VIIOn the Concept of PublicOpinion

24 Public Opinion as a Fiction of Constitutional Law-andthe Social-Psychological Liquidation of the Concept

"Public opinion" takes on a different meaning depending onwhether it is brought into playas a critical authority in con-nection with the normative mandate that the exercise of polit-ical and social power be subject to publicity or as the object tobe molded in connection with a staged display of, and manip-ulative propagation of, publicity in the service of persons andinstitutions, consumer goods, and programs. Both forms ofpublicity compete in the public sphere, but "the" public opinionis their common addressee. What is the nature of this entity?

The two aspects of publicity and public opinion do not standin a relationship of norm and fact-as if it were a matter ofthe same principle whose actual effects simply lagged behindthe mandated ones (and correspondingly, the actual behaviorof the public lagged behind what was expected of it). In thisfashion there could be a link between public opinion as an idealentity and its actual manifestation; but this is clearly not thecase. Instead, the critical and the manipulative functions ofpublicity are clearly of different orders. They have their placeswithin social configurations whose functional consequences runat cross-purposes to one another. Also, in each version thepublic is expected to behave in a different fashion. Taking upa distinction introduced earlier it might be said that one versionis premised on public opinion, the other on non public opinion.

237__ -=------~~~~~-----------------------------o;;the Concept of Public Opinion

And critical publicity along with its addressee is more thanmerely a norm. As a constitutionally institutionalized norm, nomatter what structural transformation its social basis has under-gone since its original matrix in the bourgeois constitutionalstate, it nevertheless determines an important portion of theprocedures to which the political exercise and balance of powerare factually bound. This publicity, together with an addresseethat fulfills the behavioral expectations set by it, "exists"-nctthe public as a whole, certainly, but surely a workable substitute.Further questions, to be decided empirically, concern the areasin which these functions of publicity are in force and to whatextent and under which conditions its corresponding publicexists today. On the other hand, the competing form of pub-licity along with its addressee is more than a mere fact. It isaccompanied by a specific self-understanding whose normativeobligatoriness may to a certain extent also be in opposition toimmediate interests of "publicity work." Significantly, this self-understanding borrows essential elements precisely from itspublicist antagonist.

Within the framework of constitutional law and political sci-ence, the analysis of constitutional norms in relation to theconstitutional reality of large democratic states committed tosocial rights has to maintain the institutionalized fiction of apublic opinion without being able to identify it directly as areal entity in the behavior of the public of citizens. The diffi-culty arising from this situation has been described by Lands-hut. On the one hand, he registers the fact that "public opinion[is] replaced [by] an in itself indeterminate mood-dependentinclination. Particular measures and events constantly lead itin this or that direction. This mood-dependent preference hasthe same effect as shifting cargo on a rolling ship."! On theother hand, he recalls that the constitutional institutions oflarge, democratic, social-welfare states count on an intact publicopinion because it is still the only accepted basis for the legiti-mation of political domination: "The modern state presup-poses as the principle of its own truth the sovereignty of thepeople, and this in turn is supposed to be public opinion.Without this att~i~ution, without the substitution of publicopinion as the onglO of all authority for decisions binding the

238The Structural Transformauon of the Public Sphere --whole, modern democracy lacks the substance of its owtruth."2 If, without a naive faith in the idea of a rationalizationof domination, the mandate implicit in the constitutional norm nof a .public sphere as an element in the political realm" canno~be simply abandoned to the facticity of a public sphere in astate of collapse," two paths toward defining the concept ofpublic opinion become evident.

