By John Erik Fossum, Philip R. Schlesinger
The ecu Union is usually attacked for its ‘democratic deficit’, specifically its deficiencies in illustration, transparency and responsibility, in addition to its loss of well known help. Can those shortcomings be counteracted via the advance of a conceivable ecu public sphere? This booklet assesses the prospective formation of a communicative house that will let and engender the construction of a transnational or a supranational public. The members examine the EU’s democratic credentials and the way good it communicates, and so they review the main associations and their hyperlinks to basic publics. the eu Union and the general public Sphere emphasizes a ‘deliberative democratic’ viewpoint at the public sphere, addressing a few key questions: • What are the clients for a ecu public sphere?• may still we predict when it comes to the ecu having a unmarried public sphere, or are overlapping public spheres a extra manageable option?• What do that book’s findings at the query of the general public sphere let us know in regards to the ecu as a political entity? scholars and students of ecu democracy, political conversation, and the politics of associations will all be significantly inquisitive about this ebook.
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Additional resources for The European Union and the Public Sphere: A communicative space in the making? (Routledge Studies on Democratising Europe)
Example text
Historically, strong publics have existed within the nation state, but now, especially since the Second World War and the establishment of the United Nations, there are also transnational strong publics, such as panels, tribunals, committees and conventions (Brunkhorst 2002). The discourse-theoretical proceduralisation of popular sovereignty not only makes a conceptual space for a distinction between general and strong publics, but also makes visible transnational communicative spaces; spheres above and between the nation states in which the actors affected can reason about common affairs but where access is limited.
Naturally, this ‘cultural substrate’ – the collective ‘we’ – can be created through inclusive processes of opinion formation and law-making. However it comes about, it is a precondition for collective action and redistributive measures to be undertaken in the name of all. The symbolic establishment of a demos – a people – founded on a sense of unity and belonging, is a precondition for a democratic sovereign capable of regulatory as well as redistributive measures, for the people to obey the law out of duty as well as to pay for the misfortune of their compatriots.
Antenna and sluice The public sphere is ‘a communication structure rooted in the lifeworld through the associational network of civil society’ (Habermas 1996a: 359). Civil society is a common space for free communication secured by legal rights to freedom of expression and assembly, where problems are not only discovered, but also thematised and dramatised and formed into opinions and wills acted upon by formal decision-making agencies. The public sphere ‘sluices’ new problems into the political system.
