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2004 30: 331Philosophy Social CriticismJohn S. Brady

Theory of the Public SphereNo Contest? Assessing the Agonistic Critiques of Jürgen Habermas's

  

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John S. Brady

No contest? Assessing theagonistic critiques of JürgenHabermas’s theory of thepublic sphere

Abstract Would democratic theory in its empirical and normative guisesbe in a better position without the theory of the deliberative public sphere?In this paper I explore recent theories of agonistic democracy that haveanswered this question in the affirmative. I question their assertion that thetheory of the public sphere should be abandoned in favor of a model ofdemocratic politics based on political contestation. Furthermore, I exploreone of the fundamental assumptions at work in the debate about the theoryof the public sphere’s status, namely the assumed opposition betweenconsensus and contestation. Questioning the rigid nature of the opposition,I go on to argue that the deliberative theory of the public sphere actuallyfacilitates the development of the agonistic approach to democratic theoryand practice.

Key words agonistic democracy · deliberative democracy · democratictheory · Habermas · theory of the public sphere

But how shall we test whether interests are capable of being generalized ifnot through discourse? (Jürgen Habermas1)

Has the concept of the public sphere, long considered central to demo-cratic theory, lost its usefulness as a category of social and politicalanalysis? Is, in fact, its continued deployment actually counter-produc-tive? In other words, in continuing to rely on the idea of the publicsphere as part of the empirical analysis of political systems and as anormative ideal, are political theorists actually impeding the critical

PSCPHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL CRITICISM • vol 30 no 3 • pp. 331–354Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/0191453704043096

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evaluation of modern democracy and the articulation of workable idealsfor the improvement of contemporary democratic societies? Skepticalquestions like these have been a central element of the theoretical dis-course on public politics. They have shadowed the various attempts towork out a definition of the public sphere and to specify the norms thatshould govern citizens’ interactions on the public stage. With each newclarification of the category of the public sphere and each new attemptto compile a catalog of public virtues, skeptics have wondered whethersuch analyses are not simply chasing a ‘phantom’ and wasting muchtime and energy in the process (see, for example, Lippmann, 1993;Peters, 1994; Robbins, 1993).

One recent version of this skeptical perspective has come fromtheorists of agonistic politics who have argued that the theory of thepublic sphere, especially as employed by deliberative democrats likeJürgen Habermas, is seriously flawed and actually hampers the develop-ment of a viable theory of democracy. According to this latest incarna-tion of the skeptical position, the theory of the public sphere ishopelessly unrealistic in so far as it continues to rely on a conceptionof public politics as the rational exchange of opinions, despite copiousand daily proof of the messy, conflict-laden nature of contemporarypolitical practice. What is perhaps worse, deliberative theorists seem toexhibit a shocking normative naivety. Wedded as they are to the achieve-ment of consensus on questions of democratic legitimacy as the idealgoal of public debate, they fail to see that ‘circumscribing a domain thatwould not be subject to the pluralism of values and where a consensuswithout exclusion could be established’ is a hopeless task (Mouffe,2000: 91). Given such flaws, agonistic theorists have recommendedscrapping the theory of the public sphere altogether in favor of a modelof democratic politics that places political contestation, the reality ofexclusion, and the search for the ‘emancipatory potential of alterity’ atits center (Coole, 1997: 221).

My first goal in this essay is to evaluate this latest rejection of thetheory of the public sphere. I am concerned with exploring the logic ofthe critique’s main claim, that is, the contention that the empirical andnormative flaws of theory of the public sphere are so extensive as towarrant its replacement by alternative models of political practice. If itcan be shown that the agonistic reading of the theory of the publicsphere as fatally flawed is based on a misinterpretation of the theory,one that underestimates the theory’s realism and overstates the blink-ered character of its normative imagination, then the rationale for aban-doning the public sphere as a category of analysis would be severelyundercut. I undertake such an argument in the first part of this essayvia an examination of Jodi Dean’s and Chantal Mouffe’s respective cri-tiques of Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere. Both theorists

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find similar flaws in Habermas’s theory and offer similar solutions basedon replacing Habermas’s model, which they see as rationalistic andhostile to cultural and value pluralism, with conceptions of publicpolitics based on political conflict and contestation.

My interest in the agonistic critique extends beyond the particularstrengths and weaknesses of its analysis of the Habermasian framework.The debate about the empirical and normative status of the publicsphere is just one theme in an increasingly lively and wide-rangingdebate within democratic theory between theorists of agonistic andtheorists of deliberative democracy, and I am interested in the funda-mental assumptions that have been made in the course of this debate.In particular, I think it worthwhile to focus on the assumptions theoristsmake about the relationship between consensus and contestation.

If we were to have learned one thing from postmodernism, it wasto be deeply suspicious of binary oppositions. Although they offer anoften elegant and parsimonious means of theorizing politics, in reality,so the critique goes, traditional conceptual couplets such aspublic/private, universal/particular or self/other constrain politicalanalysis by hampering the ability of theorists to appreciate the inherentflux and heterogeneity of political practice. Political reality is simply toomessy to be forced into such either/or categories of analysis. Worse still,such binaries, with their implication of opposition and independence,obscure the mutually constitutive nature of most political and socialphenomena. Thus, no identity without difference. Given both the famili-arity of this critique and the not insignificant influence of postmodernphilosophical positions, especially within recent political theory, it isperhaps surprising how stubbornly one particular binary opposition hasmanaged to shape the discussion between agonistic and deliberativedemocrats, namely the purported opposition between contest and con-sensus. With remarkable regularity, theorists on both sides insist on thefundamental opposition between a democratic political practice basedon contestation and one based on consensus formation (see, forexample, Benhabib, 1996; Brown, 1995; Connolly, 1993; Mouffe, 1999,2000; Villa, 1992; Young, 1990).2

My goal in the second part of this essay is to contribute to thedeconstruction of this particular binary from the perspective of thetheory of the public sphere in a Habermasian vein. In doing so, I willadopt a strategy different from those that other theorists who are sym-pathetic to Habermas’s project have employed in their efforts to nego-tiate the contest–consensus divide. When faced with the charge that theirfocus on rational discussion and their positive valuation of consensustogether lead them to undervalue or even denigrate political dissensusand the natural spontaneity and anarchy of the political, deliberativedemocrats have offered one of two counter-arguments. In the first

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argument, defenders of the deliberative model claim that while thetheory does not embrace political contestation for its own sake, it cancertainly accommodate it within its theoretical framework. From thisperspective, the theory of the public sphere remains more or less neutralvis-à-vis the empirical significance and normative salience of agonisticpolitical practice (Chambers, 1996). The second argument adopts a lessneutral stance. It argues that, far from simply accommodating the realityand desirability of contestation, the theory of the public sphere actuallyrequires political contestation. From this perspective, the actualizationof a genuinely democratic public sphere and the maintenance of demo-cratic legitimacy depend on citizens who engage in political practicemarked by contestation (Markell, 1997).

