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Por Hans Kleinsteuber
Número
55
Introduction
We are
in a fascinating situation. There is an intensive
discussion of Jürgen Habermas and his theory
of the public sphere going on in most of Europe,
and only few observers in Germany realise this
and participate in it. Even more striking: A
debate about the necessity of a public sphere
for Europe has started, and German politicians
and academics are the first to advocate its establishment.
Among them is the German Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer, who started his political and intellectual
carrier in Habermas. Frankfurt, and is well aware
of the theoretical contributions of the Frankfurt
School. In this paper, I want to review the state
of discussion over the public sphere in contemporary
Germany, and enquire as to why discussions on
this topic only rarely make reference to Habermas.
Important theoretical work.
One first explanation
of the situation might be this: Habermas book
onStrukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, published
in 1962, was intensely disputed in Germany for
many years, and then the debate more or less
came to an end, and the paradigm seems to be
exhausted. Even though thinking about a public
sphere is still prominent in Germany, Habermas
is no longer in fashion. This article attempts
to analyse why this is so and what Habermas argument
means in a German, and after that in a European
context. I start with a few remarks about wording:
How did the German term Öffentlichkeit become,
in other parts of Europe, the public sphere?1
After that, I discuss Habermas contributions
to the theory of the public sphere, with special
emphasis on what he has to say about Europe and
its national states. After a brief overview of
the long debate over Habermas theory in Germany,
the article finishes with an analysis of its
strengths and weaknesses in illuminating the
problem of a European public sphere and its importance
for the success of the project of further European
integration and democratisation.
Some
Etymological and Transcultural Remarks on
Öffentlichkeit and the Public Sphere
The original term that Habermas used in his study
of 1962 is Öffentlichkeit. It was. If I
am correctly informed first translated into public
sphere in the English version of one of Habermas
earlier articles in 1974, and entered the international
debate with the translation of his book on The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society
in 1989, 27 years after it was published in Germany.
The phrase .public sphere seems to be a recent
construction, selected by a translator to find
a label for a word that has been in regular use
in Germany since the 18th century. The German-American
scholar Peter Uwe Hohendahl, who is the only
author dealing competently with the transcultural
aspects of the wording, calls public sphere a
.decidedly artificial term that did not exist
in the English language of the 18th and 19th
century (Hohendahl 2000, 1).
My impression
is that this translation is somewhat misleading.
A more accurate translation that is able to carry
more of the original connotations of the German
word would have been openness or openicity (or
perhaps, as Slavko Splichal recently suggested,
.public/ness.; Splichal 1999). In order to understand
this, it is necessary briefly to explain the
history and meaning of the word Öffentlichkeit,
and relate this to the phrase public sphere.
Öffentlichkeit is based on the old German
words offen and öffentlich that can be found
in medieval German. It is related to equivalents
like open in English and ouvert in French. When
it was used during the second half of the 18th
century, it referred to places that were open
for citizen’s access, like court proceedings,
religious services, and sometimes also academic
lectures (Hölscher 1979). The core of Habermas
analysis describes developments in Germany at
the time of the Enlightenment, when leading philosophers,
intellectuals, journalists and artists demanded
an extension of this type of Öffentlichkeit
into the political domain.
It should be
recognised that the German language also offers
words that are based on the Latin public, so
what is in English a publication would be translated
as a Publikation in German, and would mean the
same in both languages. The differences between
open and public may become clearer if we think
of the respective contrary words: the opposite
of open is closed whereas the opposite of public
it is private. It is not always easy to distinguish
both words, so publicity/Publizität today
means the same thing in both languages, whereas
public opinion is öffentliche Meinung, and
public relations is Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
in German. Perhaps one could say that Öffentlichkeit
refers more to a process or demand (like opening
up something), whereas public refers more to
a fact or structure. Problems of translation
also happen in the other direction: The English-American
wording of public is usually translated into
German as Öffentlichkeit, which again creates
difficulties. The book by John Dewey on The Public
and its Problems (Dewey 1927/1996) was recently
translated as Die Öffentlichkeit und ihre
Probleme. It is interesting to note that Habermas,
who writes extensively about Britain and France,
never refers to these transcultural problems
of his central wording.
