The Phantom Public

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The Phantom Public. A sequel to “Public Opinion” (German The Imaginary Public. A continuation of “ The Public Opinion ) is a publication by the US journalist and media critic Walter Lippmann from 1925 on the role of the political public for democracy . Lippmann takes a position of democratic elitism : A functional elite of experts determines the political process in the model as in reality through political advice and control of public opinion .

The main message of the monograph is that the substantive and deliberative definition of democracy as the participation of individual citizens is an idealization, since the public, which in theory determines the decision-making process, is only imaginary , that is, in the imagination as illusion , myth and "phantom" exist. Carl Bybee commented that Lippmann saw the public as a fiction and saw government primarily as an administrative problem that should be solved efficiently so that the population could continue to pursue their individual goals.

context

Using the example of the war propaganda of the First World War , which he helped to create, and in view of the rise of Benito Mussolini, Lippmann had been able to gain sobering experiences in manipulating public opinion, which he already described in his earlier and best-known work  Public Opinion (1922). The work, which is designated as a continuation of Public Opinion in the subtitle, aroused displeasure and uncertainty due to its style, which was perceived as cold, pessimistic and cynical, and remained largely unnoticed for a long time, although it is considered one of the clearest and most revealing representations of Lippmann and in the criticism of the principles of Democracy goes much further than public opinion .

John Dewey  published a reply that has become famous, " The Public and its Problems" (1927), in which, in addition to broad approval of the diagnosis of the situation, he partly contradicted Lippmann's approaches to solving the problem . Democracy is not always fictional, but only temporarily "darkened" in the media-dominated mass society, but a democratically oriented policy is possible, since the citizens can be educated and in principle can participate meaningfully in public discourse if a suitable communicative framework is created. 

content

Lippmann criticizes the understanding of the public that he believed to be found in contemporary theory of democracy . A sovereign and comprehensively competent citizen is supposedly assumed there. (P. 21)

He criticized in detail the ideas that "the people" are

  • a kind of super-individual with a will and a consciousness (p. 160),
  • an "organism that is a unit made up of many individual cells" (p. 147),
  • a control mechanism (p. 77),
  • a describable body with established rules of membership (p. 110),
  • the embodiment of universal, cosmopolitan and disinterested perceptions (pp. 168–169) and
  • a moral authority (p. 106).

In Lippmann's view, on the other hand, the public is a “mere phantom”, an abstraction (p. 77), inserted into a false philosophy (p. 200) based on a mystical conception of society. (P. 147) Theories of democracy presuppose that the public can control public affairs competently and that the work of the government is an expression of the will of the people.  

Against this idealization and concealment of reality, Lippmann uses his model of two classes that make up the population: actors and spectators, insiders and outsiders. Actors can act “executive”, i.e. appropriately and politically competent. The basis for this is their understanding of fundamental facts. The public as a spectator, however, is incapable of acting. Nobody has the competent ability to act in all areas that corresponds to the myth of the democratic citizen. So everyone belongs to the audience with different questions, individuals switch between roles. (P. 110). The public, however, is mostly a “silent spectator in the background” (p. 13), because individuals are mostly only interested in their private affairs and their individual relationships and hardly in the issues that determine politics, which they generally have very little about knowledge. 

Lippmann sees a special task and ability of the public in controlling the exercise of state power in a moment of social unrest or a lack of adaptation of politics to the situation in society. (P. 74) Public opinion reacts to political mistakes by the government by choosing another. However, even here she does not take action on her own initiative, but is guided by oppositional insiders who can analyze and evaluate the situation for her. The public is unable to make rational decisions about a crisis. “Public opinion is not a rational force ... it argues, investigates, invents, does not negotiate and does not lead to a solution. (P. 69) It only has power over the insider by forming opinions on the question of which group is better suited to solve the problem at hand. When people comment on the intentions of others, they act as a public ”(p. 198). This control over the arbitrary use of power is the maximum of what the public can be expected, its particular purpose.

Lippmann deliberately takes an elitist point of view. He mainly trusts in the insiders who show initiative, organize, manage and solve problems. You should be largely free from the interference of ignorant and intrusive outsiders. (Pp. 198–199)

reception

Eric Alterman sees two unfounded assumptions as the main flaw in Lippmann's argumentation in 1999: It is assumed that experts acquire the politically relevant specialist knowledge with scientific value neutrality through the willingness of the decision-makers to cooperate, instead of engaging in mutually beneficial horse-trading in which each side gives the other, what she would like. It is also assumed that the experts themselves recognize and promote the interests of the outsiders, i.e. the bulk of the population, although they are closely connected to the ruling political elite. Lippmann's theory fails if these assumptions or even just one of them are incorrect. Instead of a representative of democracy, the expert becomes an accomplice in its disintegration.

