pressure of problems -
- Nec. to detect, identify,convincingly thematize problems
- Furnish possible solutions
- Dramatize them in a way that they are taken up and dealth with by parliamentary complexes
- Besides signal fx - necessary an effective problematizations

Capacity of PubS to solve problems on its own is limited
- must be used to oversee the treatment of problems in pol.sys.
- barriers and P structures exist w/in - barriers can be overcome in critical situations by escalating movements



..360


PubS
- social phenomena - as elementary as action, actor, assocation, collectivity
- eludes conventional sociological concepts of soc.O
- not an inst., organization
- not a framework of norms w/ diff. competences and roles, membership regulations
- not a system - even if allows one to draw internal boundaries
- characterized by open, permeable, shifting horizons


- best described as network for communicating information and POV
- opinions expressing affirmative or negative attitudes
- streams of comm. are, in the process, filtered and synthesized in way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified public opinions

Reproduced thru comm.a - like LW as a whole
- mastery of natural LL suffices
- tailored to the gen. comprehensibility of everyday comm.practice

LW - reservoir for simple interactions
- Specialized S of action and knowledge - diff. w/in LW remain tied to these interactions
- Categories
- religion, education, family - associated w general reproduction functions of the LW
- cultural reproduction, social integration, socialization
- science, morality, art - take up different V aspects of everyday comm.a - truth, rightness, veracity

PubS - not specialized in either of these two ways
-leaves specialized treatment of qs to PolSys
- distinguishes itself thru a comm.structure - related to a third feature of comm.a
- it refers neither to the functions nor the contents of everyday communication but the social space generated in communicative action

Unlike SOactors - mutually observe each other

..361

- comm.actors encounter each other in situation they at the same time constitute w/cooperatively negotiated interpretations
- ISubly shared space of speech situation is disclosed when the participants enter into interpersonal relationships by taking positions on mutual speech-act offers and assuming illocutionary obligations
- Actors take a second-person attitude, reciprocally attributing comm. freedom to other
- Unfold within lingustically constituted public space
- This space stands open, in principle, for potential dialogue partners who are present as bystanders, or could come on the scene and join those present
- Special measures needed to prevent others from entering

Spatial structure of simple, episodic enounters
- can be expanded, rendered more permanent, in abstract form for a larger pub of present persons
- Pub.infrastruc. of - assemblies, performances, presentations, - architectural metaphors of structured spaces
- Still cling to concrete locales when an audience is physically gathered
- More detached from public's physical presence, extend to virtual presence of scattered readers, listeners, viewers - linked by public media
- the clearer the abstraction that enters when spatial structure of simple interactions is expanded into a PubS

Gen.ized comm. struc. contract to informational content and POV
- uncoupled from thick contexts of simple interactions - from specific persons, obligations
- context gen.ion, inclusion, growing anonymity demand a higher degree of explication that must dispense with technical vocabularies and special codes

Orientation to laypersons, implies loss in differentiation
- uncoupling comm. opinions from concrete practical obligations - intellectualizing effect
- proces. of OF - especially in regard to pol. qs - cannot be separated from transformation of participants pref. and attitudes
- but can be separated from putting these into action

..362

"To this extent, the communication structures of the public sphere relieve the public of the burden of decision marking, the postponed decisions are reserved for the institutionalized political process."
- utterances are sorted according to issue, contribution
- contributions are weighted by the affirmative vs. neg. responses they receive
- Information are then worked into focus opinion

Bundled opinions into PubO
- the controversial way it comes about and the amount of approval that carries it
- not representative in statistical sens
- not an aggregate of ind. gathered, privately expressed opinions held by isolated persons - not survey resuts
- opinion polls - reflect PubO only if they have been preceeded by focused pub. deate, corresponding OF in mobilized PubS

Diffusion of info and POV via effective broadcasting media - not only thing that matters in public processes of comm
- although only broad circulation of comprehensible, attention-grabbing messages arouse sufficiently inclusive participation
- rules of shared practice of communication are of greater significance for structuring PubO
- agreement on issues dev. only as the result of more or less exhaustive controversy in which proposals, info, and reasons can be more or less rationally dealt with

Discursive level of OF and the quality of the outcome vary with the more or less in the rational processing of exhaustive proposals information reasons
- success of PubComm. not intrisincally measued by the requirement of inclusion either - but by the formal criteria governing how a qualified PubO comes about
- structures of power-ridden, oppressed PubS exclude fruitful, clarifying discussions
- the quality of PubO - measured by the procedural properties of its process of generation - is an empirical variable
- from NPOV - provides a basis for measuring the L of the influence of PubO on PolS