One of these leads back to the position of liberalism, whichin the midst ?f a. disintegr.ating p.ublic sphere wanted to salvagethe com~u~lcatIOn of ~n Inner circle of representatives capableof constItutIng a public and of forming an opinion, that is acr!tically deba.ting ,pu?lic in. the midst of one that merely s~p-plies acclamation: It ISObVIOUSthat out of the chaos of moodsconfused opinions, and popularizing views of the sort spreadby the mass media, a public opinion is much more difficult toform than out of the rational controversy between the differentgreat currents of opinion that struggled against one anotherwithin society. To this extent it must be conceded that it isharder than ever for public opinion to prevail.'?' Hennis, ofcourse, announces this state of affairs only for the sake ofdemonstrating the urgency of special arrangements intendedto procure authority and obedience for "the view adopted bythe relatively best informed, most intelligent, and most moralcitizens?", as the public in contradistinction to the commonopinion. The element of publicity that guarantees rationalityis to be salvaged at the expense of its other element, that is,the universality guaranteeing general accessibility. In this pro-cess, the qualifications that private people once could attainwithin the sphere of commerce and social labor as social criteriaof membership in the public become autonomous hierarchicalqualities of representation, for the old basis can no longer becounted on. Sociologically, a representativeness of this kind canno longer be determined in a satisfactory fashion under theexisting conditions."

The other path leads to a concept of public opinion thatleaves material criteria such as rationality and representative-ness entirely out of consideration and confines itself to insti-tutional criteria. Thus Fraenkel equates public opinion withthe view that happen to prevail in the parliament and to be

239o;~~lh-e~C~o-n-c-e-p-t-o~f~P-u~b~lic~O-p~in~i-on------------------------------

authoritative for the government: "With the help of parlia-mentary discussion, public opinion makes its desires known tothe government, and the government makes its policies knownto public opinion'v=-public opinion reigns, but it does notgovern. Leibholz contends that this way of counterposing gov-ernment and parliament as the mouthpieces of public opinionis incorrect, claiming that the antagonistic political actors alwaysare the parties in their roles as party-in-government and party-in-opposition. The will of the parties is identical with that ofthe active citizenry, so that the party happening to hold themajority represents the public opinion: "Just as in a plebiscitarydemocracy the will of the enfranchised citizenry's majority isidentified, in a functioning democratic state with a party sys-tem, with the collective will of the people on an issue, the willof the parties that happen to hold the majority in governmentand parliament is identified with the uolonte generale."9 Non-public opinion only attains existence as "public" when pro-cessed through the parties. Both versions take into account thefact that independently of the organizations by which the opin-ion of the people is mobilized and integrated, it scarcely playsa politically relevant role any longer in the process of opinionand consensus formation in a mass democracy. At the sametime, however, this is the weakness of this theory; by replacingt~e public as the subject of public opinion with agencies invirtue of which alone it is still viewed as capable of politicalactivity, this concept of public opinion becomes peculiarly non-?escript. It is impossible to discern whether this "public opin-IOn" has come about by way of public communication ort~rough opinion management, whereby it must remain unde-CIded again whether the latter refers merely to the enunciationof a mass preference incapable of articulating itself or to thereduction to the status of a plebiscitary echo of an opinion that,although quite capable of attaining enlightenment, has beenfo~ci?ly integrated. As a fiction of constitutional law, public0p1I110n is no longer identifiable in the actual behavior of thepublic itself; but even its attribution to certain political insti-tutions (as long as this attribution abstracts from the level ofthe public's behavior altogether) does not remove its fictivecharacter. Empirical social research therefore returns with pos-

240The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere ---it!vist pathos to this I~v~l, in order to establish "public opinion"directly. Of course, It In turn abstracts from the institutioa~pec.ts and quickly accomplishes the social:..psychological ~a~uidation of the concept of public opinion as such. q

Already a problem for liberalism by the middle of the ce _tury, 'public opinion' came fully into view as a problemat~

.. hfil 1CentIty In t e na quarter of the nineteenth century. Strikina note ofliberal resignation, a treatise about "Nature and Valu~of Public Opinion" of 1879 put it in the following fashion:

So for the present the novelty of facts and the need for diversionshas become so decisive that the people's opinion is as deprived of thesupport of a firm historical tradition ... as it is of that peculiarlyenergetic spadework in the intellectual laboratory of great men who'placed their faith in principles and sacrificed everything to them.What. a cen.tu~y ago was, according to the belief of contemporaries,a social principle that placed an obligation upon each individual(name.ly, public opinion), in t~e course of time has become a sloganby WhIChthe complacent and intellectually lazy mass is supplied witha pretext for avoiding the labor of thinking for themselves. 10

A half-century earlier Schaffle had characterized public opin-ion as a "formless reaction on the part of the masses" anddefined it as "expression of the views, value judgments, orpreferences of the general or of any special public."!' Thenormative spell cast by constitutional theory over the conceptwas therewith broken-public opinion became an object ofsocial-psychological research. Tarde was the first to analyze itin depth as "mass opinion"; 12 separated from the functionalcomplex of political institutions, it is immediately stripped ofits character as "public" opinion. It is considered a product ofa communication process among masses that is neither boundby the principles of public discussion nor concerned with po-litical domination.

