Anti-Politics and Civic Identity: How to Revitalize the Public Sphere in a Democracy?

Abstract

Contemporary democracy requires rethinking on the normative level and certain changes in the institutional and cultural dimensions. To this end, we should start by revising our perception of the public sphere and the role that citizens have to play in it. First of all, it should be emphasized that the public sphere is composed of various citizens’ forums, which should be effectively included in the political decision-making process. New institutional solutions must ensure the free flow of information between citizens and take into account different, even minority points of view, because democracy, if it is not to be exclusive, cannot be limited only to formal representation and closed, top-defined forms of discourse. In fact, people are unequal in terms of their civic competences, both in terms of their individual characteristics, as well as their social position, and democracy should neutralize these inequalities. These problems cannot be solved on purely theoretical grounds. Indeed, the clash of different views and arguments in the political debate is a constitutive element of politics, and therefore they have to be negotiated in practice by actual citizens. The lack of such solutions and, consequently, the experiences enabling the development of civic competences, not only result in a crisis of democracy, but also lead to the negation of the very essence of politics.