..363

  - Actual influence coincides with L influence as little as the belief in L coincides w L
- Conceiving things this way at least opens perspective from which the relation between actual influence and the procedurally grounded quality of public opinion can be empirically investigated


Parsons' - influence
- symbollically generated form of comm. that facilitates interactions in virtue of conviction or persuasion
- persons or insts. can enjoy a reputation that allows their utterances to have an influence on others' beliefs without having to demonstrate authority, or give explanations in the situation
- feeds on resource of MU - based on advancing trust in beliefs not currently tested


PubO represents political potentials - can be used for influencing the voting behavior of cns, or the WF in parliamentary bodies, adm. agencies, courts

Pol. influence becomes Pol P, potential for rendering binding decision
- when it affects the beliefs and decisions of authorized members of the Pol S, determines the behavior of voters, legislators, officials
- like soc.P - pol. influence can become pol.p only thru institutionalized procedures

Influence develops in PubS, becomes the object of struggle there
- reputation of those who have acquired influence in special PubS also comes into play
- As soon as pub.space has expanded beyond context of simple interactions - diff. among organizers, speakers, hearers, arenas, galleries, stage, viewing space
- actors' roles - increasingly professionalize and multiply with organizational complexity and range of media are furnished with unequal opportunities for exerting influence


..364

The political influence that the actors gain thru public comm. must ultimately res on the resonance, approval of egalitarian lay public
- public of citizens must be convinced by comprehensible and broadly interesting contributions to issues it finds relevant
- public audience possesses final authority - it is constitutive for the internal structure and reproduction of the PubS - only place where actors can appear


Distinguishing actors
- emerging from public to take part of reproduction of PubS itself from actors who occupy already constituted public domain in order to use it
- large, well-org. interest groups - anchored in various soc. SS, affect the pol. S thru the PubS
- without manifest use of sanctions, rewards they rely on in bargaining, or in nonpublic attempts at pressure
- capitalize on their soc. power, convert it into pol.p - only if they can advertise interests ina language that can mobilize convincing reasons, shared value orientations
- contributions of these are vulnerable to criticism which contributors from other sources are not exposed
- credibility lost when sources of social power are made publicly
- PubO can be manipulated, but not publicly bought, or publicly blackmailed - can't be manufactured

Before it can be captured by actors with strategic intent, the public sphere together with its public must have developed as a structure that stands on its own and reproduces itself out of itself
- this lawlike regularity gov. formation of PubS - remains latent in the constituted PubS - takes effect again only in moments when PubS is mobilized

..365

PPubs fulfills fx of perceiving, thematizing encompassing soc.problems only insofar as it develops out of the comm. taking place among those who are potentially affected
- carried by public recruited from among the entire citizenry
- in diverse voices of public - one hears the echos of private experiences that are caused throughout soc. by externalities and internal disturbances of various fxal S
- even by ST Ap on whose regulatory activities the complex, poorly coordinated SS depend

Systemic deficiencies
- experienced in the context of individual life histories
- such burdens accumulate in the LW
- has the appropriate antennae
- in its horizon, private life histories are intermeshed, of clients of fx S that might be failing in their delivery of services

Only spheres of private life have an existential LL at their disposal - in which such socially generated problems can be assessed in terms of one's own life history
- Problems voiced in PubS first visible when they are mirrored in personal life experiences
- To extent these are expressed in languages of religion, art, literature - literary PubS, specialized for the articulation of values and world disclosure - intertwined with PPubS


Citizens occupy two positions at once - bearers of PPubS and members of Soc.
- as members of soc - roles of employees, consumers, insured persons, patients, taxpayers, clients of bureaucracies, students, tourists, commuters
- in such complementary roles - exposed to specific requirements and failrues of the corresponding service systems
- such experiences are assimilated privately - interpreted within horizon of a life history intermeshed with other life histories in the contexts of shared LWs
- comm. channels of PubS - liked to private spheres - thick networks of interaction found in families, circles of friends, looser contacts w neighbors,

..366

- linked so that spatial structures of simple interactions are expanded abstracted, but not destroyed
- thus - MUO predominant in everyday practice is also preserved for a communication among strangers - conducted over great distances in PubS whose branches are complex