In questioning the stubborn persistence of the contestation–consen-sus divide, I have chosen a line between these two previous strategies.As I will argue, the first ‘accommodationist’ position is too weak in sofar as it fails to appreciate the ways in which Habermas’s theory of thepublic sphere goes beyond neutrality to forge a positive relationship toagonism. In other words, it ignores the ways in which the theorysupports agonistic democracy both as a theoretical program and as aparticular type of political practice. Yet this support does not extend sofar so as to validate the second position. Habermas’s theory does notrequire agonistic forms of political action. Instead, I will argue it is bestto interpret Habermas as facilitating an agonistic approach to demo-cratic theory and practice without, however, offering a judgment regard-ing the agonistic model’s ultimate validity. Habermas’s theory opens upboth the conceptual and political space conducive to a deeper appreci-ation of and support for the ‘spontaneity, initiation, and difference thatcharacterize agonistic speech’ (Villa, 1992: 716).

In reaching this conclusion, I read Habermas in two ways based onan analogy between the character of democratic public communicationand Habermas’s own political theory. As Habermas has remarked, com-munication in the public sphere possesses a self-referential quality.Those political actors who support democratic public debate tend to‘put forward “texts” that always reveal the same subtext, which refersto the critical function of the public sphere in general. Whatever themanifest content of their public utterances, the performative meaningof such public discourse at the same time actualizes the function of theundistorted public sphere as such’ (Habermas, 1998: 369). We cananalyze Habermas’s theory in a similar way, that is, explore how its‘text’ – the concepts it employs, the positions it takes – and its ‘sub-text’– the manner in which Habermas articulates his theory – relate to theagonistic model. When we do so, we see that Habermas’s support forthe agonistic approach stems not only from the theoretical positions hetakes, but also from the fact that in the course of articulating his theory

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he contributes to the production and reproduction of a public forumopen to the critical evaluation of the agonistic model of democratictheory and practice.

Part I: The theory of the public sphere and the skeptics

As an object of political and scholarly debate, Habermas’s theory of thepublic sphere has had an impressively long career. In its original formu-lation in Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, the theory wasswept up into the politics of the German student movement, where it,along with other elements of Habermas’s social philosophy, became apoint of reference in the student activists’ attempt to mount an effectivecritique of West German society (Abendroth et al., 1968; Holub, 1994).Beyond the realm of movement politics, the study also had an impacton German academic debate, spurring a number of critical responsesacross the academy’s ideological spectrum (Hohendahl, 1982). The1989 translation into English was, of course, too late to influenceAmerican student movement politics, but the work did have a substan-tial effect on American scholarship, inspiring a variety of historical andtheoretical studies employing the theory’s framework along with anumber of important critiques. Like their German predecessors, thesenew critics confronted Habermas along a broad front, pointing out thetheoretical inconsistencies in Structural Transformation, questioningHabermas’s idealization of the bourgeois public sphere and its achieve-ments, and disputing the historical validity of his description andanalysis (Holub, 1994). Theorists working in the tradition of agonisticdemocracy have recently extended the theory’s career as a flashpoint forintellectual dispute with their criticisms of Habermas’s concept of thedeliberative public sphere and its emphasis on the desirability of attain-ing a rational consensus through public debate (Dean, 1996a; Mouffe,1999, 2000; Villa, 1992).

Agonistic critics of Habermas’s theory of the public sphere havetaken up earlier themes of Habermas’s other critics – including theanalysis of power and his treatment of subaltern public spheres – whileemphasizing one element in particular: his examination of the politicsof difference, including the political contestation that takes place asgroups address issues of group identity and culture in public debate.Although the intellectual foundations of these criticisms vary – somecritics look to French critical theorists such as Foucault, Derrida,Lyotard, and Deleuze for inspiration, while others seek theoreticalassistance from Arendt – they share the common conviction thatHabermas’s theory presents an under-theorized account of difference:empirically, it has little to say about how political contestation over

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questions of cultural, sexual, or ethnic difference shapes the contours ofpublic debate (Calhoun, 1997); and normatively, the theory is ‘unableto attribute any emancipatory potential to . . . otherness’ (Coole, 1997:221). While some have argued that it is possible to correct theseproblems within Habermas’s framework, others have taken a moreradical approach. They have argued that it is only by jettisoningHabermas’s theory and its outdated and dangerous attachments to con-sensus, political transparency, and universal norms, that the analysis ofthe public sphere within democratic theory can move forward. Thealternative is to adopt an agonistic or contestatory model of the publicsphere if theorists are to deal effectively with the politics of differencein the public arena. Scholars working in this vein stress that politicalstruggles over questions of identity are endemic in the contemporarypublic sphere. Indeed, we should not expect anything less, givenhumanity’s fundamental inability to reconcile recalcitrant differencesthrough the creation of a common political discourse or in reference touniversally valid norms. In light of this, the appropriate political projectconsists of a ‘politics engaged in the endless subversion of codes’ (Villa,1992: 719). Here I will argue that this approach does not live up to itsradical promise: it fails to offer a more powerful, difference-sensitiveapproach to the public sphere. This failure suggests that abandoningHabermas’s framework does not represent the best way to develop amore powerful critical theory of the public sphere.

