ABSTRACT
The concept of a public sphere is central to any account that attempts to chart the possibilities and limits of democracy in late capitalist societies – and beyond (Fraser, 1990). In its basic form it connects ‘civil society and the state through the principle that public understanding could inform the design and administration of state institutions to serve the interest of all citizens’ (Calhoun, 2011, p. 312). Concise as Calhoun’s formulation is, it betrays all the elements and procedural suppositions that are part of such an intricate web of communication, and one of the key questions empirical research seeks to answer is how public spheres conceived this way are embedded in complex modern societies and how they structure the political process. This is crucial as the political process and the legitimate law it generates is tied to the communicative power that emerges from the rational discourses of deliberating citizens.