Threshold separating PrivS and PubS - not marked by fixed set of issues or relationships, but by different condtions of comm.
- conditions leading to differences in the accessibility of the two spheres - safeguarding intimacy of one, publicity of other
- private not sealed off from public - only channel the flow of topics from one into the other
- "For the public sphere draws its impulses from the private handling of social problems that resonate in life histories."
- viewed historically - connection bw public and private spheres is manifested in the clubs, organizational forms of a reading public composed of bourgeois private persons and crystalizaing around newspapers and journals



Sphere of civ soc - rediscovered today in wholly new historical constellations
- CivSoc - in contrast to liberal "bourgeois society", Hegelian "system of needs, Marxist, which included the economy as constituted by private law and steered thru markets in labor, capital, commodities
- CivSco - inst.al core comprises - nongov, non.eco connections, voluntary associations - anchoring the comm. sturctures of PubS in soc component of LW

..367

- Composed of those more or less spontaneously emergent assoc, orgs, movements
- attuned to how societal problems resonate in the priv.s
- distill and transmit such reactions in amplified form to PubS
- Core comprises network of assoc. - institutionalize problemsolving discourses on q of gen. interests inside the framework of org. PubS
- Discursive designs - have an egalitarian, open form of org.
- mirrors essential features of kind of comm. around which they crystallize, led continuity and permanence


While these aren't most conspicuous element of PubS - do form org. substratum of gen. public of citizens
- more or less emerging from the PrivS, made up of citzens who seek acceptable interpretations for their soc. interests and experiences, want to have an influence on institutionalized OWF

Eisenstadt's definition of civ.soc - with a certain continuity with older theory of pluralism
- civ soc embraces multiplicty of ostensibly private yet potentially autonomous pub.arenas, distinct from state
- activities of such actors are regulated by various associations existing w/in them - preventing the society from degenerating into a shapeless mass
- in civ.soc - sectors aren't embedded in closed, ascriptive, or corporate settings
- open-ended, overlapping
- each has autonomous access to the central political arena - with a certain degree of commitment to that setting


Jean Cohen, Andrew Areto - features of civ.soc. - demarcated from ST, ECO, other fx S, but coupled with core priv.s of LW

..368

- Plurality - families, informal groups, vol. assoc whose plurality and autonomy allow for a variety of forms of life
- Publicity - insts. of culture and comm
- Privacy - domain of ind. self-dev. and moral choice
- Legality - structures of gen. laws and basic rights needed to demarcate plurality, privacy, publicity from the ST at least and tendentially, the Eco.
- Together these secure the inst. existence of a modern diff. civ.soc.


*The constitution of this sphere thru basic rights - provides some indicators for social structure
- freedom of assembly, assoc - when linked with freedom of speech - define scope for various types of assoc. and soc.
- vol.assoc - intervene in the formation of PubO, push topics of gen.interest, acting as advocates for neglected issues and underrepresented groups
- groups difficult to organize or that pursue cultural, religious, or humanitarian aims
- ethical com., relig. denominations
- freedom of the press, radio, tv - safeguards the media infrastructure of pub.comm.
- supposed to preserve an openness for competing opiniions, represetn a diversity of voices


Pol. S - must remain senstive to the influence of PubO - intertwined w PubS and CivSoc thru the activity of pol.parties and gen.elections
- intermeshing guaranteed by right of parties to colloborate in PWF of the people, as well as the citizens' active and passive voting rights and other participatory rights

*Network of assoc can assert its authority, preserve spontaneity on if it can draw support from a mature pluralism of forms of life, subcultures, WVs
- const. protection of privacy - promotes the integrity of private life spheres
- rights of movement, privacy of letters, mail, telecomm., inviolability of one's residence, protection of families
- circumscribe an untouchable zone of personal integrity and independent jugdment

Connection bw autonomous civ.soc and an integral private sphere
..369

 sharply contrast w/ experiences of totalitarian societies of bureaucratic socialism
- panoptic state directly controls dessicated PubS, undermines private basis of this PubS
- admin. intrusions, constant supervision - corrode comm. structure of everyday contacts
- destruction of solidary living conditions, paralysis of intitiative and independent engagement in overregulated, yet legally uncertain sectors
- hand in hand with crushing of social groups, associations, networks
- with indoctrination and the dissolution of cult. identities
- the suffocation of spontaneous public comm.