As representative examples of this more radical approach, I wouldlike to examine recent work by Jodi Dean and Chantal Mouffe. Boththeorists, citing the difficulties Habermas has in including analyses ofdifference, the political contestation over questions of identity, and theplay of political power involved in such contestation, have made similarcalls for abandoning Habermas’s theory of the public sphere in favor offrameworks based on contestatory, agonistic conceptions of politics.Working with the concept of civil society, Dean (1996a) argues thatHabermas’s continued reliance on the public sphere as his normativemodel of democratic politics impedes critical theory’s move from totalityto multiplicity. In Dean’s view unless critical theory jettisons the conceptof the public sphere in favor of a model centered around a conceptionof civil society as a ‘series of interconnected discursive spheres’ (1996b:91), it will be unable to develop a ‘post-conventional conception of amulticultural, democratic society’ (1996a: 222). For Mouffe the theor-etical and political stakes are equally high. Habermas, she charges,works under the illusion that political questions, especially those thataddress questions of justice and ethics, can be adjudicated rationally. Asa result, Habermas elides the reality of power and antagonism in thepublic sphere, and consequently he fails to envision adequately ‘thenature of a pluralistic democratic public sphere’(Mouffe, 1999: 745). In

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Mouffe’s (2000: 104) view the solution to this problem is to adopt ago-nistic pluralism as a new model of democratic public politics, a modelthat accepts that ‘every consensus exists as a temporary result of a pro-visional hegemony, as a stabilization of power, and that it always entailssome form of exclusion’.

For both commentators, Habermas’s failure to provide a satis-factory analysis of the contestatory politics of difference is more thanjust an incidental feature of his theory: in fact, it is an unavoidableproduct of the foundational assumptions with which Habermas hasworked. Surveying Habermas’s early work on the public sphere, Dean(1996a: 228) identifies its three fundamental theoretical flaws: theadoption of an homogenous and homogenizing conception of the publicsphere; the denial of the constitutive role played by the exclusion ofmarginal groups, especially women, in the public sphere’s development;and, finally, the formulation of a concept of political subjectivity thatbelies the ‘conflicts and multiplicities already present’ in any subject. Asa result of these flaws, Habermas elides the significant role played byparticular gender, racial, cultural, and ethnic differences in the publicsphere’s development.

Dean is a careful critic, and thus she acknowledges that Habermashas refined his concept of the public sphere in works subsequent toStructural Transformation of the Public Sphere. She cites Habermas’srecognition of the plurality of public spheres and the malleability of thepublic–private distinction as elements that have allowed him to movehis theory toward a greater appreciation for multiplicity and pluralityin the public sphere. Still, Dean (1996a: 231) feels that Habermas,because he insists on retaining the public sphere as the anchor for hisconception of deliberative politics, falls far short of providing a theorythat ‘can do justice to the multiplicity and diversity of post-conventionalsocieties’.

She traces this inability to three new flaws in Habermas’s revisedframework. First, he elides the inherent presence of power in public dis-course. ‘For Habermas,’ Dean (1996a: 234) evocatively notes, ‘powerinfiltrates.’ She continues: ‘[power] comes from outside into areas previ-ously untouched by its manipulative and regulatory forces – as if theseareas were not from the outset already influenced or even constructed bya variety of processes and relationships of power’ (ibid.). Habermas itseems is a bit of a Pollyanna. Worse still, he leads us astray by implyingthat the public sphere, as a sphere devoid of the distortions of power,can produce rational discourses when in fact such discourses are theresult of struggles for political advantage. Secondly, Habermas’s focus oncommunicative rationality suggests a monolingual conception of thepublic sphere in the sense that he privileges a certain conception of ration-ality at the expense of others. Such privileging misses the essential point

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that ‘if we are truly to conceive of multiple discursive spheres, we mustallow for a variety of types of communication and representation’ (ibid.).Finally, Habermas’s focus on the procedures of public discussion, drawsattention away from the bodily and material influences on discourses incivil society, that is, he fails to take into account how ‘discourses andsystems of representation construct our understandings of our bodies,their boundaries, and their meanings’ (1996a: 235). These three flawscombine to bring the original problem of homogeneity back with avengeance. Indeed, so burdened is Habermas’s theory, Dean argues, thatit ends up misdirecting attention toward ‘closure, answers, and categoriz-ation of discourse’ and away from ‘openness, questioning, and an accept-ance of the messiness of political styles and engagements’ (1996a: 233).

Like Dean, Mouffe argues that Habermas’s theory presents a static,one-dimensional conception of the public sphere. She faults his modelof deliberative democracy for ignoring the role that power and politicalconflict play in politics generally and in the formation of collective iden-tities specifically. Mouffe traces this flaw to Habermas’s adamant insist-ence that political questions can be decided rationally and that a publicexchange of arguments and counter-arguments that takes place underconditions of equality, impartiality, and openness is the most suitablemeans of producing rational political opinion. To maintain such aposition in the face of the ample evidence testifying to the irrational,power-soaked nature of contemporary politics, underscores the unreal-istic, idealistic nature of Habermas’s model, Mouffe believes. What ismore, the impediments to rational public discourse are not, asHabermas seems naively to believe, only a matter of faulty institutionaldesign or of the domination of politics by vested interests. Instead, theseimpediments belong to the very being of democracy, they are ‘onto-logical’ not ‘empirical’ (Mouffe, 1999: 751). Mouffe incorporates bothWittgenstein’s argument that agreement between individuals is estab-lished not through significations but through a common form of life,and Slavoj Žižek’s claim that a discursive field without distortion isimpossible, to bolster her contention that language and communicationare never neutral: they are constituted by relations of power and fraughtwith particular ethical commitments that privilege certain forms ofargument and the groups that make them. The very conditions thatmake it possible for human beings to communicate – the grounding ofcommunication in specific forms of life, the need for master signifiersauthoritatively to order speech – simultaneously rule out the possibilityof Habermas’s model of rational public communication. Difference andpower are part and parcel of democracy.