When, under the impression of an actually functioning pop-ular government, political theoreticians like Dicey in Englandand Bryce in the United States!" nevertheless retained thisfunctional context in their concepts of public opinion (which,to be sure, already show the traces of social-psychological re-flection), they exposed themselves to the accusation of empir-ical unreliability. The prototype of this kind of objection is

~ Concept of Public Opinion

A. C. Bentley's early critique. He missesi'a quantitative analysisof public opinion in terms of the different elements of thepopulation," which is to say, "an investigation of the exactthings really wanted under the cover of the opinion by eachgroup of the people, with time and place and circumstancesall taken up into the center of the statement." Hence Bentley'sthesis: "There is no public opinion ... nor activity reflecting'or representing the activity of a group or set of groups."14

Public opinion became the label of a social-psychologicalanalysis of group processes, defining its object as follows: "Pub-lic opinion refers to people's attitudes on an issue when theyare members of the same social group."15 This definition be-trays in all clarity what aspects had to be positivistically ex-cluded from the historic concept of pub1ic opinion by decadesof theoretical development and, above all, of empirical meth-odological progress. To begin with, "public," as the subject ofpublic opinion, was equated with "mass," then with "group,"as the social-psychological substratum of a process of commu-nication and interaction among two or more individuals."Group" abstracts from the multitude of social and historicalconditions, as well as from the institutional means, and cer-tainly from the web of social functions that at one time deter-mined the specific joining of ranks on the part of private peopleto form a critical debating public in the political realm. "Opin-ion" itself is conceived no less abstractly. At first it is still iden-tified with "expression on a controversial topic,"!" later with"expression of an attitude,"!" then with "attitude" itself.18 Inthe end an opinion no longer even needs to be capable ofverbalization; it embraces not only any habit that finds expres-sion in some kind of notion-the kind of opinion shaped byreligion, custom, mores, and simple "prejudice" against whichpublic opinion was called in as a critical standard in the eigh-teenth century-but simply all modes of behavior. The onlything that makes such opinion a public one is its connectionwith group processes. The attempt to define public opinion asa "collection of individual opinions"!" is soon corrected by theanalysis of group relations: "We need concepts of what is bothfundamental or deep and also common to a group."20 A groupopinion is considered "public" when subjectively it has come to

242The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

prevail as the dominant one. The individual grouh ( ibl . P rnernbas a POSSI y erroneous) notion concerning the irn er

f hi .. . POttano ISopmIOn and conduct, that ISto say, concerning h ced hi h ow rnanan w IC ones of the other members share or' Y. ~~tilicustom or view he embraces." eIn the meantime Lazarsfeld has pointedly insisted th. b id t: at the

pn.c~ to . e pal .lor .th.e ~ocial-psychological concept of publicopmIOn IS too high If It IS held at the expense of elimi .II . I . I . natIng

a essenua SOCIOogical and politolog~cal elements. Using sev-eral examples he confronts the social-psychologica] ver .. " SlonWith the concept as It denves from traditional political theory22bu.t. then, u~fort~nately, does no more than state the desir-ability of a classical-empirical synthesis."23 Nevertheless th

. f ' eexpans.IOn.o the field of investigation beyond group dynamicsto msutunons of publ~c opinio~, .that is, to the relationship?etw~en. the .mass me~la and opmIOn processes, is a first stepm this direction. A typical example of the extent to which eventhese investigations of communication structures are bettera.ble to deal with psychological relationships than with institu-tional conditions is provided by the theorem (which as such isinteresting) concerning the two-step Aow of communication."A more significant step toward the desired synthesis between~he classical concept of public opinion and its social-psycholog-ical surrogate occurs only through the recollection of the sup-pressed relationship to the agencies of political domination."Public opinion is the corollary of domination ... somethingtha~ has political existence only in certain relationships betweenregime and people."25

