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Globalization and Democracy 223

individuals should be able to debate the fundamental principles on which
society should be based for the common good, accepting only the reasons

put forward by the better argument as justification of the validity of their
conclusions. Habermas ’ s main concern in this work is with the degenera-
tion of the public sphere as a result of modernization: the growth of
large - scale bureaucratic organizations, like political parties, replaced the
role of critical individuals; public life became more a matter of negotiating
interests between parties, administration, and special interest groups than
attempting to reach agreement about the objective common good; and
the growth of mass communications made citizens into the passive recipi-
ents of products of “ the culture industry ” and worked to manufacture
consent without genuine deliberation (Habermas, 1989 ). Nevertheless, in
his subsequent work, Habermas tried to develop the normative conse-
quences of the ideal of the public sphere to inform critical social theory.
Using what is sometimes called the “ ideal speech theory, ” it should be
possible to investigate the democratic legitimacy of structures and policies
by asking whether all those who should have been able to participate in
deciding on them would have been able to agree that they were justifi ed
(Outhwaite, 1994 ).
As a result of criticisms, Habermas has now revised his understanding
of the public sphere to understand how deliberative democracy might be
engaged in practice. Feminist critics argued that his initial understanding
was too rationalist and too individualist: the most important contribu-
tions to democratic deliberation over the last two hundred years have
actually come from social movements, which have mobilized counter -
public spheres using a range of styles of communication, including story -
telling, graphic art, demonstrations, and political rhetoric aimed at stirring
emotions (Young, 1996 ; Fraser, 1997 ). In addition, Habermas has accepted
criticisms by theorists of popular culture that audiences of the mass media
are not simply cultural “ dopes. ” He now understands the mass media to
be crucial to the functioning of any public spheres in contemporary societ-
ies. Media representations, whilst always susceptible to the infl uence of
money and power, are not wholly determined by economic and political
interests. Indeed, they are embedded in strategies of interpretation and
re - interpretation and are, therefore, subject to criticism and to redefi nition
on the part of media audiences, who are not passive consumers of media
products. In his more recent work, then, rather than the ideal of rational
deliberation between members of a face - to - face, singular, and unifi ed
public, Habermas sees “ popular sovereignty [as] no longer embodied in

a visibly identified gathering of autonomous citizens. It pulls back into
the as it were ‘ subjectless ’ forms of communication circulating through