Given such fundamental theoretical failings, the rescue ofHabermas’s model seems hardly possible. Indeed, Dean and Mouffeboth advocate its abandonment, although it should be noted that Dean

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is more sympathetic to Habermas’s overall discourse theory of demo-cracy. Dean (1996a: 236) suggests abandoning the public sphere in favorof a theory of civil society ‘as the site of relationships of recognition’, amove she feels will enhance critical theory’s ability to acknowledge andcritique the exclusionary practices that undermine contemporary demo-cratic practice. The focus on civil society and relationships of recog-nition means a move away from considering discursive rationality as theprimary indicator of the validity of social practices and toward aninterrogation of the forms of degradation and disrespect that threatenhuman identity and cause human suffering. This re-mapping of criticaltheory’s terrain, Dean feels, corrects the flaws in Habermas’s model ofthe public sphere. Critical theory can now directly address the bodily,psychic and emotional harms that Habermas, according to Dean, rele-gates to secondary importance by assigning them to the domain ofethics, tradition, and culture. It is also a better position to analyze powerand political contestation. Most importantly a critical theory based oncivil society and relationships of recognition draws attention to the issueof difference. Resisting the temptation to ‘predefine political debate interms of a given set of discursive rules’, Dean’s alternative model ofpublic politics remains open to the variety of ways in which relation-ships of difference influence the dynamics of public debate (Dean,1996a: 238).

Mouffe’s alternative model, agonistic pluralism, reformulates thebasic question that the theory of the public sphere asks. Instead ofexploring how citizens can remove power from politics, the questionMouffe feels animates Habermas’s theory, agonistic pluralism asks howcitizens can constitute forms of power compatible with democraticvalues. In Mouffe’s alternative model, the normative goal of politics isnot freedom from power, but freedom from hostile and violent politicalrelationships, or what Mouffe (1999: 755) terms ‘antagonism’.Adopting this analytical lens entails a concomitant shift in one’s viewof the nature of politics. Unlike with the deliberative model, the task ofdemocratic politics is no longer the elimination of the passions and theirrelegation to the private sphere in order to make rational consensus inthe public sphere possible. Instead, the goal is to ‘mobilize thosepassions towards the promotion of democratic designs’ (ibid.: 755–6).Productively engaging power, conflict, and the passionate side ofpolitics, agonistic democracy, Mouffe concludes, is at once more realis-tic and more sensitive to the importance of difference in contemporarypolitics. It is, as she notes, ‘more receptive than the deliberative demo-cracy model to the multiplicity of voices that a pluralist society encom-passes, and to the complexity of the power structure that this networkof differences implies’ (ibid.: 757).

Dean and Mouffe both offer fundamental critiques of Habermas’s

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theory of the public sphere and his conception of deliberative demo-cracy. Identifying what they consider to be fundamental flaws inHabermas’s framework, they propose making a radical break with histheory in order to adopt alternative models of the public sphere. But doDean and Mouffe succeed? That is, do they really offer viable alterna-tives to Habermas’s framework, ones that are, as they claim, more real-istic in their empirical and sociological estimations of the possibility ofa conflict-free, rational democratic politics and that evidence morenuance in their normative analyses of the contemporary public sphere?

Ultimately, no. Dean and Mouffe do draw attention to some poten-tially problematic aspects of Habermas’s framework – his analyses ofpower, political conflict, and the exclusion of minority groups. Yetshortcomings in their readings of Habermas’s work lead both critics tooverstate the significance of the issues they identify and to overlook thesignificant strengths of Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, strengthsthat ultimately recommend it as a more powerful and desirable modelfor theorizing the contemporary public sphere. Habermas presents amore sophisticated empirical and normative analysis of the publicsphere and the politics of difference than either Dean or Mouffe givehim credit for. In so far as this is true, serious doubts exist about thenecessity, and indeed the desirability, of abandoning Habermas’s ana-lytical framework.

We can trace the agonistic or contestatory perspective’s question-able interpretations of Habermas’s work to a number of factors. First,both Dean and Mouffe fail to provide sufficient readings of Habermas’stheory. They overlook the significant analyses of power, politicalconflict, and even difference that Habermas has provided over thecourse of his career. Similarly, they do not give enough due to the signifi-cant alterations Habermas has introduced into his theoretical frame-work, changes that have directly contributed to his ability to addressmany of the very issues Dean and Mouffe feel he continually neglects.But beyond these partial readings of Habermas, his interlocutors makea second, more fundamental mistake: they do not sufficiently acknow-ledge the reconstructive methodology Habermas employs in the studyof politics. As a result, they discuss Habermas’s theory in terms – idealistic/realistic analysis, normative/empirical theory – that do notreally apply to Habermas’s work. Adopting a frame of reference foreignto Habermas’s framework, Dean and Mouffe cannot adequatelyevaluate what they seek to transcend.3

Although in many respects they offer sensitive readings ofHabermas’s work, Dean and Mouffe’s readings are not sensitive enoughto acknowledge when Habermas does provide analyses of power,conflict, and political contestation over issues of difference: all phenom-ena the two commentators feel must be contained in any contemporary

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theory of public politics. Examples of Habermas’s acknowledgment andanalysis of these aspects of politics can be found throughout his workon the public sphere and the theory of communicative action (see, forexample, Habermas, 1973, 1982, 1991a). Indeed, even StructuralTransformation of the Public Sphere, a work that critics frequently offeras the quintessential example of Habermas’s inability adequately toconfront issues of power and conflict, contains a sophisticated analysisof power’s role in both the development and the transformation of thepublic sphere. As Habermas (1989: 82) points out in his discussion ofthe public sphere’s initial development, this arena of public debate arisesin the political contest between the emerging bourgeoisie and the officials of the absolutist state; the bourgeoisie ultimately wins its auth-ority to legislate only through a ‘tough struggle’ with the old guard. Inthe book’s second half when he discusses the transformation of thepublic sphere, Habermas re-works Walter Benjamin’s category of theaura, adapting it from the realm of aesthetics to that of politics in orderto provide a supple analysis of how organized interests employ theirsuperior resources of political power to instrumentalize public debateand conjure up the aura of popular legitimacy for their self-interestedpursuits. In other words, the issues of power and political conflict havehad their place in Habermas’s theory from its earliest stages, even if theyhave not always been in the foreground of his analysis.

