ABSTRACT
How does an ordinary citizen answer with certainty questions about the quality of civic life, questions which go beyond how far his or her particular pay cheque will stretch? If each citizen necessarily has a slightly different view of what has been going on, does this have implications for the coherence of political debate in civil society? Do liberal democracies need zones of shared perceptions of the recent past, in order that their debates about governance may be more informed, and more coherent? And how far is a free press not only politically necessary for civil society, but, due to the difficulty of making good ‘quality of life’ assessments, sociologically necessary, too? These are some of the questions addressed in this chapter.