The same is
basically true for the translators (Sara Lennox
and Frank Lennox) of Habermas, who seemingly
introduced the term public sphere in a first
article in the New German Critique in 1974 without
reflecting on the fact that this was a decision
that would have far-reaching consequences. An
interesting interpretation on this choice of
wording was offered by Bruce Robbins in a footnote:
.As the most frequent translation of Habermas.s
Öffentlichkeit, or .publicity, the English
phrase public sphere has a music that recalls
the noun.s early celestial connotations (Robbins
1993, XXV). To understand the shift in meaning
that goes with the introduction of the term public
sphere, it seems reasonable to look at both words
separately:
Public: As it
was said above, Öffentlichkeit had originally
to do with events that, contrary to closed occasions,
are open and accessible for everybody (Habermas
1990, 54). In addition the term includes meanings
like .making something public or discuss in public.
Specific other connotations are not possible
in the German language, especially those that
refer to the republican tradition of public,
based on the Latin word res publica. In German,
the public sphere cannot be related to a re-publican
sphere. Contrary to what Habermas himself claimed,
I cannot see that his analysis of the public
sphere has any special affinities to theories
of democracy. He rarely mentions democracy in
the study of 1962, and his valuable contributions
to democratic theory are based on later publications.
Sphere: The term is used quite often in the original
version of Habermas book, but certainly not as
a substitute for Öffentlichkeit. Instead,
it refers to several quite different phenomena:
e. g. public interventions into the privatised
household through taxes that led to the creation
of a .critical sphere. (Habermas 1990, 82). By
introducing the term sphere, itself a physical
metaphor that describes special spaces, the public
sphere is sometimes connected to a spatial understanding
(seen as a public space), which leads away from
Habermas original argument. In French, the translation
is even more space-oriented: Öffentlichkeit
is seen as espace public (Hohendahl 1990, 2).
But when Habermas wrote his study, space was
not high on the theoretical agenda, and any reference
in this direction was a later imposition upon
the original study.
The etymological
problems that are involved here cannot be resolved.
Habermas himself refers to them, complaining
that even in the German language no precise wording
is available (Habermas 1990, 54). There is a
much greater problem when we encounter the transcultural
transfer of ideas through translations into living
languages. In the rest of this article, I will
use the term public sphere, but the reader should
be aware that the context determines whether
the German meaning of Öffentlichkeit is
referred to, or if a newer meaning that evolved
in an Anglo-American context is appropriate.
The
Public Sphere and Europe
The
intention of this article is not to give another
reinterpretation of Habermas work on the transformation
of the public sphere. Rather, the I will present
some of the results of a re-reading of Habermas
work of 1962 (here quoted in an edition of 1990)
looking especially at what he has to say about
Europe and other European countries. The aim
is to discover if we can find clues that help
us to prepare the path to a future European public
sphere.
The result of
a first reading is clear: Europe was not one
of Habermas interests. In fact, Europe is not
mentioned in the index of the book at all. Instead,
he concentrated on three core European countries
Britain, France and Germany, and discussed the
emergence of the public sphere in these states.
Interestingly enough, he did not explain to the
reader why he selected these three countries,
nor did he explain on what methodological basis
his comparison was made. At the centre of his
attention is a conception of how history moves
ahead in situations of transformation, and the
three countries serve mainly as illustrative
examples. They have been selected to demonstrate
that bourgeois society, growing in influence
and attacking the feudal class, created a public
sphere, first in Britain, later in France and
last in Germany.
Habermas was
confronted with a structural problem: How could
he describe a phenomenon that has only a clear
name in Germany, but which he searched for and
found in the two other countries mentioned. He
claims that the German word Öffentlichkeit
was introduced in 18th century Germany as an
analogue term to publicité in France and
publicity in Britain (Habermas 1990, 55f). If
this is correct, it means that words to describe
the public sphere did first exist in the countries
where it actually evolved, but later these words
changed their meaning (publicité today
describing advertising), whereas the original
meaning of the wording survived in Germany. This
is an interesting claim that calls for further
research.
With regard
to Habermas own work, it seems he did not recognise
the transcultural problems that arise when he
described developments in European history using
a vocabulary peculiar to the German language.
One could say more generally that Habermas shows
little sensitivity concerning the cultural differences
of Europe, not informing us what the respective
wording (and subsequent changes of meaning) mean
in the history of different European cultures.
This criticism does not, however, apply to his
chapter on öffentliche Meinung/public opinion/opinion
publique, where he demonstrates how the concept
evolved, how it was transferred across borders
into Germany, and how different European cultures
stimulated each other (Habermas 1990, 161ff).