Yet despite his recognition of the role played by power and domi-nation in public debate, Habermas, to his credit, does not reduce politicsto the struggle over and use of political power – a move Dean andespecially Mouffe often come close to making. Instead, he offers ananalysis that is at once more subtle and more realistic: it acknowledgesthe play of power in politics but also the real role that rationality andnon-strategic political communication play in shaping public debate.Thus what Dean and Mouffe interpret as a preoccupation with idealis-tic aspects of public debate is actually part of Habermas’s attempt toprovide a more comprehensive analysis of the public sphere, one thatavoids a one-dimensional, reductionist depiction of politics as simplypower politics.

As Habermas has developed his social theory he has introduced intohis framework innovations that have successfully built upon his originalanalysis of the public sphere and increased his ability to analyze power,conflict and difference in the public sphere. To cite some of the moreprominent examples, he has included a much more differentiatedanalysis of the public sphere’s main actors, focused in greater detail onthe mechanisms of exclusion that undermine the democratic potentialof public debate, and placed the constitutive pluralism of modernsocieties in the foreground of his analysis of public politics.4 Thanks tosuch changes, Habermas can now, among other things, locate the use

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of illegitimate power in public politics with more precision, acknow-ledge the importance of cultural membership and collective identity asimportant supports of participation in public debate, and also identifythose political actors most likely to show support for the issues raisedby minority groups.

In her criticisms of Habermas, Mouffe completely ignores suchchanges to Habermas’s framework and their significance for his theory’sability to analyze the politics of difference. As a result, she provides aninaccurate evaluation of Habermas’s framework. Dean, by contrast, isa more sensitive reader. She notes, for example, Habermas’s acknow-ledgment of the valuable role played by subaltern public spheres inincreasing the diversity of political debate and his recognition that theboundary between public and private spheres is itself ‘an issue to bedemocratically determined’ (Dean, 1996a: 230). Nonetheless, she doesnot appreciate the full ramifications of these alterations. In integratingthese and other changes, Habermas is now better able to underscore thecomplexity and multiplicity of discourses that constitute contemporarypublic politics (see, for example, Habermas, 1994). Thus, for instance,he can acknowledge the important role that political debates betweensocial groups over their differing interpretation of needs play in thepublic sphere (ibid.). Moreover, in his writings on multiculturalism,Habermas has examined how relationships of mutual recognition facili-tate the democratic political participation of citizens, and he has alsoexplored the harms suffered by individuals when such recognition isdenied to them (Habermas, 1994, 1996). He examines, in other words,the exact phenomena Dean faults him for ignoring.

This interpretation of Habermas’s work suggests that it providestools for the empirical analysis of politics that are more powerful thaneither Dean or Mouffe can appreciate. In so far as this is true, it suggeststhat the need to abandon the Habermasian framework is not nearly asacute as his two critics claim. But Dean and Mouffe do not only focuson Habermas’s empirical analysis of public politics, they also questionthe validity of his theory based on what they see as fundamental flawsin his normative conception of democratic public politics. They areespecially critical of what they see as Habermas’s advocacy of a publicsphere based on the principles of rationality, consensus, and politicaldiscussions free of power. In Dean and Mouffe’s view the advocacy ofthese principles of public debate necessarily leads Habermas to devaluethe normative significance of difference and political contestation.

Yet in this respect Dean and Mouffe misconstrue the normativecharacter of Habermas’s theory, in large part because they fail to givesufficient credence to the reconstructive aspects of his theory. AsHabermas himself has noted, he is not a normative theorist in the tra-ditional sense: he does not design the ‘norms of a “well-ordered” society

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on the drafting table’ (in Pensky, 1994: 101). The key distinction hereis between ideals of communicative interaction – rational exchange ofviewpoints, the avoidance of force and manipulation, the equal inclu-sion of perspectives – as norms of action that individuals can or shouldadopt and these same ideals conceived of as unavoidable conditions ofany interaction in which speaker and hearer raise and discuss validity-claims. Contrary to the interpretations of Dean and Mouffe, Habermasdoes not offer ideals such as the rational exchange of opinions or non-manipulative dialogue as norms toward which individuals should strivein their desire to secure the good life. From Habermas’s perspective, thearticulation of basic norms of law and morality falls outside the domainof moral theory. Moral theory’s charge is, instead, meta-ethical: it is todevelop the principles and criteria of fair procedure that should governany process of argumentation through which individuals attempt eitherto restore the validity of a norm that has been contested or to arrive ata valid new norm (Habermas, 1991b; also Heath, 2001). Habermasderives these principles and criteria from his formal-pragmatic analysisof language, the goal of which is the reconstruction of those idealizingsuppositions such as the non-coercive exchange of opinions that anyspeaker must assume when engaging in rational argumentation. Hetakes this empirical turn toward the use of language in order to providean account of such principles and criteria without, however, remainingbeholden to culturally or historically specific justifications and thusrisking dogmatism in the process. It is upon the basis of this recon-struction that Habermas derives his theory of discourse ethics.

Two aspects of this reconstruction should be emphasized here inorder to throw the difference between Habermas’s project and those ofDean and Mouffe into greater relief. First, the theoretical reconstruc-tion of the pre-theoretical knowledge that subjects possess regardingwhat makes normative argumentation possible is fallible. It itself mustbe subject to debate and compete with other ethical approaches to offerthe most convincing account of ‘empirically existing moral and legalideas’ (Habermas, 1991b: 97). Secondly, in reconstructing those ideal-izing suppositions operative in argumentation, Habermas (1991b) doesnot automatically take the position that these ideals should then havethe power to regulate action. Such an argument could indeed be made,but it would shift the focus of the theory back to that of traditionalphilosophical ethics and would also alter the role played by the theorist.No longer a scientific investigator seeking to determine the context-transcendent suppositions that make argumentation as such possible,the theorist would switch roles and become a concerned citizen partici-pating with others in her particular society’s ongoing discussion aboutthe legitimacy of its social norms. For their part, Dean and Mouffe doplay the role of participants in such a normative debate; they intervene