*Communicative rationality is thus destroyed simultaneously in both public and private context of comm.
- the more the bonding force of comm. action wanes in private life spheres, and the embers of comm. freedom die out, the easier it is for someone who monopolizes the PubS to align the mutually estranged, isolated actors into a mass that can directed and mobilized in a plebiscitarian manner

Const. guarantees alone can't preserve PubS and CivSoc from deformations
- comm.strucs must be kept in tact by energetic civ.soc.
- politicized pubs must reproduce, stabilize its from its own resources
- evident in odd self-referential character of the practice of comm. in civ. soc
- "Those actors who are the carriers of the public sphere put forward 'texts' that always reveal the same subtext, which refers to the critical function of the public sphere in general."
- Beside manifest content of public utterances, "performative meaning of such public discourse at the same time actualizes the function of an undistorted public sphere as such."

Insts. and Legal Guarantees of free and open OF - rest on unsteady ground of the pol.comm of actors of who in using them - interpret, defend, radicalize their normative content


Actors who know they are involved in the common enterprise of reconstituting and maintaining structures of the PubS as they contest opinions, strive for influence
...370
- differ from those who merely use forums that already exist

Dual orientation of actors who support the PubS
- with programs, directly influence the PolS
- also reflexively concerned with revitalizing, enlargening civil society and the PubS
- also confirming their own identities and capacities to act

Cohen, Arato
- dual politics - esp. in new soc. movements that simultaneously pursue offensive and defensive goals
- offensive - bring up issues relevant to the whole society, define ways of approaching problems, propose possible solutions, supply new info., interpret values differently, mobilize good reason, critcize bad ones
- intended to bring about a broad shift in PubO, alter the parameters of org. PWF, exert pressure on gov. in favor of specific policies
- defensive - attempt to maintain existing structures of association and public influence, gen. subcultural counterpublics and counter institutions, to consolidate new collective identites, to win new terrain in form of expanded rights and reformed insts.
- preserving, dev. comm. infrastructure of LW. captures Touraine and JH's insight - movements  can be carriers of the potentials for cultural modernity
- must redefine identities, reinterpret norms, dev. egalitarian, dem. associational forms.
- the expressive normative and comm. modes of collective action involve efforts to secure inst. changes w/in civ.soc that correspond to new meanings, identities, norms created


Janus-faced politics - aimed at the Pol S and the self-stabilization of PubS and civ.soc - space is provided for the extension and radicalization of existing rights
- combination of assocs, publics, rights - when supported by pol.cul in which independent initiatives and
..371
movements represent an ever-renewable, L, pol.O - an effective set of bulwarks around civ.soc - within whose limits much of the program of radical democracy can be reformulated


Civ.soc - can't be seen as a focal point where lines of societal self-org. as a whole would converge
- Cohen, Arato emphasize limited scope for action that is afforded to non.inst. pol movements, forms of pol. expression
-  structurally nec. self-limitation of rad.-dem. practice

1. robust civ. soc - only dev. in context of lib.pol.culture, and corresponding patterns of socialization, and on the basis of an integral PriS
- can blossom only in an already R.ized LW
- otherwise, populist movements arise that blindly defend the frozen traditions of a LW endangered by capitalist modern.ion

2. w/in PubS, or LPubs - actors can only gain influence, not PolP.  Pub influence can become comm.P only after it passes thru the filters of inst. procedures of dem. O and L laMa
- the informal flow of public opinion issues in beliefs that have been tested from the standpoint of the generalizability of interests.
*- Not influence per se, but influence transformed into communicative power legitimates political decisions.

Pop. sov. set comm. aflow cannot make itself felt solely in the influence of informal pub. discourses
- not even when these arise from AU PubS

372

- generating PolP - influence must have an effect on the dem. reg. deliberations of dem. elected assemblies, assume authorized form in formal decision

3. Instruments available in law and adm.p - limited effectiveness in fx diff. societies
- pol. steering, while the addressee for all unmanaged integration problems, can often only take an indirect approach, must leave intact the modes of operation internal to fx S, and other highly org. spheres of ac
* - holistic aspirations to a self-org. soc must be given up
- civ.soc. can directly transform only itself - can have at most an indirect effect on self-transformation of the PolS; generally, influence only on the personnel and programming of this S
- doesn't occupy the position of a macrosubject - supposed to bring society as a whole under control, and simultaneously act for it
- adm.P not suitable medium for fostering emancipated forms of life
- can develop in wake of dem. proccesses - can't be brough about thru intervention