Yet just as the concept of public opinion oriented to theinstitutions of the exercise of political power does not reachinto the dimension of informal communication processes, aconcept of public opinion social-psychologically reduced togroup relations does not link up again with that very dimensionin which the category once developed its strategic function andin which it survives today, leading the life of a recluse not quitetaken seriously by sociologists: precisely as a fiction of consti-tutional law.~li Once the subject of public opinion is reduced toan entity neutral to the difference between public and privatespheres, namely, the group--thus documenting a structural

~he Concept of Public Opinion011 t

sformation, albeit not providing its concept-and oncetra~lic opinion itself is dissolved into a group relationship neu-POl to the difference between reasonable communication and~ra tional conformity, the articulation of the relationship be-Jrra . hori I f ben group opinions and public aut onty IS e t to e accom-tWe '1' . f blilished within the framework of an auxi Jary science 0 pu IC~dministration. Thus Schmidtchen's approach le~ds to the fol-lowing definition: "Accordingly, all those ~ehav.lo:s of popu-lation groups would be designated as public opmIOn that area t to modify or preserve the structures, pr~ctIces, and ~~alsof the system of domination."27 The intention of. a polI~l~al

ublic sphere (to which the mandate of democratic publicity~n the part of a social-welfare state refer: ~fter all) is so. co~-pletely ignored by such a concept that. If It were a~plIed mempirical research, not even the nonexistence o~ this. spherewould be demonstrated. For it characterizes public opimon assomething that, friction-like, might offer resis~anc.e to g.overn-mental and administrative practice and that mime With theresults and recommendations of opinion research can be di-agnosed and manipulated by appropriate means. For the.seresults and recommendations "enable the government and ItSorgans to take action with regard to a reality constit~ted by ~hereaction of those who are especially affected by a given policy.Opinion research has the task of providing the committees andinstitutions in charge ... of aligning the behavior of the pop-ulation with political goals"28 with a feedback of ~eliable sound-ings of this reality. The author does not fall to produceevidence for his assertion.F? Public opinion is defined from theOutset in reference to the kind of manipulation through whichthe politically dominant must ever strive "to bring a popula-tion's dispositions into harmony with political d?ctnne. ~ndstructure, with the type and the results of the ongomg d.eCls~onprocess."30 Public opinion remains the object of dominationeven when it forces the latter to make concessions or to reorientitself. It is not bound to rules of public discussion or forms ofverbalization in general, nor need it be concerned with politicalproblems or even be addressed to political authorities." Arelationship to domination accrues to it, so to speak, behind itsback. The "private" desires for cars and refrigerators fall under

244The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere ---the category of "public opinion" just as much as the behav'" lorsof any given group, If only they are relevant to the gover _mental and administrative functions of a social-welfare state~2

25 A Sociological Attempt at Clarification

The material for opinion research-all sorts of opinions heldby all sorts of population groups-is not already constituted aspublic opinion simply by becoming the object of politicallyrelevant considerations, decisions, and measures. The feedback?f group opinions, defined in terms of the categories employedIn research on governmental and administrative processes oron political consensus formation (influenced by the display ofstaged or manipulative publicity), cannot close the gap betweenpublic opinion as a fiction of constitutional law and the social-psychological decomposition of its concept. A concept of publicopinion that is historically meaningful, that normatively meetsthe requirements of the constitution of a social-welfare state,and that is theoretically clear and empirically identifiable canbe grounded only in the structural transformation of the publicsphere itself and in the dimension of its development. Theconflict between the two forms of publicity which today char-acterizes the political public sphere has to be taken seriously asthe gauge of a process of democratization within an industrialsociety constituted as a social-welfare state." on public opin-ions are at work in great numbers, and "the" public opinion isindeed a fiction. Nevertheless, in a comparative sense the con-cept of public opinion is to be retained because the constitu-tional reality of the social-welfare state must be conceived as aprocess in the course of which a public sphere that functionseffectively in the political realm is realized, that is to say, as aprocess in which the exercise of social power and politicaldomination is effectively subjected to the mandate of demo-cratic publicity. The criteria by which opinions may be empir-ically gauged as to their degree of publicness are therefore tobe developed in reference to this dimension of the evolutionof state and society; indeed, such an empirical specification ofpublic opinion in a comparative sense is today the most reliablemeans for attaining valid and comparable statements about the

245 __ ~ ~~~~~ _~he Concept of Public Opinion

extent of democratic integration characterizing a specific con-stitutional reality.