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in the larger normative discourse about the political values and normsproper to contemporary societies distinguished by high levels of culturalpluralism and advocate the adoption of a politics based on contestationand the recognition of difference. This is, of course, a perfectly legiti-mate pursuit, but it is not the one that Habermas is engaged in. As henotes,

[M]y references to idealizations have nothing to do with ideals that thesolitary theorist sets up in opposition to reality; I am referring only to thenormative contents that are encountered in practice, which we cannot dowithout, since language, together with the idealizations it demands ofspeakers, is simply constitutive for socio-cultural forms of life. (Pensky,1994: 102)

Keeping the distinction that Habermas draws here in mind is importantif we are to avoid Dean and Mouffe’s mistake of imposing non-appli-cable standards of critique to Habermas’s work. In taking Habermas onhis own terms, we gain a deeper appreciation for his attempt to decon-struct some of the basic distinctions that social science and politicaltheory employ, including the distinction between empiricism and pre-scriptivism.5 Keeping this distinction in mind is also significant becauseit allows us to understand how Habermas’s theory can emphasize therational and consensual elements operative in everyday speech andnormative discourse and still facilitate an agonistic approach to demo-cratic theory and practice. Illustrating this capacity of Habermas’stheory is the task of the next section.

Part II: Theory, practice, and agonistic politics

Habermas’s recent contribution to political theory, Between Facts andNorms, opens with a brief sketch of the shaky edifice of practical reason.The growing complexity of modern societies has rendered the moderntradition’s previous attempts to anchor practical reason in the capacityof individuals, either as private subjects who adopted the role of bour-geois or citoyen or as members of a society that finds its unity in thestate, deeply problematic. More recent attempts to rehabilitate theexplanatory power of practical reason, such as philosophical anthro-pology, also fail to provide a sufficient basis of ‘norms for a reasonableconduct of life’ (Habermas, 1998: 2). And while the constitutionaldemocracies of the West provide examples worth pursuing, their utilityis limited for those born outside the political traditions that continue tolend support to these democracies. Those who come from outside thedemocratic tradition still face the fundamental task of finding criteriaand reasons they can employ to ‘distinguish what is worth preserving

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from what should be rejected’ in humanity’s democratic inheritance(ibid.: 2–3). The obvious importance of the task, but the simultaneousfailure of modern philosophy to provide a foundation for practicalreason, helps to explain, Habermas notes, ‘the attractiveness of the onlyoption that seems to remain available: the brash denial of reason alto-gether, whether in the dramatic form of a post-Nietzschean critique ofreason or . . . of a systems functionalism that neutralizes anything that,from the participant perspective, appears obligatory or at all meaning-ful’ (ibid.: 3).

Not content to accept such a denial, Habermas has chosen insteadto map out an alternative concept of reason, substituting communicativefor practical reason. On the basis of this conception of reason and thetheory of communicative action of which it is part, Habermas’s ultimategoal is provide a theory which supports the rational justification of bothmoral norms and norms of political justice and democratic legitimacy.The shift from practical to communicative reason is important for ourpurposes because it significantly alters the relationship between theoryand practice. The tradition of modern political theory envisioned adirect link between practical reason and social practice. In transposingthe concept of reason into the linguistic medium, Habermas attenuatesthis link. He does not offer individuals the knowledge necessary toorient their actions; his theory is neither ‘informative nor immediatelypractical’ (1998: 5). Instead, he employs his theory to describe andreconstruct the human rationality at work in everyday life; that is, heattempts to show ‘how the use of language and social interaction ingeneral necessarily rely on notions of validity, such as truth, normativerightness, sincerity, and authenticity’ (Rehg, 1998: xiii). This rationality,which is actualized through the medium of communication aimed atreaching understanding, forms ‘an ensemble of conditions’ that enable,but also limit, the action of actors and the reproduction of the struc-tures of everyday life (Habermas, 1998: 4). Communicative rationalityis not, however, a subjective capacity that individuals possess and thatwould tell them what they ought to do. This is a decisive point. It meansthat a theory that aims to describe communicative rationality will notproduce prescriptions for individual action; it will not tell individualshow they should best lead their lives or how they should best organizetheir society (Habermas, 1998).

In terms of the relationship between Habermas’s theory and agon-istic politics, the attenuated nature of the theory–practice link opens upa space for political contestation. At first glance this claim must seemfar-fetched. Habermas never explicitly endorses an agonistic politicalposture or publicly agitates for a political practice based on agonisticprinciples. In so far as this is true, it calls into question the idea thatHabermas’s theory requires an agonistic approach to politics. What

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Habermas’s theory does do, though, is support a theoretical debate andpolitical practice conducive to a consideration of agonism as a theoryof politics and a strategy of political action. It does so in two ways.First, by not prescribing a normative framework individuals shouldadopt, Habermas’s theory provides them room to decide the amount ofpolitical contestation proper to their particular historical situation.Secondly, on the basis of the reconstruction of the manner in whichrational validity-claims can be found in all realms of social life, includ-ing the rules and practices that individuals make use of when partici-pating in public debate, Habermas provides standards of critiqueindividuals can employ to contest illegitimate norms. In other words,Habermas goes beyond simply accommodating agonism within hisframework to provide some of the important means through whichpolitical actors can test the desirability of political contestation as aningredient in the continuing project of democratization. This is indirectsupport to be sure, but to do more would undermine the autonomy ofpolitical actors as participants in ‘the process of enlightenment’ and asjudges of the risks and expectations of political action (Habermas, 1973:32). After all, ‘[d]ecisions for the political struggle cannot at the outsetbe justified theoretically and then be carried out organizationally’ (ibid.:33).

One key source of this support comes from the theory of the publicsphere itself. The public sphere is, as Habermas (1998: 373) updates itsdefinition in Between Facts and Norms, ‘a highly complex network thatbranches out into a multitude of overlapping international, national,regional, local, and subcultural arenas’. When functioning at their best,these arenas are accessible spaces of political debate. Sites of spon-taneous action and participation bordering on the anarchic, these nodesin the public network feature lively discussions in which actors, facedwith the constraints and opportunities presented by their concrete situ-ation, not only bundle their specific viewpoints into an influentialpolitical opinion, but also have the opportunity to discover their ownindividual potential as political actors. At its best, in other words, thepublic sphere is one of the central sites where individuals can partici-pate in the self-determination of their society’s political path anddiscover and actualize in the process their status as free and equalcitizens. At their worst, the various arenas that make up the publicsphere lack any of this creative and transformative political character.Instead, they are sites of manipulation and passivity as powerful actors,deploying their superior resources of political power, cultural prestige,and financial strength, exploit the natural openness of the public inorder to push their particular projects on a politically demobilized cit-izenry. Securing plebiscitary acclaim, not fostering participation in theprocess of collective self-determination, becomes the goal of such actors.

