Publics, Politics and Participation

(Wang) #1

50 Philosophical Frames


On the role of the public sphere in the transition to democracy
in the European experience


Is the public sphere a cause of the democratic transformation of European
societies or a product of it; or is it both? Habermas seems to be quite
ambivalent in his answers to the question. To begin with, he attributes
the idea of the public sphere historically to the Europe of the eighteenth
century where “bourgeois” public spheres arose as counterweights to
the absolutist state and were independent of it, the second characteristic
being the precondition for the first function. It is precisely this historical
reference that raises a number of questions concerning the conditions and
forces that operated in the transition from absolutism to democracy.
I will limit myself to raising only two questions.
irst, are the proposals for recreating a civil society in countries out-F
side Europe and North America more than attempts to re-create one of the
historical processes that Europe already passed through, that of the devel-
opment and consolidation of industrial capitalism? In answer to this ques-
tion, Partha Chatterjee says that “the central assumption of this proposal
is that it is only the concepts of European social philosophy that contain
within them the possibility of universalization... the provincialism of the
European experience [is] taken as the universal history of progress.”^2 In
all fairness, Habermas never pretended that his own analysis of advanced
capitalism and his notions of civil society and public sphere contained any
lessons for the rest of the world. He readily agreed that his is a “eurocentri-
cally limited view.”^3 This admission constitutes additional proof—not that
there is nothing to learn from that experience, but that what is required is
a critical historical approach that draws inspiration and lessons from it.
econd, were the “bourgeois” public spheres—that undoubtedly S
played the role of counterweights to the despotic state—a necessary
and sufficient condition in the transition of Britain and later of other
European countries to democracy? In answering this question, I wish to
argue that Habermas seems to underestimate the role of a decisive factor
in the democratization of European societies: the nonbourgeois and anti-
bourgeois forces in effecting radical revolutionary changes in their societ-
ies which culminated in the final transition to democratic systems. This
Habermasian bévue can be attributed to a set of different but converging
and interrelated factors.

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