Within this model, two politically relevant areas of commu-nication can be contrasted with each other: the system of in-formal, personal, nonpublic opinions on the one hand, and onthe other that of formal, institutionally authorized opinions.Informal opinions differ in the degree of their obligatoriness.The lowest level of this area of communication is representedby the verbalization of things culturally taken for granted andnot discussed, the highly resistant results of that process ofacculturation that is normally not controlled by one's own re-flection-for example, attitudes toward the death penalty orsexual morality. On the second level the ra~ely discussed basicexperiences of one's own biography are verbalized, those re-fractory results of socialization shocks that have again becomesubreflective-for example, attitudes toward war and peace orcertain desires for security. On the third level one finds theoften discussed things generated as self-evident by the cultureindustry, the ephemeral results of the relentless publicist bar-rage and propagandist manipulation by the media to whichconsumers are exposed, especially during their leisure time.!"

In relation to those matters taken for granted in a culture(which as a kind of historical sediment can be considered atype of primordial "opinion" or "prejudice" that probably hasscarcely undergone any change in its social-psychological struc-ture), the matters whose taken-for-granted status is generatedby the culture industry have both a more evanescent and moreartificial character. These opinions are shaped within the me-dium of a group-specific "exchange of tastes and preferences."Generally, the focus for this stratum of other-directed opinionsis the family, the peer group, and acquaintances at work andin the neighborhood-each with its specific structures of infor-mation channeling and opinion leadership ensuring the bind-ing nature of group opinions.t" To be sure, matters that aretaken for granted in a culture also become topical in the ex-changes of opinion of such groups, but they are of a differentSOrt from the ideas sustained by conviction, which in anticipa-tion of their inconsequentiality circulate, so to speak, untilrecalled. Like those "opinions," they too constitute systems of

246The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere ----norms demanding adaptation, but they do so more in themanner o~ a social control through "fashion" whose shiftingrule requIre only a temporary loyalty. Just a tho e things thatare taken for granted in a culture because of deep-seated tra-ditions may be called subliterary, so those generated by theculture industry have reached a post-literary stage, as it were.The contents of opinion managed by the culture industry the-matize the wide field of intrapsychic and interpersonal rela-tionships first opened up psychologically by the subjectivitywhich during the eighteenth century, within the framework ofan intact bourgeois domain of interiority, required a publicand could express itself through literature. At that time theprivate spheres of life were still protected in their explicitorientation to a public sphere, since the public use of reasonremained tied to literature as its medium. In contrast, theintegration culture delivers the canned goods of degenerate,psychologically oriented literature as a public service for pri-vate consumption-and something to be commented on withinthe group's exchange of opinions. Such a group is as little a"public" as were those formations of pre-bourgeois society inwhich the ancient opinions were formed, secure in their tra-dition, and circulated un polemically with the effect of "laws ofopinion." It is no accident that group research and opinionresearch have developed simultaneously. The type of opinionthat emerges from such intragroup relations-picked upready-made, flexibly reproduced, barely internalized, and notevoking much commitment-this "mere" opinion, a compo-nent of what is only "small talk" anyway, is per se ripe forresearch. The group's communication processes are under theinfluence of the mass media either directly or, more frequently,mediated through opinion leaders. Among the latter are oftento be found those persons who have reflected opinions formedthrough literary and rational controversy. However, as long assuch opinions remain outside the communication network ofan intact public, they too are part of the nonpublic opinions,although they clearly differ from the three other categories.

Over and against the communicative domain of nonpublicopinion stands the sphere of circulation of quasi-public opin-ion. These formal opinions can be traced back to specific in-

24~7__ ~ ~~~~~~ _On the Concept of Public Opinion

stitutions; they are officially or semiofficially authorized asnnouncements, proclamations, declarations, and speeches.