Self-limitations - NOT incapacitation
- knowledge required for pol. supervision, or steering - a scarce resource in scarce societies - can certainly become the source of a new systems paternalism
- admin ony knowledge from knowledge S, doesn't produce it, doesn't enjoy a monopoly on such knowledge
- despite assymetrical access to expertise and lim. problem solving capacties, civ. soc. has the opportunity of mobilizing counterknowledge and drawing on the pertinent forms of expertise to make its own translations

..373

- public's consisting of laypersons, comm. with OL - doesn't imply an ability to diff. the essential questions and reasons for dec.
- can serve as pretext for technocratic incapacitation of PubS - only if pol. initiatives of civ.soc. fail to provide sufficient expert knowledge along with appropriate, if nec., multilevel translations in regard to managerial aspects of pub.issue



Empirical Relevance of PPubs and CivSoc
- requires addtional assumptions to translate it into empirically falsifiable manner


Under certain circumstances
- civ soc can acquire influence in PubS, effect parl.complex thru own PubOs, compel Pol S to switch over ot the official circulation of P
- sensitve to problems, the groupings of civ soc - send out signals too weak to initiate learning processes, or redirect deMa in the Pol S in the short run

In Xsocieties
- PubS consists of an intermediary structure bw Pol S and private sectors of the LW and fx systems on the other hand
- highly complex network - branches out into a multitude of overlapping inter, nation, regio, local, subcultural arenas
- points of reference ofr subst. diff. of PubS - functional specifications, thematic foci, policy fields
- still accessible to laypersons

..374

- PubS differentiated into levels - according to density of comm and org. complexity and range
- episodic publics - coffee houses, traverns, streets
- occasional or arranged - particular presentations, events, party assemblies, church congresses
- abstract - isolated readers, listeners, viewers - scattered across geographic areas, even around globe, brought together only thru mass media
- All partial publics - remain porous to one another
"The one text of 'the' public sphere, a text continually extrapolated and extending radially in all directions, is divided by internal boundaries into arbitrarily small texts for which everything else is context; yet one can always build hermeneutical bridges from one text to the next."
- Segmented PubS - thru exclusion mechanisms
- can't harden into orgs or S, on exclusion rule w/o proviso for its abolishment

-- boundaries inside UPubs - defined by its reference to Pol S - remain permeable in principle
*- Built into LPubs - rights to unrestricted inclusion and equality  - prevent Foucaldian type of exclusion mechanisms, ground potential for self-transformation
- universalist discourses of the BPubS couldn't immunize themselves from within
ex. labor movement, feminism
- able to join these discourses in order to shatter the structures that had intially constituted them as the other of a BPubS


Roles of the actors appearing in these arenas are increasingly separated from the roles of spectators
- as the audience is widened, becoming more inclusive and abstract


.375

- can the public's adoption of YNP on a issue be autonomous - is it a process of becoming informed, or a more or less congealed game of power
- question w/o answer - but can be posed more precisely by assuming that pub.proc. of comm. can take place with less distortion the more they are left to the internal dynamic of a civ.soc. that emerges from LW

Distinction bw actors emerging from and those appear before the public
- appearing before - have org. P, resources, sanctions - available from the start
- actors anchored in civ.soc. also depend on the support of sponsors who supply the nec. resources
- such sponsoring doesn't nec. reduce the authenticity of pub.actors they support
- appearing before - from specific org. or fx S have own basis of support
- inc. large interest groups w/social power, as well as est. parties that become arms of the pol. S

Distinction bw 'indigenous' actors and mere users - can't be made based on org. compleixty, resources, professionalization - nor from interests
- some can be identified from their functional background - represent pol.parties, pressure groups, unions or prof.assoc., consumer protection or rent control assoc.
..376
- others must produce identifying features
- especially evident w/ social movements
- go thru phase of self-identification, self-legitimation
- even after that, they pursue a self-referential identity politics parallel to goal-directed politics
- must continually reassure themselves of their identity
- identification also possible by sensitivity to threast to comm.rights
- "It is also shown in the actors' willingness to go beyond an interest in self-defense and take a universalist stand against the open or concealed exclusion of minorities or marginal gropus."
- existence of soc.groups depends on whether they find org. forms that produce solidarities and publics, forms that allow them to fully utilize and radicalize existing comm. rights and strucs as they pursue special goals


