The European Public Sphere

Abstract

As outlined above, the present study departs from Habermas’s definition of the public sphere in several ways. His assumptions about the class character of the early modern public sphere, for example, are not particularly relevant for the purpose of this study, nor is his account of the decline of the public sphere or his focus on the public sphere as a socio-cultural basis for rational communicative action in the narrow sense. Complemented by a more contemporary perspective on the meaning and practice of democracy (which takes into account the prominent role of the mass media), the concept nevertheless constitutes a useful tool to approach the relevance of communication for the democratic development of the EU.¹