~ere we are primarily dealing with opinions that circulate ina relatively narrow circle-skipping the mass of the popula-tion-between the large political press and, generally, ~~osepublicist organs that ~u~tivate r~tiona~ debat~ .and the ad~l.smg,influencing, and deciding bodies WIth political o~ polItICallyrelevant jurisdictions (cabinet, governme~t commissions, ad-ministrative bodies, parliamentary committees, party.leader-ship, interest group committees, corpora.te bu~eauc~a~les, andunion secretariats). Although these quasi-official OpInIOnS canbe addressed to a wide public, they do not fulfill the requi.re-ments of a public process of rational-critical de~ate acc?r?mgto the liberal model. As institutionally authorized OpInIOnS,they are always privilege? and achieve n~, mut~a,l, correspon-dence with the nonorganized mass of the public.

Between the two spheres, naturally, exists a linkage, a~waysthrough the channels of the mass media; it is e~tablIs?edthrough that publicity, displayed for .s~ow. or .manIpulatI~n,with the help of which the groups partlCIpatm.g I.n the exerciseand balancing of power strive to create a plebiscitary followe~-mentality on the part of a mediated public. We also count t?ISvehicle of managed publicist influence among the ~or.mal ?pm-ions; but as "publicly manifested" they have to be distinguishedfrom "quasi-public" opinions.

In addition to this massive contact between the formal andinformal communicative domains, there also exists the rarerelationship between publicist organs devoted. to rational-crit-ical debate and those few individuals who still seek to formtheir opinions through literature-a kind of opinion cap~bleof becoming public, but actually non public. The C~mmU?ICa-tive network of a public made up of rationally debating privatecitizens has collapsed; the public opinion once emergent fromit has partly decompo ed into the informal opinions of pri~atecitizens without a public and partly become concentrated intoformal opinions of publicistically effective institutions. Caughtin the vortex of publicity that is staged for how or manipulationthe public of nonorganized private people is laid claim to not

248The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere --by public communication but by the communication of pubJi Imanifested opinions. c y

An opinion that is public in the strict sense however can on]be generated in the degree that the two domains of comm;nication are mediated ~y ~ third, th~t of critical publicity. TOday,of course, such a mediation IS possible on a sociologically rel-evant scale only through the participation of private people ina process of formal communication conducted through intraor-ganizational public spheres. Indeed, a minority of private peo-ple already are members of the parties and special-interesta~soc.iations un?er p~blic law. To the extent that these orga-rnzations permit an internal public sphere not merely at thelevel of functionaries and managers but at all levels, there existsthe possibility of a mutual correspondence between the politicalopinions of the private people and that kind of quasi-publicopinion. This state of affairs may stand for a tendency that forthe time being is on the whole insignificant; the extent andactual impact of this tendency need to be established empiri-cally-that is, whether we are dealing in general with a growingor declining tendency. For a sociological theory of public opin-ion this tendency is nevertheless of decisive importance, for itprovides the criteria for a dimension in which alone publicopinion can be constituted under the conditions of a largedemocratic state committed to social rights.

In the same proportion as informal opinions are channeledinto the circuit of quasi-public opinions, seized by it, and trans-formed, this circuit itself, in being expanded by the public ofcitizens, also gains in publicity. Since, of course, public opinionis by no means simply "there" as such, and since it is at bestpossible to isolate tendencies that under the given conditionswork in the direction of generating a public opinion, it can bedefined only comparatively. The degree to which an opinionis a public opinion is measured by the following standard: thedegree to which it emerges from the intraorganizational publicsphere constituted by the public of the organization's membersand how much the intraorganizational public sphere commu-nicates with an external one formed in the publicist inter-change, via the mass media, between societal organizations andstate institutions.