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Habermas’s social theory is designed to support the first, best-casescenario of public politics. This support comes in some of the usualforms one expects from a theory constructed with practical intent. Thecomponents of his social theory – the two-tiered rendering of society assystem and life-world, the concept of colonization, the sociologicalmodel of the public sphere – are supposed to aid the empirical investi-gation of democratic systems, providing the conceptual tools and theor-etical generalizations needed to better locate the potential fordemocratization present in modern, complex societies. Such an investi-gation entails, in part, the analysis of power constellations that suppressand distort the rationality ‘announced in the teleological and inter-subjective structures of social reproduction’, structures to whichHabermas’s social theory is designed to draw our attention (Habermas,1982: 221). This is the negative moment of his social theory: the height-ening of awareness for the distorting effects of power. The theory’spositive moment comes in sensitizing individuals to the ‘stubbornly tran-scending power’ of rationality contained in everyday life, a power thatis ‘renewed with each act of unconstrained understanding, with eachmoment of living together in solidarity, of successful individuation, andof saving emancipation’ (ibid.). In both its negative and positivemoments, the theory plays a clarifying and sensitizing role by provid-ing analytical tools and concepts individuals can employ in order to con-struct a critical analysis of their particular political situation.

Habermas’s theory of discourse ethics offers support of a differentkind to the democratic project. Democratization is the goal of his socialtheory. As he notes:

We are faced with the problem of how capabilities for self-organization canbe developed to such an extent within autonomous public spheres thatradical-democratic processes of will-formation can come to have a decisiveimpact on the regulatory mechanisms and marginal conditions of media-steered subsystems in a lifeworld oriented toward use values, toward endsin general. (Habermas, 1991a: 261)

But while Habermas’s social theory is designed to further the process ofdemocratization, it has relatively little to say about the institutions andnormative framework that would result from this process. Here thetheory of discourse ethics is significant, not so much because it suppliessubstantive guidelines for generating norms in those cases when theyhave been contested, but because it offers a procedure for ‘testing thevalidity of norms that are being proposed and hypothetically consideredfor adoption’ (Habermas, 1991b: 103). It is only political actors whosupply the normative content for any practical discourse, and it is theywho must engage in the process of trying to secure a valid norm. Dis-course ethics, for its part, ‘articulates the criteria which guide practical

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discourses and serve as the standard for distinguishing between legiti-mate and illegitimate norms’ (Cohen, 1988: 316). The theory has adouble utility then, offering both possible procedures for arriving atvalid norms and a critical standard for assessing the legitimacy ofparticular practices of normative justification.

In both of these instances, Habermas’s theory stands at a consider-able distance from history in the sense that the theory provides certaintools and procedures actors can take with them to the arena of politicalpractice, even as the theory itself remains outside of this arena. But thereis another sense in which the theory is in history, that is, more directlyinvolved in the political project of democratic self-organization. It is inhistory in so far as Habermas’s theory contributes to the historical con-stitution of a particular public space in which scholars and citizens cancontribute to the political discourse about the democratic transform-ation of modern societies. In providing the conceptual tools for thesystematic study of the public sphere, Habermas contributes, forexample, to the development of a more or less coherent language inwhich scholars can proceed with an analysis of the public sphere anddeliberative democracy. At the same time, Habermas himself continuesto intervene in this international public sphere in a variety of modes,including engaging in critical self-reflection about his own previouswork and analyzing the work of others on the topics of public politicsand deliberative democracy. In doing so, Habermas contributes to thereproduction of this particular communicative network.

Whether in history or not, Habermas’s theory opens up a space fordemocratic reflection and democratic action, a space that necessarilycontains room for a consideration of agonistic politics. In this senseHabermas’s theory facilitates the agonistic approach to politics. Thereare, I think, very few people who would claim that contestation andagonistic political relations are not part and parcel of politics, do notbelong to the very fabric of political practice. Habermas certainly hasnever denied that this is the case. Indeed, from the very earliest he hasrecognized and commented on conflict, especially the conflict over inter-ests, as a characteristic dimension of modern politics. His always ener-getic, sometimes very pointed, interventions in popular political debatealso demonstrate a fundamental appreciation for what agonistictheorists consider to be among the essential ingredients of politics – thepassionate advocacy of a particular position, a refusal to shy away fromconfrontation, and an embrace of the ‘metaphorical, rhetorical, playful,embodied aspects of speech’ (Young, 1990: 118).

The agonistic model of politics is, in part, a theory of politics, onethat claims that political contest is a fundamental characteristic ofpolitical practice. Beyond this, it is an ethical theory that urges theadoption of political norms that will facilitate a politics based on

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contest. Finally, it also seems to imply a specific strategic approach topolitics, one that again recommends the value of conflict and confron-tation as a means of furthering radical democracy. All of these positionsare, of course, themselves subjects for discussion. In other words, agon-istic theorists are themselves dependent on the public sphere, on pro-cedures for testing the validity of norms, and on the conceptualresources that help to identify sources of democratic consciousness, allof which are resources that Habermas’s theory provides. What is thestatus of political contest as a form of action? Is it the fundamentalform? Or derivative of something else? As a political strategy, to whatextent is the agonistic approach effective? Does the endless subversionof codes and norms contribute to democratic politics or simply topolitical frustration? In supplying the theoretical tools and contributingto the historical constitution of the public sphere, Habermas promotesdebate, discussion, and contestation around exactly these questions. Itis in this limited, but nonetheless significant, sense that his theory facili-tates the further development of agonistic politics.

