A Not-Very-New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

• In Event: Habermas's Structural Transformation of the Digital Public Sphere

Abstract

Jürgen Habermas’ latest contribution to political theory is a timely intervention that deserves a wide readership. For those us struggling to make sense of the links between and among democratic backsliding, digitalization, and populism, Habermas, as always, has many insightful things to say. Despite my basic sympathy for his vision of free-wheeling, deliberative public spheres as democracy’s core, I am unconvinced that the allegedly new transformation of the public sphere he diagnoses is, in fact, especially novel. In this paper, I pose some critical questions about Habermas’ comments about right-wing authoritarian populism and its sources, and also his views of political and social exclusion as a motor driving populism. I fear that Habermas’ social democratic orientation fails to provide a framework that allows us to capture core features of contemporary authoritarian populism. Finally, I argue that the recent trends Habermas identifies are in fact congruent with longstanding patterns, including some he vividly described in the original version of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962).

Author

• William E. Scheuerman, Indiana University, Bloomington