We can see it as a good demonstration of how
ideas were created in certain parts of Europe
and quickly moved from country to country, even
in an era when communication was poor and transportation
very slow. These passages demonstrate that historical
Europe may be described as a common communication
space, with an extremely high density of information
exchange, even during pre-industrial times, that
seems to be unique in the world (Kleinstüber
and Rossmann 1994, 9-58). Habermas, however,
just offers the example, he does not follow the
argument further. One possible reason being,
ironically enough, that perhaps he was not interested
then in the spatial aspect of communication.
Another element
of Habermas work is also striking: He reproduces
the idea of a rather homogenous state. This is
extremely interesting, as the emergence of the
public sphere began before the creation of the
modern national state. Habermas talks consistently
about England (meaning the United Kingdom) and
claims implicitly that regional, and therefore
cultural, differences are of little importance.
The idea here is that political conflicts were
based mainly on classes, not on regions, so the
special situation of Scotland was outside the
scope of his interest. In fact, details like
this were of little concern to Habermas. His
not very thorough description of Britain bears
out the criticism that his understanding of the
British model was mainly based on the study of
just one book (by Cecil S. Emden) that he quoted
extensively (Jäger 1973).
The argument
becomes even shakier when we take into consideration
that a distinct Germany did not exist at the
time of his historical focus. The situation around
the complex of issues involving press freedom,
freedom of criticism, and the existence and influence
of parliaments, was extremely diverse in this
part of Europe. I should remind the non-German
reader that, inside the territory that we call
Germany today, there were various monarchies
of different degree of absolutism, but there
were also old established republics like the
City States of Hamburg and Bremen. The Senatorial
political system of Hamburg to give the example
of my place of work was clearly one in which
wealthy bourgeois families were in total control
of political power, and they took very little
interest in a strong public sphere. If Hamburg
was (at times) an important place for media production
and distribution, this was because its port functioned
as a market for information. It was also important
that publishers, under pressure from censorship
in Hamburg, could escape to the sister city of
Altona, which was until 1864 under the rather
liberal regime of the Danish crown. All in all,
Habermas does not demonstrate much concern for
the diversity of the European continent and the
variable situation inside the states he was interested
in.
In order to
understand Habermas and the rather cavalier relationship
of his study to the history and diversity of
Europe, a consideration of the general scope
of his position is required. In the tradition
of interpreting history in terms of universal
tendencies as suggested by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, in his idealistic fashion, and developed
by Karl Marx with a materialist approach, Habermas
was focussing on the transformations during a
whole epoch (Habermas 1990, 195ff).
He held that
history is determined by large waves of development
that lead to certain characteristics, which seem
to be much more dominant than any cultural variations.
Quite differently from Hegel, and more in accordance
with Marx, Habermas saw economic changes as the
driving force behind history. As bourgeois society
(Marx would have said bourgeois class.) gained
strength in economic power, it used the development
of a specific public sphere as an instrument
to exert pressure upon the feudal class that
controlled most of the state apparatus of that
time. This was a universal tendency that took
place in the most progressive parts of Europe
(Britain, France and Germany). Obviously, this
needed little explanation: Habermas used the
three states more or less as illustrations of
his general theory.
To prove his
point, he identified the positions of leading
thinkers, and examined the main controversies
of the epoch and reinterpreted them. These thinkers
were mostly philosophers, and sources of economic
and social history were of secondary importance
to him. Many of the studies that were stimulated
by Habermas work criticised him for not being
bothered about details. This, to take one example,
is the central criticism of the historian Andreas
Gestrich, who studied political communication
during the 17th century (Gestrich 1994). Gestrich
was interested in small facts and used them to
uncover interesting developments concerning Europe.
He identified the surprising number of six publications
in German that all carried the word Europe in
their title. All were published during the years
17201730. Among them were Theatrum Europäum,
Europäische Fama, Der Europäische Postillion,
Das AllerMerkwürdigste in Europa (Gestrich
1994, 186-187). Information like this lets us
ask questions about the roots of a European public
sphere but this is another topic. Even though
it is certainly true that Habermas approach was
based on very limited empirical evidence, in
my view his book still stands as a very general
interpretation of that fascinating era of (Western)
European economic, social, intellectual and media
history.
The
Concept of Public Sphere in Germany
The English
speaking reader of Habermas study should be aware
that the book only opens a tiny window onto a
rich German tradition of reflecting on the necessity
of, and the conditions for, a public sphere.
Habermas himself underlines this by grounding
his argument in the theoretical writings of the
three leading German thinkers: Immanuel Kant,
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx.
