Beyond Habermas: Democracy, Knowledge, and the Public Sphere

Part I

PUBLIC OPINION IN THE DEMOCRATIC POLITY

Chapter 1

PUBLIC SPHERE AND POLITICAL EXPERIENCE

Lord (Richard) Wilson

I take as my starting point the explanation of the public sphere that Christian J. Emden and David Midgley gave in their proposal for the conference out of which this volume grew. It included the phrase a symbolic site of conversation and public reasoning and the notion that it sought to come to terms with the political tensions between state authority and private responsibility. I approach the subject with some diffidence, as someone who is not an academic. But if thirty-six years working inside government can be regarded as a research project, I may have something to contribute.

Governments are surrounded by endless dialogues, cluster upon cluster of conversation and public reasoning. Their contributions to these dialogues may be formal policy statements intended to be of long-term significance. But they may also be tentative interventions that serve some ephemeral purpose such as the need to mediate disagreement, neutralize attack, test out a new idea, propitiate some vested interest, or promote their chances of being reelected. At any one time there are many such dialogues taking place within overlapping circles of government and public institutions, government departments and their client groups and critics, governments and their supporters and, sometimes more important, their enemies, dialogues between all these circles and the wider world, dialogues with media commentators and critics, dialogues with parties and the public, dialogues even with academics. These dialogues do not typically include much artistic activity but they may be theatrical as, say, the Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament and the Hutton Inquiry demonstrate.¹ And they may be the inspiration for much literature, theater, and cinema, not least in Shakespeare’s history plays.

It is the essence of government that conflicting interests have to be reconciled, that disagreements have to be resolved, that priorities have to be determined and choices made in a manner that affects many people. All this means that conversation and public reasoning, and the tension between individual freedom and the authority of the state, are central elements in the public sphere. But nothing stays still for long. Just as power moves ceaselessly between people and groups, rarely staying in one place for long, so the topics and issues covered by these dialogues that make up the public sphere are also constantly changing. And it is always important to remember not only the dialogues that take place but also the dialogues that do not take place. The things that are not discussed or that occupy very little time and attention in the public sphere can be as significant as those that do, and sometimes more so. Even more important are those areas where governments say one thing and do another.

There are many illustrations one could give of these propositions: for instance, the brilliant presentation of New Labour as a new political force in the 1990s was a remarkable manipulation of perception in the public sphere. However, there are three main points that I want to explore. First, I want to make the point that governments can be as much affected by changes in the public sphere as the other way around. Second, I want to argue that if government is making a great show of using conversation and reasoning in the public sphere it may mean that not much is actually happening. And third, I want to argue that important things may take place in government, not secretly but in relative silence in the public sphere, or the government may do something that is different from what they are saying in the public sphere. I shall take these each in turn.

The Public Sphere Keeps Changing

The ways in which changes in the public sphere may have an impact on government are illustrated by the growth in power of the media, of newspapers and television.² In the mid-1960s there were roughly a dozen news reports a day. In the mid-1990s there were 50 news broadcasts, on the hour, every hour of the day and night. Now the reporting of news is virtually continuous, with live news flashes interrupting the 24-hour news programs, while digital television and the Internet make it possible to check the latest news headlines whenever the viewer wishes to do so. This has a considerable impact on the conduct of government. The public sphere never rests. In the late 1990s the UK government set up a team of people to watch the news twenty-four hours a day and to alert departments when a new story of interest appeared so that they could be swift to respond as it gained momentum. Continuous news coverage required a continuous response. The dialogue between government and media never stops.

The nature of the dialogue within this public space also changes. Reporting of facts tends increasingly to be replaced by analysis and comment. There was a time when, if you wanted to know what had been said on the previous day in Parliament, you would be able to find it in the newspapers. Quite often now you are likely only to be able to deduce what was said from an editorial or a semisatirical account written by a Parliamentary correspondent; or by going onto the Internet. In the 1960s, if you wanted to hear the latest developments in government policy you would await the Statement, first business after Questions, in Parliament by the Secretary of State, because convention required that Parliament be told first. This is still the formal position, but in practice you are likely to be able to get a good idea of what is coming from advance trailers in the newspapers or the BBC’s Today program.

