The role and the realities of public opinion

It is evident that public opinion, or what Habermas calls a ‘public capable of functioning politically’ ¹ , is vital to an understanding of democracies based on the rule of Law. Hard-won human and civil rights guarantee that public opinion can exist and can be expressed: freedom of thought, opinion and speech; freedom to associate and to demonstrate; and, finally, freedom of the press. In so far as it is open to all to contribute to public opinion, these freedoms also lend it a basic democratic aura. In marked contrast to the act of voting, which the individual undertakes in isolation, public opinion seems designed to offer a permanent guarantee of the active sovereignty of the people, of its will to control and to participate in politics.