They might not have used the German word Öffentlichkeit,
but they all were concerned with the power of
public debates and their transformation into
political criticism. The foreign reader should
know that several hundred books have been written
on the public sphere and related concepts in
Germany, many of which have little interest in
the social and political aspects that Habermas
was concerned with. Much of what has been discussed
under the term is centred on discourses of aesthetics,
literature, theatre and art, and how they relate
to the audience (in German, interestingly enough:
Publikum, derived from public). German-speaking
writers usually separate the social and political
discourse about the public sphere from the literary
one, even though both approaches are concerned
with the public criticism of politics. Very recently,
a comprehensive history of Öffentlichkeit
has been published that covers more than two
hundred years during which the term has been
used in Germany (Hohendahl 2000). Habermas is
mentioned in it on a few pages as a person that
wrote a history of public sphere in Germany,
as author of a normative approach to public sphere,
and as a commentator of recent politics (Hohendahl
2000, 93ff).
Habermas gives
the impression to his reader that he was the
first to write a comprehensive history and theory
of the public sphere2.
In fact, the academic discussion in Germany has
been long and intensive. Many books about Öffentlichkeit,
öffentliche Meinung and related topics,
have been written before and after him (Hohendahl.s
book includes a bibliography of 50 pages). But
Habermas study on the Strukturwandel opened a
very intensive debate that resulted in the publication
of many reactions, both political and academic.
Some of his prominence is due to the time when
he wrote the study. These were years of structural
transformation in Germany, especially on the
political Left (where Habermas belonged). It
was highly significant that, just three years
before the publication of his book, the German
Social Democratic Party (SPD) had finally abandoned
its Marxist traditions and adopted an openly
reformist programme. They claimed that gradual
change was possible, but that commercial activities
endanger this development, which is exactly what
Habermas said about the public sphere in contradiction
to Marx and his idea of the inevitability of
revolutions. In the academic world, quite a number
of studies took up Habermas argument and discussed
it, mainly in philosophy, sociology, history
and political science. A majority offered a rather
critical appraisal of Habermas work. The main
opposition to Habermas is usually associated
with Niklas Luhmann, the systems theorist and
leading conservative sociologist, who expressed
a much more sceptical view about the reflexivity
of discourses as an ingredient of the public
sphere (Luhmann 1990).
This is not
the place to offer details of this intensive
debate that resulted in several dozen books about
Habermas theory. It is significant, though, that
Habermas is mainly seen as a philosopher and
a political commentator of the moderate left,
whereas in communication studies his views have
been rarely accepted. American approaches dominate
the scene here. The recent German debate about
the public sphere, which is mostly driven by
sociologists such as Friedhelm Neidhardt and
Jürgen Gerhards, and by Cultural Studies
(Uwe Hohendahl), sees Habermas approach as just
one among a number of others (Neidhardt 1998;
Gerhards and Neidhardt 1993; Hohendahl 2000).
To put Haberlas
theory of the public sphere into a wider perspective,
it has to be emphasised that it was often seen
and in my eyes misinterpreted as a theory of
democracy. Habermas himself claimed this at times,
but his important work on public discourses in
a deliberative democracy was developed and published
much later (Habermas 1992; 1992a). In his original
works on the public sphere, he follows very much
a German tradition of limiting political demands
to the opening up of the political realm for
public debate, and permitting criticism of the
authorities in public. Öffentlichkeit that
follows this tradition does not accompany bourgeois
demands for political participation but substitutes
for them. The emphasis on the public sphere in
Germany was mostly intellectual, philosophical
and normative. It was not practical. The typical
citizen outside the political process demanded
transparency concerning the political dealings
of the feudal class, but rarely at least compared
with neighbouring countries did he require that
somebody like himself conquer political positions.
The total failure of the German revolution of
1848/49 was partly the result of it being dominated
by endless debates of the many professors and
educated men in the rudimentary parliament, which
substituted for actions for the protection of
newly acquired democratic rights. In his comparative
study of The Social Origins of Dictatorship and
Democracy, Barrington Moore described how .conservative
modernisation, the result of an informal alliance
between the feudal and the bourgeois segments
of the German society, prevented real revolutionary
change (Moore 1966). Comparative studies in political
culture revealed that, even after the Second
World War, German political behaviour had a subjective
character. In Germany, a good citizen tends to
be well informed about political events but does
not participate, because, as an old saying goes,
politics is dirty.