3rd group of actors - journalists, publicity agents, press
- collect information, make decisions about the selection and presentation of programs, and to a certain extent control the entry of topics, contributions, and authors in to the mass-media-dominated PubS
- centralization of mass media - with growth in complexity, expensive
- inc. pressure of selection - becomes the source of P
- not sufficient reined in, but becoming subjected to const. regulation
- image of politics on tv - issues/contributions prof.produced as media input, fed via press conferences

..377

- official producers of info - are more successful the more they can rely on trained personnel, fin and tech resources, on prof. infrastructure
- coll. actors operating outside the Pol S, or outside large orgs. normally have fewer opportunities to influence the content/views presented
- especially for views which aren't "balanced" - centrist and rather narrowly defined spectrum of est. opinions


Broadcast messages - subject to information-processing strategies w/in the media
- oriented by reception conditions as preceived by media experts, program directors, press
- follow market strategies - aim to capture public receptiveness, cognitive capacity, attention
- while structure of media well-established, effects are controversial
- strategies of interpretation of viewers - comm. w/ one another, can be provoked to criticize, reject what programs offer, synthesis it with judgments of their own

..378

Unclear still how the mass media intervene in diffuse circuits of comm in PPubS
- N. reactions to it's powerful postion are clearer
- Gurevtich, Blumler - list of tasks media ought ot fulfill
1. survey socio-pol environment - report dev. likely to impinge on welfare of cn
2. meaningful agenda-setting, identify key issues of the day - including forces that may have formed and may resolve them
3. platform for intelligent, illuminating advocacy by pol and spokespersons of other causes and int. groups
4. dialogu across diverse range of view - bw actual and prospective powerholds and mass publics
5. mechanisms for holding officials to account for exercise of power
6. incentives for cit. to learn, choose, become involved in pol.proc
7. principled resistance to efforts of those outside media to subvert independence, integrity, ability to serve the audience
8. sense of respect for the audience member - as potentially concerned, able to make sense of pol.environment

- principles guide both prof.'s SU and laws gov. mass comm.
- express simple idea - "the mass media ought to understand themselves as the mandatary of an enlightened public whose willingness to learn and capacity for criticism they at once presuppose, demand, reinforce
- ought to maintain independence, be receptive to publics' concerns and proposals, confront the pol. process with articulate demands for L.ion

..379

power should be neutralized - tacit conversion of adm.p or soc.p into pol.influence blocked
- use of PubS by actors - should be base on their making convincing contributions to the solution of problems that have been perceived by the public, have been put on the public agenda w/public's consent
- polparties would have to participate in OWF from public's own POV - rather than patronizing the public and extracting mass loyaly from the PubS for purposes of maintain their own power




Depiction of PubS as infiltrated by AdmP and SocP - one will be cautious in estimating the chances of civ.scoc having an influence on PolS
- But this estimate pertains only to a public sphere at rest - "In periods of mobilization, the structures that actually support the authority of a critically engaged public begin to vibrate.  The balance of power between civil society and the political system then shifts."




Central q - who can place issues on agenda, det. direction the lines of comm. take
- have constructed models that depict how new, compelling issues dev.
1- inside access model
2- mobilization model
3- outside initiative mode
- from dem.theo POV - present alternatives in how PubS and Pol S influence one another

1- inside access model - initative - officeholders, pol leaders
- issue circulates inside Pol S all the way to its formal treatment
- broader public either excluded or doesn't influence process

2- mobilization model

..380

- begins w/in pol. S - but proponents of the issue must mobilize PubS
- support needed to either obtain formal consideration, or implement adopted program successuflly

3- outside intiative model
- initiative lies with forces in the periphery - outside purview of Pol S
- with help of mobilized PubS - pressure of Pub.O - compel formal consideration
group outside gov - 1. articulates grievance, 2. tries to expand interest in the issue to enough other groups in the pop. to gain a place on the pub.agenda 3. in order to create sufficient pressure on deMakers to force the issue onto the formal agenda for their serious consideration.
- likely to predominate in more egalitarian societies.
- inclusion into formal agenda doesn't mean policy will be that sought by group


In normal cases - issues and proposals have a history whose course corresponds more to first or second model
- as long as the informal circulation of power dominates the pol.S -  initiative and power to put problems on agenda lies with gov.
- as long as mass media in PubS - contrary to N self-understanding to draw their material from powerful,well-organized information producers, and prefer media-strategies that lower discursive level of pub.comm., issues will tend to start in, and be managed from the center - rather than follow spontaneous course originating in periphery


While no conclusive evaluation of mutual influence that pol and public have on each other can be made