The public sphere has also become bigger and more complex because the number of participants has grown: unofficial briefings and leaks of documents or information mean that in principle anyone who wishes to contribute in the public sphere may do so, anonymously or attributably. Possibly more important, technology and blogs have the potential to allow the individual to participate in the public sphere and to have an impact on it. Citizen journalists are frequently quoted in the media. Consider for instance the private lives of politicians. Forty years ago it was possible for a cabinet minister to have an affair with a member of his staff without attracting public comment, even though it was a matter of common gossip. Contrast that with the present day, where the Guido Fawkes blog discusses similar current affairs with a sharp blend of gossip and shrewdness which in July 2006 had apparently attracted 2,921 hits from the BBC, 3,207 from The Guardian, and 18,147 from the Houses of Parliament.³ In 2008, The Economist described the Guido Fawkes blog as one of the most influential political blogs in the UK, and in 2009 Total Politics ranked Guido Fawkes as the number one political blog in the UK.⁴ There are, of course, many other ways in which developments in the public sphere may affect government. Protests, for instance over the poll tax, and opinion polls are other examples; and certainly the growth of the Internet as a whole.

The code of values in the public sphere is changing and now eschews any hint of deference. Perhaps what is more striking is that so much still manages to remain private within government rather than that so much enters the public sphere. There is an important if ill-defined code of values that, far more than any Official Secrets Act, still limits the information that enters the public domain. Even so, the implications of these changes are important because they represent a shift in power. The influence of the media, the Internet, and opinion polls has to some extent replaced or qualified the power of Parliament. I do not want to exaggerate this. Parliament still exerts huge influence on the behavior of governments. The reputations of government ministers are still only as good or as bad as the last speech they made or the last Parliamentary Questions and Answers they handled. The support of the people on the benches behind the Prime Minister and his ministers are still more important than those of the watching correspondents in the Press Gallery.

But the media in particular are an important adjunct of political life and possess power through their contribution to the public sphere, which can have great influence on events by influencing perceptions and by selectively reporting stories and facts. Government ministers may be as likely to respond to the suggestions of the media in taking a policy initiative as to a proposal from a backbencher or Select Committee. Indeed, the speed of media conversation in the public sphere may influence the very processes of government. Public debate may require a decision to be taken faster than the normal processes of collective government would normally allow and which would involve the preparation of a paper setting out the facts, options, and costs followed by a meeting of a cabinet committee, and so on. There is a price to be paid in terms of governance because of the pressures of the public sphere.

Spin needs to be seen in that light. In one interpretation spin treats the affairs of the state as soap opera. What a journalist or reporter needs is a story that develops day by day in a manner that repeats the same facts but with a new twist: in short, a new episode every day, perhaps for a period of four or five days until the story is exhausted but occasionally for longer. Spin is an attempt by government to write the next episode of the story for the media, and thereby steer it in a desirable direction from the point of view of the government, rather than let the media determine the next episode and the direction in which it goes.⁵ The dangers inherent in this approach, which may set a higher value on the story than its truths, are self-evident.

Dialogue between Government and the Governed

I now turn to my second point about the great volume of communication that governments contribute to the public sphere, which may or may not be effective. Communication is a central activity of the state in the modern age. It is the bread and butter of everyday life in government. Consultation with the public is one example of this. Thus, in the late 1990s the government issued a document that stated: Government departments should carry out a full public consultation whenever options are being considered for a new policy or if new regulation is planned, and there is a Code of Practice on Consultation to go with it, which continues to be updated.⁶ That was sensible, if unexciting, so far as it went. The question is how far governments listen to what they hear in response. In truth, the effectiveness of consultation from the point of view of those consulted may vary in practice depending on how far the government may be clear in its own mind about what it wants to do. In this as in many things timing is all. If a government is uncertain what do on a particular issue and consults with an open mind, the result may be deeply influenced by the outcome of consultation. But if it knows what it wants to do, it may simply decide that consultation has revealed nothing to deflect it from its proposals.

The point goes further than consultation. Governments have in the past from time to time attempted to use public dialogue as a means of implementing their policies or even defining the role of the state. Let me take a very old illustration of this. In September 1965 the then government issued a document called The National Plan.⁷ Possibly one of the most ambitious documents ever published by a British government, this was in its own words designed to achieve a 25 per cent increase in national output between 1964 and 1970, seeking to allocate this growth between different industries in considerable detail. To take a random example, clay brick makers were expected to expand their output of Fletton bricks from 3,216 millions to 4,306 millions over those years, an average annual increase of 5 percent; and other industries were expected to implement similar increases. There was even a Check-list of Action Required, which included such entries as: There will be a selective programme of agricultural expansion to meet a major part of the additional demand for food . … Action: Government; Agricultural industry.

How, you might ask, was this plan to be implemented? The answer lay partly in government action in its own sphere but also partly in dialogue. First Secretary of State George Brown noted in his introduction:

The Government is discussing with industry the measures needed to implement the plan. Leaders in management and the trade unions have a special responsibility but it cannot be left solely to them. The achievement of these aims will depend on the involvement and acceptance of responsibility by individuals at every level of industry. I hope that the Plan … will be widely read and discussed throughout the