The
German Tradition of Public Literary Discourse
This strong
tradition of intellectual debate without political
consequences is still alive today. It is carried
on in a special section of the high class daily
and weekly press that is called the feuilleton.
This is a segment of the paper where traditionally
the leading thinkers of the country offer their
opinion on culture, politics, soccer, natural
sciences. It is, as the Feuilleton-Editor of
the leading weekly Die Zeit describes it, a place
for utopias and he explains that the political,
you would better say the politicising, feuilleton
owes its existence not to a genuine interest
in politics, but to an interest in finding explanations
that inevitably reach out to political themes
(Jessen 2000, 35). In the feuilleton, even generally
conservative papers traditionally tolerate critical
analysis, as long as it is written in a highly
abstract language that limits the understanding
of the debate to the intellectual elite. The
feuilleton (derived from the French feuillet
= little page) emerged during the first half
of the 19th century, exactly during the epoch
that Habermas discussed, when the bourgeois public
sphere was established under a generally repressive
political rule, as a place for an open, but encrypted
discussion. The feuilleton had a special location
in those early newspapers. It usually covered
the lowest third of the second page, separated
by a printed line from the rest of the paper.
Its writings were under the line (Haacke 1951).
Habermas himself
never mentioned the feuilleton in his study of
1962, but his style of writing combines classical
German philosophy with the best traditions of
feuilleton journalism. It comes at no surprise
that Habermas influence in German politics is
not based primarily on his (very heavy to digest)
philosophical works but his regular articles
in the style of the political feuilleton (mainly
in Die Zeit). In these he stimulated some of
the great controversies of the last decades,
e.g. the historian’s debate about the uniqueness
of Nazi crimes. Habermas is not just the scholar
who studied the public sphere; he probably represents
more then anybody else the tradition of the grand
public debate. Interestingly enough, this public
discourse in Germany always occurs in written
form, not in public speech. This goes well with
the strong philosophical and weak parliamentary
strains in German culture. Rhetoric and oral
exchange have a weak history in Germany, as they
belong to the communication style of a parliament.
Also, it should be noted that Habermas is a brilliant
writer of German prose, but an extremely bad
orator.
It is clear
that Habermas, in idealising the culture of criticism
in a former epoch, created a huge debate, and
that is what he wanted to do. He answered many
of his critics in a new 40-page preface to the
republished book on The Structural Transformation
in 1990 (some of this self-criticism appears
also in Habermas 1992a). A central and often
repeated point is that he did not emphasise enough
the role of the strong German state as an organisation
of the repressive rule of the king, bureaucrats,
the military and, partially, the feudal class,
nor its total separation from society. In fact,
Germany did better in creating a bourgeois public
sphere than in developing a civil society.
This historical
background shapes the context for the special
interest in a public sphere, that only becomes
politically functional as it empowers the economic
citizen to become a political citizen by equalising
and generalising their interests and as such
bring them to bear, so that the might of the
state liquefies to a medium of the self organisation
of society (Habermas 1990, 22).
The later Habermas
emphasised much more the need for a civil society
that is opposed to the might of the government.
He limited the public sphere less to an observational
role, and related it more to political participation
and action (Habermas 1990, 23ff). In my opinion,
it is this strong reliance on reflection instead
of action that contributed to the catastrophes
in German history, and even contributed to the
failure of much of Germans academic community
during the times of dictatorship. It was finally
overcome only in the years after 1945.
Habermas
and the Coming of a European Public Sphere
In this
section, an attempt is presented to relate this
original one may say teutonic version of a public
sphere to the recent problems of the European
integration process Habermas describes an epoch
in Europes history when the monopoly of the feudal
class in the executive power was challenged by
a bourgeois society that was gaining economic
power and demanded political cohabitation (to
use a recent term). It was the special contribution
of Habermas to underline that this process did
not usually culminate in a bourgeois revolution
(as the Marxists claimed) but that structural
transformation was a better term to describe
the gradual changes that actually took place.
It also becomes clear that this evolution was
a slow process that (in the Western part of the
continent) occurred at various times and places,
and possibly never took place in the East. This
general restructuring of power was accompanied
by the creation of a new and more developed type
of public sphere, which is the central focus
of Habermas study. He describes this transformation
and in this he follows a Marxist logic as a universal
process that is determined by a kind of historical
law to which there are only limited variations
based on specific historical circumstances. In
terms of comparative methodology, he looks for
similarities, not for differences.