Suffices to make it plausible that
- In a perceived crisis situation - actors in civ.soc. can assume a surprisingly active and momentuous roule

..381

despite lesser org. complexity
weaker capacity for action
structural disadvantages

- at critical moements of an accelerated history - acts get the chance to reverse the normal circuits of comm. - in the pol. S and in the pubS
- shift of entire system's mode of problem solving


Comm.struc of PubS - linked with the private life spheres
- in a way that gives the civil-social periphery the advantage of greater sensitivity in detecting, ident. new problem situations
ex. spiraling nuclear-arms race, peaceful use of atomic energy or other large-scale technological projects scientific experimentation such as genetic engineering, the ecological threats involved in an overstrateined natural environment, the dramatically progressing impoverishment of the Third World and problems of world economic order,
ex. issues such as feminism, increasing immigration, associated problems of multiculturalism

- issues raised initally by intellectuals, concerned cns, radical professionals, self-proclaimed advocates

- moving in from this outermost periphery
- issues force their way into newspapers, intereested assoc, clubs, prof. orgs, academies, forums, czn initiatives, other platforms
- catalyze growth of social movements, new subcultures
- can dramatize contributions, present them effectively so mass media take up the matter
- only thru controversial presentation in the media - do such topics reach the larger public and subsequently gain a place on the public agenda
- sometimes the support of sensational actions, mass protests, etc. is required before an issue can make its way into the core of the political system and there receive formal consideration

..382

Other ways in which issues develop - other paths from the periphery to the center

In general, even in more or less power-ridden public spheres - the power relations shift as soon as the perception of relveant social problems evokes a crisis consciousness at the periperhy
- if actors in civ.soc then join together, formulate the relevant issue, promote it in the PubS - efforts can be successful

"because the endogenous mobilization of the public sphere activates an otherwise latent dependency built into the internal structure of every public sphere, a dependency also present in the normative self-understanding of the mass media"

- players in arena owe influence to the approval of those in the gallery
- insofar as rat.LW supports the development of a LPubS by furnishing it with a solid foundation in civ soc
- the authority of a position taking public is strengthend in the course of escalating public controversies

Under LPubS, informal public comm. accomplishes two things
- prevents the accumulation of indoctrinated masses seduced by populist leaders
- pulls together the scattered critical potentials of a public that was only abstractly held together thru public media
- helps it have pol.influence on inst. OWF

Only in LPubS
- do subinstitutional pol. movements take this direction
- abandon the conventional path of interest politics in order to boost the const. regulated circulation of power in the PolS

In authoritarian distorted PubS - brought into alignment - merely provides a forum for plebiscitary L.ion


Sense of a reinforced demand for L.ion
- especially clear when subinst. protest movements reach a high point by escalating their protests
- last means for obtaining more of a hearing and greater media influence for oppositional arguments are acts of civil disobedience
- acts of nonviolent symbolic rule violation
- meant as expressions of protest against


..383

binding decisions that, their legality notwithstanding, actors consider -L in light of valid const. principles

Directed at two address
- officeholders, parliamentary reps
- to reopen formally concluded pol. del - so that their decisions may possibly be revised in view of the continuing public criticism
- the sense of justice of the majority of the com
- to the critical judgment of a public of citizens that is to be mobilized w/ exceptional means

Civ.diso - always an implicit appeal to connect org. PWF w/ comm. processes of PubS
- subtext aimed at a pol. S that as const. org.ized, may not detach itself from civ. society and make itself independent of peripher

"Civil disobedience thereby refers to its own origins in a civil society that in crisis situations actualizes the normative contents of constitutional democracy in the medium of public opinion and summons it against the systemic inertia of institutional politics."

Self-referential character - Cohen, Arato
- involves illegal acts, usually on the part of collective actors, that are public, principled, symbolic in character
- involve primarily nonviolent means of protest
- appeal to the capaicty for reason and the sense of justice of the populace
- aim of civ.disobedience - persuade pub.O in civil and pol. soc. that a particular law or policy is illegitimate, a change is warranted
- cllective actors involved in civil disobedience invoke utopian principles of const. dems - appealing to the ideas of fundamental rights, or democratic L
- a means for reasserting the link bw civil and pol society - when legal attempts at exerting the influence of the former on the latter have failed and other avenues are exhaused


* Interpretation of civ.disobedience manifests the self-consc. of a civ.soc. confident that at least in a crisis it can increase the pressure of a mobilized public on the Pol S