Conclusion

I have made two related arguments in this essay. First, I argued that theagonistic critique of Habermas’s theory of the public sphere fails to offera convincing set of reasons in favour of abandoning the Habermasianframework for a theory based on the agonistic principles. In fact, sucha move would entail a significant loss in analytical power and norma-tive insight. Expanding the scope of the essay, I then argued thatHabermas’s theory of the public sphere read in conjunction with otheraspects of this social theory allows us to question the sharp distinctiondemocratic theorists are prone to draw between consensus and politicalcontestation. If acceptable, what are the wider implications of thesearguments for the development of the theory of the public sphere anddemocratic theory generally?

In response to the various criticisms of his analysis of the bourgeoisand post-bourgeois public spheres, Habermas has continued to defendthe basic outline of his theory of the public sphere. Despite the criticismit has faced, Habermas has argued that his theoretical frameworknonetheless continues to provide the appropriate analytical perspectivefor investigating contemporary public politics. The theory is particularlyuseful, Habermas has claimed, for analyzing how citizens contest thedomination of public debate by organized political and economic inter-ests and how these citizens are thereby able to open the public sphereto a wider spectrum of topics, values and political perspectives(Habermas, 1992: 455). Certainly one implication of this essay is that

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Habermas’s claim enjoys a basic credibility. His theory of the publicsphere is sound; it certainly does not suffer from the flaws identified bythe theory’s agonistic critics. To the extent that this is true, it suggeststhat a potentially more fruitful path for future research lies in the direc-tion of investigating the constituent parts of Habermas’s framework inan effort to add conceptual and empirical specificity to his rendering ofthe public sphere.

A hallmark of Habermas’s social theory is its attempt to theorizethe relationship between normative models of democracy and therealities of political practice in modern, complex polities. One ofHabermas’s goals is to provide a theory of law and democracy thatavoids, on the one hand, the ‘danger of losing contact with social reality’without, however, ‘screen[ing] out all normative aspects’ of contem-porary politics (Habermas, 1998: 6). Habermas’s investigation of thepublic sphere takes place within this context. He provides such adetailed sociological definition of the public sphere in order to ‘give amore precise form to, and seek a tentative answer to, the question ofwhether and how a constitutionally regulated circulation of powermight be established’ (ibid.: 354). If the answer Habermas provides istentative, it is also abstract. Various elements of Habermas’s definitionscreen out some of the variability in the types of public spheres presentin modern democracies. Thus, for example, some of the conceptualcouplets Habermas employs as building blocks of the category of thepublic sphere – center/periphery, success-orientated actors/actors whoemploy communicative action, manipulated/non-manipulated publicopinion – are very broadly drawn and do not always reflect the com-plexity of public politics. As commentators, for example, have pointedout, actors regularly engage in both strategic and communicative actionin the course of their political interventions in the public sphere(Johnson, 1991; James, 2002). Moreover, Habermas articulates thecategory of the public sphere without any reference to the variousdifferent ways in which procedures of opinion and will-formation areorganized within the set of democracies. Thus, for example, he does notdraw a distinction between the public sphere in presidential as opposedto parliamentary systems, nor does he address the effect different typesof party systems might have on the democratic quality of public opinion.These illustrations are meant to suggest that there is considerable roomwithin Habermas’s framework for conceptual specification and for anempirical and comparative turn in public sphere research. Such a turnwould supply systematic investigations of ‘actually existing’ publicspheres and thus multiply the points of contact between the theory ofthe public sphere and the practice of public politics.

Finally in terms of the wider context of democratic theory, this essaysuggests the advantage of quickly moving away from the standard

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treatment of consensus and contestation. Such a move would allow amore complex pattern of interaction between deliberative and agonistictheories of democracy to emerge. This essay has taken the perspectiveof deliberative democracy and made the case that the deliberativeframework stands in a positive sum relationship to agonistic concep-tions of democracy. It would be interesting to witness the degree towhich a similar argument could be made from the agonistic perspective,that is, an argument that would address the ways in which political con-testation can support the achievement of consensus. It is possible tomake such an argument only if democratic theory moves away from itsreliance on the idea that consensus and contestation are necessarilymutually exclusive aspects of political life.

Department of Political Science, University of California San Diego,San Diego, CA, USA

Notes

I would like to thank Shannon Stimson and Paul Thomas for their commentson earlier drafts of this essay.

1 The original reads, ‘Aber wie sollten wir die Verallgemeinerungsfähigkeitvon Interessen prüfen können, wenn nicht im Diskurs?’ (emphasis inoriginal; my translation) (Habermas, 1981: 324).

2 The opposition between political contestation/conflict and consensus isinfluential throughout democratic theory and not simply in the particulardebate between deliberative democrats and theorists of agonisticdemocracy. For example, see the recent work by Raymond Geuss (2001),Ian Shapiro (1999), and Yasemin Soysal (1997).

3 Here it is important to draw a distinction between Dean’s article ‘CivilSociety: Beyond the Public Sphere’ and her book The Solidarity ofStrangers: Feminism After Identity Politics. In the latter Dean does includea discussion of Habermas’s theoretical reconstruction of the idealizationspresupposed by human speech and relates this to the political contestabil-ity of norms (see Dean, 1996b: 153–65). At the same time, this does notalter her argument that the public sphere should be replaced by a modelbased on civil society. The critique I am offering here applies more to Dean’sarticle than to her book.

4 In an interview focussing on the aftermath of German unification,Habermas makes his recognition of power politics explicit. Commenting onthe unification process, Habermas notes, ‘Opening up legitimate spaces forstrategic action is just what such a legally formed political order is supposedto do. The politics of the chancellor’s office . . . were naturally legal; they

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stayed within the space that was constitutionally conceded by the govern-ment’ (Pensky, 1994: 105).

5 ‘Prescriptivism in its extreme form maintains that all value standards ofcitizenship theory should be treated as prescriptions that are immune tochallenge by evidence from social science. The standards in citizenship theory,it would be said, are “prescription[s] for a worthwhile policy which shouldbe sought after”. No evidence about what men do or can do in present politiescould ordinarily undermine such prescriptions’ (Thompson, 1970: 30).

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