One might say
that this process of the emergence of a new public
sphere followed very different lines in core
European states. In France, it was linked to
alternations between revolution, repression and
reform. In Britain, a model of press freedom
evolved slowly. In Germany, the bourgeois class
and its intellectuals rested content with an
uncensored discourse and the opportunity of public
criticism. It is still an unfulfilled European
duty to analyse this transformation in other
parts of Europe, e.g. in the Netherlands, where
the first modern bourgeois society was established,
or in Scandinavia with its pragmatic attitude
to reform, in Republican Switzerland, and in
the countries of Eastern and Southern Europe,
where the influence of Enlightenment was very
limited.
This is not
just of interest for a better understanding of
Europe’s past. The specific charm of Habermas
work lies in the fact that Europe is in a somewhat
similar situation today as the one that it encountered
at the beginning of the second half of the 18th
century. Of course, history never repeats itself,
and the institutions, actors and decisionmaking
processes are vastly different today from what
were present during those years. Nevertheless,
we are confronted with a European Union, which
has a peculiar institutional framework that looks
all too familiar. A strong bureaucracy, in the
form of the Commission, represents the political
Europe. A government, institutionalised as the
European Council, decides behind closed doors,
and a weak European Parliament performs mostly
symbolic functions. It is rarely respected as
a powerful actor. The bureaucrats and the governmental
actors in Brussels prefer to keep internal information
tightly secret and do not make it easy for Members
of Parliament and journalists to see what they
are up to. The media systems in Europe are (completely
differently to the 18th century) highly developed,
but only on a national (and perhaps local) level.
European media with a distinct European Union
focus are nearly non-existent. A strong and opaque
executive, a weak and mainly symbolic legislature,
and no working European public sphere does this
not somewhat resemble the power constellation
of another epoch?
It is interesting
to note that during the last two years or so,
we may observe a rapidly intensifying debate
about the future of the .European project, led
by politicians but including intellectuals, academics
and journalists in all parts of the Union. These
discourses are always limited to a minority.
They are the concern of an info-elite of highly
motivated and informed thinkers and actors, similar
to what we found more than 200 years ago. A grand
debate has begun over what has to be done to
move ahead in Europe. The central topics are
human rights, constitutional provisions, subsidiarity,
direct elections, and federalism. To put it in
Hegelian terms: the situation is ripe for the
creation of a European public sphere. This debate
is not primarily a parliamentary debate, as the
European Parliament is not seen as a major stage
on which to initiate discourses. Instead, communication
among actors in Europe is mainly conducted with
the printed word that, up to a point, follows
the tradition of the feuilleton. A completely
new factor is the reliance on translations, and
the accompanying problems of transcultural communications.
It seems that
the politicians, who up until now far preferred
traditional clandestine dealings behind closed
doors in Brussels to public debate, are now prepared
to open up and discuss matters with whoever shares
their interest. Even more, they campaign to find
political advice and support in a public that
for the first time is taken seriously, because
they have never been so disoriented about Europe.s
future. To give an example: The German weekly
Die Zeit and the French daily Le Monde organised
a dispute between the German Foreign Minister,
Joschka Fischer, and the (then) French Minister
of the Interior, Jean-Pierre Chevénement,
in which all the major questions of Europe’s
future where touched. I will give just one quotation
out of this rather controversial debate. In the
words of the Frenchman:
I observe, there
is no European people today. European citizenship
is, if I may state my personal opinion, a joke.
For that we first need a European public sphere,
a common space, in which the debate over European
questions takes place. One cannot create institutions
before we have discussed them. The debate has
to come before the institutions (Fischer and
Chevenément 2000, 16).
This dispute
also made it clear that the European discourse
can only flourish if it is seen as an exercise
in transnational communication, in which ideas
and concepts are being explained in the context
of national experiences. Words like federalism
or nation mean something completely different
in Germany and France, and the debate offers
the chance for communication and explanation
to end previous misunderstandings and fears (And
Chevenément demonstrated his knowledge
of European philosophers by mentioning and criticising
Habermas. concept of state patriotism. as being
inappropriate for the understanding of European
national states).
It is especially
encouraging that politicians themselves started
the debate, offering conflicting positions not
in order to polarise but to inform themselves
and others about forthcoming options. Wherever
the peaceful transformation in Europe in the
18th and 19th century took place, this proved
possible because there was a sense of compromise
on the part of both the feudal and the bourgeois
class. Today, you might say that something similar
occurs between the European political class and
concerned European citizens.
