The Habermasian Concept of Democracy

Abstract

This essay presents an analysis of the relations between public space and democracy in the work of Jürgen Habermas. I begin by elucidating the way in which the concept of public space appears in Habermas’ thought and the functions he assigns to it in Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (1962). I then analyze how these aspects are systematically taken up and developed in his Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (1981) before going on to explain in some detail how public space and democracy are examined in Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats (1992). Later, I turn my attention to Die postnationale Konstellation. Politische Essais (1998) to see how the notion of public space and the democratic process in the globalized world is re-thought there in the framework of Habermas’ conception of democracy. Finally, I propose some general considerations on the Habermasian understanding of democracy related, first, to the economic-social and material conditions that allow citizens to participate effectively in processes of deliberation, argumentation, and reasoning in the public space and, second, to the reduction of democracy to formal procedures instead of an expansion towards the democratization of a society’s whole way of life.