In 1993, Wilfred M. McClay stated that Lippmann's work was still up to date and its importance for the future. The Phantom Public is even more valuable because it is more substantial and informative than Public Opinion .

Bruno Latour compared Lippmann's work in 2008 with Machiavelli's Il Principe . In his “Prince of the 20th Century”, which could not be understood at the time, he teaches modern readers a lesson in “strict realism”. Even more painful than Machiavelli's insight into the connection of virtue (virtú) with violence (violenzia), unpredictability (fortuna) and cunning (astuzia) is Lippmann's attack on the idea of ​​people, public and representation. He recommended the reading especially to French readers of the 21st century as a “detox cure”, because it was precisely the highly valued beliefs about democracy that, in Lippmann's opinion, had led to the public becoming a “ghost”. Lippmann had demystified democracy precisely in order to save it from the democrats, just as Macchiavelli wanted to preserve the republic by declaring the power of princes to the people.

Quotes

"These various remedies, eugenic, educational, ethical, populist and socialist, all assume that either the voters are inherently competent to direct the course of affairs or that they are making progress towards such an ideal. I think [democracy] is a false ideal. "(P. 151) 

“These various remedies, eugenic, educational, ethical, grassroots and socialist, all assume that either voters are inherently competent to direct the flow of things or that they are making progress towards that ideal. I think democracy is an absurd ideal. "

"The fundamental difference which matters is that between insiders and outsiders. Their relations to a problem are radically different. Only the insiders can make decisions, not because he is inherently a better man but because he is so placed that he can understand and can act. The outsider is necessarily ignorant, usually irrelevant and often meddlesome, because he is trying to navigate the ship from dry land. - In short, like the democratic theorists, they miss the essence of the matter, which is, that competence exists only in relation to function; that men are not good, but good for something .; that men cannot be educated, but only educated for something. "(p. 140)

“The fundamental and decisive difference is that between insiders and outsiders. Their relation to a problem is completely different. Only the insiders can make decisions, not because they are inherently better people, but because they are positioned to be able to understand and act. The outsider is inevitably without competence, without relevance and often a nuisance because he tries, so to speak, to navigate the ship from dry land. - In short, like the democratic theorists, the outsider misses the essence of the matter, which is that competence and function only exist together. People are not simply "good", they are only well suited for certain things, they are not universally educated, but only appropriately trained for certain matters. "

See also

swell

  • Lippmann, Walter: Phantom Public. A sequel to "Public Opinion". New York 1925.
  • Lippmann, Walter: Phantom Public. A sequel to "Public Opinion". New edition with an introduction to. Wilfred M. McClay. Library of Conservative Thought. New Brunswick, London 1993. ISBN 978-1-56000-677-0 .
  • Bybee, Carl: Can Democracy Survive in the Post-Factual Age? " Journalism and Communication Monographs 1: 1, 1999, pp. 29-62.
  • Steel, Ronald: Walter Lippmann and the American Century. Transaction Publishers, 1980. ISBN 978-1-4128-4115-3 .
  • Bruno Latour, Bruno : Introduction to Le public fantôme,  par Walter Lippman. Demopolis, 2008 ( PDF ).
  • Wright, Benjamin F .: Five Philosophies of Walter Lippmann. University of Texas Press, 2015. ISBN 978-1-4773-0529-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carl Bybee. Retrieved August 22, 2016 (American English).
  2. ^ Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. In: www.infoamerica.org. Retrieved August 23, 2016 .
  3. ^ Ronald Steel: Walter Lippmann and the American Century. [With portrait] (2nd print.) . Transaction Publishers, 1980, ISBN 978-1-4128-4115-3 ( google.com [accessed August 22, 2016]).
  4. ^ N. Marres: Material Participation: Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics . Springer, 2016, ISBN 978-1-137-48074-3 ( google.com [accessed August 22, 2016]).
  5. ^ Sandra M. Gustafson: Imagining Deliberative Democracy in the Early American Republic . University of Chicago Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-226-31129-6 ( google.de [accessed August 22, 2016]).
  6. ^ Peter Winkler: A PR of the next society: ambivalences of a discipline in transition . Springer-Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-658-05183-9 ( google.com [accessed on August 22, 2016]).
  7. ^ Benjamin F. Wright: Five Public Philosophies of Walter Lippmann . University of Texas Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4773-0529-4 ( google.com [accessed August 22, 2016]).
  8. ^ Eric Alterman: Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy . Cornell University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8014-8639-4 ( google.com [accessed August 22, 2016]).
  9. ^ Walter Lippmann: The Phantom Public . Transaction Publishers, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4128-3823-8 ( google.de [accessed August 25, 2016]).
  10. ^ Walter Lippmann: The Phantom Public . Transaction Publishers, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4128-3823-8 ( google.de [accessed August 25, 2016]).