If all this
sounds a little idealistic, it is certainly meant
to, since Habermas argument stands in the line
of the German idealistic school. It is based
on the hope that a very plausible idea, if it
is well represented, will be able to change reality.
The approach is normative in the sense that it
offers a vision for a more democratic and more
open Europe, but will have a chance only if powerful
actors keep moving in this direction. It is also
quite pragmatic, as it points to real problems,
like the fact that only Europe-wide media will
be able to provide the platform to discuss common
concerns. The above-mentioned cooperation between
Die Zeit and Le Monde (on this and similar discourses)
demonstrates how European media may contribute
to the evolving European public sphere. The papers
follow a federal and subsidiary strategy of horizontal
cooperation at least in the German understanding
of these words.
European
Media and the Creation of a EuropeanPublic Sphere
In this
final argument, I will attempt to discuss the
question of how a structure of European media
might be established. In Habermas analysis, the
bourgeois public sphere profited from the expansion
of the print media of that epoch. It later deteriorated
under the influence of commercialisation, which
changed the political functions of the press,
because the journalism of writing by private
people became perverted, and ended in a structure
where selling and publishing advertisements became
the leading function of the public sphere (Habermas
1990, 225-342). The publisher as businessman
endangered the very idea of the creation of a
critical public sphere that had been built up
during the years of the bourgeois struggle for
free and influential debate.
If we apply
this kind of thinking to the media policy of
the EU, we find an interesting reversal of historical
stages. In the 1980s, the EC’s media policy
was born, first with a debate in Parliament about
the necessity for a European TV-channel. In 1986,
four public service-broadcasters from Germany,
the Netherlands, Ireland and Italy jointly established
the Europa TV-channel. This ended after a short
period because of lack of funding. Transmission
was limited to satellites, and programming was
still experimental, when the venture broke down
completely (Vollberg 1999). After this, special
interest channels, financed more or less commercially,
went on air for news (Euronnews 1993) and sports
(Eurosport 1989). Both have a number of independent
sound tracks to cope with Europe’s language
problems. Arte is a symbol of cooperation between
countries that speak either speak the German
or the French language, but is limited to cultural
programming. Up to today, public broadcasters
are only marginally involved in producing joint
European content for Europeans and as such creating
a European communication space.
European media
policy moved into a very different direction.
The Commission began its policy with the Green
Paper on Television without Frontiers. (1984)
and later introduced a corresponding directive
(1989). The need of a .common audiovisual space
was established, but its introduction was seen
entirely in economic terms. The policy was based
on the principle that media activities were economic
by nature (not cultural and not political), and
that Pan-European media companies were the prime
movers in the process of European integration.
Both assumptions proved to be wrong. Instead,
markets grew along language spaces and the larger,
economically stronger countries tended to dominate
the smaller neighbouring countries with a programme
offensive.
Just as Habermas
had argued was the case in an earlier epoch,
commercial actors proved that the creation of
a common public sphere was beyond their scope
and interest. As they are driven by the profit
motive, they follow national and trans-border
language markets. A culturally diverse Europe
is of no interest for them. They have no impetus
to create public spheres that serve genuinely
political and cultural functions. This all sits
very well with Habermas argument that purely
commercial activities are a threat to the critical
function of public spheres. The EC/ EU-policy
in fact hindered the transformation of national
spaces into a European public sphere. One reason
was that the media industry used heavy lobbying
pressure to have it their way, but the Commission
itself was (and still is) not too interested
in creating the preliminaries for a European
public sphere. The logic of a bureaucratic policy
maker like the Commission favours a clandestine
style of politics and avoids public spaces.
The experience
of the last 15 years of a declared European media
policy led to much stronger media actors, some
of them .media moguls, operating in increasingly
concentrated, but basically national markets.