249On the Concept of Public Opinion

c. W. Mills, by contrasting "public" and "mass," obtainedempirically usable criteria for a definition of public opinion:"In a public, as we may understand the term, (1) virtually asmany people express opinions as receive them. (2) Public com-munications are so organized that there is a chance immedi-ately and effectively to answer back any opinion expressed inpublic. Opinion formed by such discussion (3) readily finds anoutlet in effective action, even against-if necessary-the pre-vailing system of authority. And (4) authoritative institutionsdo not penetrate the public, which is thus more or less auton-omous in its operation."36 Conversely, opinions cease to bepublic opinions in the proportion to which they are enmeshedin the communicative interchanges that characterize a "mass":"?

In a mass, (1) far fewer people express opinions than receive them;for the community of publics becomes an abstract collection of indi-viduals who receive impressions from the mass media. (2) The com-munications that prevail are so organized that it is difficult orimpossible for the individual to answer back immediately or with anyeffect. (3) The realization of opinion in action is controlled by au-thorities who organize and control the channels of such action. (4)The mass has no autonomy from institutions; on the contrary, agentsof authorized institutions penetrate this mass, reducing any auton-omy it may have in the formation of opinion by discussiou."

These abstract determinations of an opinion process that takesplace under the conditions of a collapse of the public spherecan be easily fitted into the framework of our historical anddevelopmental rnodel.P? The four criteria of mass communica-tion are fulfilled to the extent that the informal domain ofcommunication is linked to the formal merely through thechannels of a publicity staged for the purpose of manipulationor show; via the "culture industry's unquestioning promulga-tions," the non public opinions are then integrated throughthe "publicly manifested" ones into an existing system; in re-lation to this system the non public opinions are without anyautonomy. In contrast to this, under conditions of the large,democratic social-welfare state the communicative inter con-nectedness of a public can be brought about only in this way:through a critical publicity brought to life within intraorgani-zational public spheres, the completely short-circuited circula-

250The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

tion of quasi-public opinion must be linked to the informaldomain of the hitherto nonpublic opinions.

In like measure the forms of consensus and conflict thattoday determine the exercise and equilibration of power wouldalso be altered. A method of public controversy which came toprevail in that manner could both ease the forcible forms of aconsensus generated through pressure and temper the forcibleforms of conflicts hitherto kept from the public sphere. Conflictand consensus (like domination itself and like the coercivepower whose degree of stability they indicate analytically) arenot categories that remain untouched by the historical devel-opment of society. In the case of the structural transformationof the bourgeois public sphere, we can study the extent towhich, and manner in which, the latter's ability to assume itsproper function determines whether the exercise of domina-tion and power persists as a negative constant, as it were, ofhistory-or whether as a historical category itself, it is open tosubstantive change.

Notes

Preface

I. Cf. W. Hennis, "Bemerkungen zur wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Situation der poli-tischen Wissenschaft," Staat, Cesellschaft, Erziehung 5:203ff.; idem., Politik und praktischePhilosophie (1 euwied, 1963); regarding the latter, see my essay, 'The Classical Doctrineof Politics in Relation to Social Philosophy," Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel(Boston, 1973), 41-81.

1 Introduction: Preliminary Demarcation of a Type ofBourgeois Public Sphere

I. See below, 238ff.

2. Deuisches Wiirterbuch der Bruder G'1mm (Leipzig, 1889), 7: 1183, art. "Offentlichkeit."

3. Weigands Deuisches worterbuch, 5th ed. (Ciessen, 1910),2:232.

4. Most recently H. Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, 1958).

5. See J. Kirchner, Beiuiige zur Gesduchte des Begrif]« "iiffentlich" urul "iiffer:tliches Recht"Ph.D. diss. (Gottingen, 1949), 2. The res publica is the pr?perty that IS universallyaccessible to the populus, i.e. the res extra cmnmercmm, which IS exempted from the lawthat applies to the privati and their property; e.g.,jlumen publicum, vw publica, etc. lbul.,10ff.

6. Otto Brunner, Land und Herrschajt (Brunn, 1943), 386f.

7. Kirchner, Beitrage ZUT Geschichte des Begnf]s, 22.

8. We leave aside the problem of late medieval town sovereignty. On the level of the"territory" we encounter the towns (which usually belonged to the prince's crown land)as an integral component of feudalism. In early capitalism, however, the free townsassumed a decisive role 111 the evolution of the bourgeois public sphere. See below,section 3, 25ff.