On Habermas’ Theory Of Communicative Power

The concept of communicative power is one of the most important categories in Habermas’theory of discourse democracy, which plays a crucial role in the third models of democracy. It is the communicative power that coordinates the tension, which always exist in the modern political theory, between human rights and popular sovereignty, private autonomy and public autonomy, though Habermas didn’t say much about it in Between Facts and Norms. As a core concept which makes Habermas" democracy theory transcend liberalism and republicanism, the communicative power also justifies the legitimacy of the constitutional state, and makes discourse democracy possible in the real world. Consequently, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to understand the concept of communicative power and the theory of communicative power, thereby grasping the essence of Habermas’political philosophy and legal philosophy precisely.According to Habermas, communicative power is primarily a kind of discourse influence which restricts the social power, especially the political power through the institutionalized procedure and non-organizational public sphere, in spite of its disability in the sphere of political sanction. Here exists the main difference between communicative power and the political power. People who live in the civil society make comments on public affairs in public sphere, where public opinions are generated by communicative actions and are filtered and synthesized in the process of negotiation. It is the exactly way how the communicative powers comes out of the public opinion and becomes efficient to restrict social power and political power. In this way, the popular sovereignty is not only reflected in collectivity, but also among the rational communication and discourse negotiation in non-institutionalized public spheres (like forum, media) and institutionalized public spheres (like legislature). Accordingly, human rights and the popular sovereignty can be united and the third models of democracy centered with communicative power can be formed. It seems to Habemas that this mode of democracy transcending the liberalism and republicanism can overcome the "legitimacy crisis" and "guide control crisis" which modern democratic legal state would encounter inevitably. It can create a new democratic model and achieve a dialectical synthesis between factuality and validity.I will start my treatise by clarifying the concept of communicative power, and then comes the discussion of communicative power which can be developed from three aspects. The first is about the forming mechanism of communicative power. The three main factors that make effects on the formation of communicative power are life world, civil society and the public sphere are. However, these three factors are all closely connected with public opinion, which arises from the communicative situation constituted by potential communicators. According to Habermas, the communicative power is transferred from public opinions in the public sphere, while the life world, as the foundation of the communicative power, can present issues in private sphere to civil society. Then people in civil society combining into the non-government, non-economic associations, organizations and movements voluntarily initiate their communicative activities and introduce the common issues which may ignite the critical consciousness into the public sphere. It is the way the communicative power works to affect the differentiation and formation of political wills in the political system directly.Secondly, I will discuss Habermas’empirical analysis of the communicative power. Through the sociological transformation of communicative power, Habermas intends to find out the factors that hinder the formation of communicative power and direct a new strategy to overcome them. As Habermas points out, factors that influence the formation of communicative powers can be summarized as follows:(1) the decline of civil society has made a great damage to private sphere by means of the political control; (2) the public sphere was controlled by interest groups, while the communication became monopolized by people who had the discursive power; (3) as the mass media was damaged by power and entertainment, public sphere was depoliticized. In response to this situation, I think it is impotent to overcome these obstacles in terms of the following strategies. The civil society should first use reverse knowledge to translate expertise knowledge, breaking the monopoly of knowledge of a professional organization or group. Then by strengthening the role of the public who constitutes the public sphere, the public’s rational voice can be heard. Lastly, the neutralization of mass media can be realized by the standardization of public principles which the mass media should follow.Thirdly, I wonder to analyze the role of communicative power playing in the constitutive state and in the third models of democracy. Though the analysis, it can be concluded that Habermas’theory of communicative power developed a new political theory of legitimacy, and it also opens up a new horizon of democracy. Comparing with the liberalism and republicanism, the third models of democracy dominated by communicative power make access to the original meaning of democracy directly. It means that the communicative power may achieve the unity of human rights and popular sovereignty, and through the transformation of communicative power into social power and administrative power, the "crisis of legitimacy" and "guidance and control crisis" in the modern democratic politics can be alleviated effectively.Admittedly, the theory of communicative power has many difficulties, and its detachment from real life has been criticized and challenged all the times. Nevertheless, instead of constructing an operative mode of democracy, Habemas pays more attention to provide a normative value for democracy politics which is guided by the rule of law. So we should understand Habermas’theory from a long run. In this thesis, I attempt to criticize Habermas in terms of three aspects, namely the public sphere, the formation of communicative power and the definition of connotation of communicative power, and devote myself to open a new horizon through the open discuss with Habermas.