..384
- to the point where the latter switches into conflict mode, and neutralizes the unofficial countercirculation of power

Justification of civil disobedience relies on a dynamic understanding of the const. as an unfinished project

Const. ST
- not a finished structure
- a delicate and sensitive
- above all fallible and revisable enterprise
- whose purpose is to realize the system of rights anew in changing circumstances
- to interpret the system of rights better
- to institutionalize it more appropriately
- to draw out its contents more radically

This is the perspective of citizens who are actively engaged in realizing the system of rights
Aware of, and referring to, changed contexts, such citizens want to overcome in practice the tension between social facticity and validity.
- PPOV can't be adopted by legal theory
- it can reconstruct the paradigmatic understanding of law and democracy that guides citizens whenever they form an idea of the structural constraints on the self-org. of the legal com. in their soc.


"From a reconstructive standpoint, we have seen that constitutional rights and principles merely explicate the performative character of the self-constitution of a society of free and equal citizens.  The organizational forms of the constitutional state make this practice permanent."

Double temporal reference of every example of dem. const.
- marks a beginning in time - historic document
- its normative character means that the task of interpreting and elaborating the system of rights poses itself anew for each generation
- as the project of a just society, a constitution articulates the horizon of expectaion opening on an ever present future

As an ongoing process of const.making set up for the long haul - the dem. procedure of L lawmaking acquires a privileged status
- can such a demanding procedure be implemented in complex societies like our own, if so, how can it be done effectively

...385

so that a const.reg. circ. of P actually prevails in the pol.S

Four points for elucidating such a historically situated understanding of the const.

a. const.org. pol sys - specialized for generating collectively bind decisions
- represents only one of several SS
- in virtue of its internal relation to law
- politics is responsible for problems that concern society as a whole
- must be possible to interpret collectively binding decisions as a realization of rights such that the structures of recognition built into comm.a are transfred to anon. rels. among strangers
- in pursuit of particular collective goals, regulating specific conflicts - politics simultaneously deals with gen. problems of integration
- constituted in legal form - politics whose M.O. is functionally specificed still refers to society-wide problems
- carries on the tasks of soc.int at a reflexive level when other action systems are no longer up to the job

b. Assymetrical position - explains pol.S - contraints on two sides, with two standard governing its achievements and decisions
- fx specified act. S - limited by other functional S that obey their own logic, and bar direct pol. interventions
limits on the effectiveness of adm.P
- const. reg. act. S - politics is connected with the PubS, depends on lifeworld sources of comm.p
- internally dep. on enabling conditions
- conditions that make L law possible - ultimately not at the disposition of politics

c. pol.S - vulnerable on both sides to disturbances that can reduce the effectiveness of its achievements

..386

and the L of its decisions respectively

ineffectiveness
- the regulatory competence of the pol. s fails
- if the implemented L programs remain ineffective
- if regulatory activity gives rise to disintegrating effects in the act. S that requires regulation
- instrumend deployed overtax legal medium and strain the Ncomposition of pol. S
- as steering problems become more complex, irrelevance, misguided regulations, and self-destruction can accumulate to the where a reg. trilmma results


lack of L
- pol. S fails as a guardian of soc.int. if its decisions, even tho effective, can no longer be traced back to L law
- const. reg. circ. of power - nullifed
- if adm.S becomes independent of comm.gen. P
- if soc.P of fx S and large orgs. is converted into -L power
- if LW resources for spontaneous pub.comm. no longer suffice to guarantee an uncoerced articulation of soc.interests

Independence of -L P - together with the weakeness of civ.soc and the PubS can deteriorate into a L dilemma which in certain circumstances can combine w/ steerigng trilemma and devel. into a vicious circle
- pol. S pulled into whirlpool of L deficits and steering deficits - reinforce one another


d. Crises can at most be explained historically - not built into structures of fx diff societies in a way that they would intrisincally compromise the project of self-empowerment undertaken by a society of free and equal subjects who bind themselves by law
- Symptomatic of the peculiar position of a Pol S as asymmetrically embedded in  highly complex circulation processes
- Actors seeking to engage successfully as czs - must form an idea of this context
- Because these rights must be interpreted in various ways under changing social circumstances, light thrown on this context is refracted into a spectrum of changing legal paradigms

Historical constitutions can be seen as so many ways of construing one and the


..387

same practice - that of self-determinaton of the part of free and equal citizens
- Those involved must start with their own current practice if they want to achieve clairty about what such a practice means in general.