Companies might be active in different European
countries, but they normally establish national
companies, and seek an arrangement with the national
government and political class. Wherever elements
of an emerging European public sphere are visible,
they are found outside of the large media actors
that enjoyed EU-support for so many years. It
is again within Habermas logic that only non-commercial
media are strong actors in the establishment
of a public sphere. The public broadcasters of
Europe themselves a creature of Europe.s traditions
of public responsibility unlike the commercial
model that stems from the US have been hampered
by European media policy for years, but they
still offer the most potential to establish the
platform on which a European public sphere might
prosper. This applies not just to the national
broadcasters (like BBC, RAI, ARD) but also to
the foreign broadcasters with their special expertise
in transcultural communication (BBC World Service,
RAI International, Deutsche Welle). The integration
of Europe demands an investment in overcoming
the language barriers. Public broadcasters should
establish an alliance (perhaps on the base
of the European Broadcasting Union, EBU) to provide
a framework that communicates European concerns
in a non-national mode inside as well as outside
the Union, thereby creating a common image of
the EU. This policy design lies very much in
Habermas tradition. He wrote that the electronic
media in Europe .were organized as public and
semi-public bodies, because this was the only
way to sufficiently protect their publicistic
functions bodies, because this was the only way
one could sufficiently protect the publicistic
against the private capitalistic functions (Habermas
1990, 283).
Conclusions
These are
certainly speculative ideas, but they take their
stimulus from Habermas book, written a generation
ago. Quite often it has seemed antiquated, outdated
by developments in the real world, and often
contradicted by empirical and historical research.
But there is still a certain value in applying
his historical methodology. This moment is the
right time to discuss the overdue establishment
of a European public sphere, and Habermas has
a lot of insights and visions to offer that might
foster that process. This is the real reason
why discussing the theory of the public sphere
is quite timely, and it would be helpful to the
wider debate if some more of the German theoretical
work on Öffentlichkeit entered the international
arena. I do not think that Habermas would object.
In a recent interview, the German Foreign Minister
and leading Green politician Joschka Fischer
was asked about the reactions that Habermas would
have concerning the continuities in international
politics with those of the former conservative
governments, which Habermas had earlier criticised).
Fischer answered: He would not be jubilant, instead
in the modest way typical of him, he would rather
grin broadly (Fischer 2001).
Notas:
*
This article was first publish in the magazine,
Javnost, in Slovenia, Vol. 8, 2001,
1, 95-98.
1 I am aware
that there are, however, European languages with
words that match German Öffentlichkeit,
for example javnost in Slovene (which happens
to be the original name of the journal publishing
this article).
2 In 2000 the
American professor Ernest Mannheim turned a hundred
years old. This was when he received an honorary
Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig. Mannheim,
a cousin of Karl Mannheim, was born in Budapest
and worked until 1934 in Germany at the University
in Leipzig. He planned and nearly finished, but
never completed his Habilitations-thesis
on the topic: The Holders of Public Opinion.
Studies in the Sociology of the Public Sphere
(Die Träger der Öffentlichen Meinung.
Studien zur Soziologie der Öffentlichkeit.)
As a “Jew and Foreigner” he had to
cope with increasing problems at his university
and finally escaped from Germany and never returned
to his original topic. The scope of his analysis
– thirty years earlier - was extremely
close to Habermas, emphasizing the intellectual
self-finding of the bourgeois society in corporative
associations and jointly training the art of
discourses there (Averbeck 2000.)
Referencias:
Averbeck, S.
2000. Ehrendoktorwürde für Ernest Mannheim.
relation leipzig 7, 1-3.
Dewey, John. 1996. Die Öffentlichkeit
und ihre Probleme. Bodenheim: Philo (original:
The Public and its Problems Athens: Ohio U. P.
1946.)
Fischer, Joschka. 2001. Die Antwort auf fast
alle Fragen ist: Europa. Die Zeit, 12
( March 15), 3f. (Interview with Joschka Fischer.)
Fischer, Joschka and Jean-Pierre Chevenément.
2000. Streitgespräch Joschka Fischer contra
Jean-Pierre Chevenément. Die Zeit, 26
(June 21), 13-18.
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1993. Strukturen und Funktionen moderner Öffentlichkeit.
Fragestellungen und Ansätze. In W. R. Langenbucher
(ed.): Politische Kommunikation, 52-88.
Wien: Braunmüller.
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Öffentlichkeit. Politische Kommunikation
in Deutschland zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts.
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und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurs des Rechts
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on the Public Sphere. Craig Calhoun (ed.): Habermas
and the Public Sphere, 421-461. Cambridge
MA: The MIT Press.
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der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer
Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp with a new foreword to the
1990 edition (first: Neuwied: Luchterhand 1962)
Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry
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Polity.
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und Geheimnis. Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung
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1969.)
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Vollberg,
Susanne. 1999. Der alte Traum vom "Europäischen
Fernsehen". Medien+erziehung 3,
158-161.
Dr.
Hans J. Kleinsteuber
Professor of Political Science and Journalism
at Hamburg University.
Germany. |