Today western democracies confront social, cultural and political challenges of different nature, challenges which call for a reevaluation of our state affairs, our system of practices and our system of discourses. There is an increased gap between citizens and what we generally call ‘political establishment’ – in societies, which become more and more multicultural, traditional approaches to how to deal and how to translate claims into the public sphere seem no longer sufficient. Social landscape is changing at a dramatic speed and the black/white distinction between ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ is no longer applicable in politics. ‘Minorities’ are multiplied and particular interests formulated in parallel discursive spaces - the totality of one’s social, cultural and political life appears in several layers, dispersed and presented no longer in one but several public spheres, under different formats and shapes. Under this light, the meaning(s) we generally tend to attribute to the concept of democracy need to be re-evaluated and ultimately redefined.

This project has three stages. During the first stage, we will raise fundamental questions regarding the meaning(s) of democracy and its instantiations. At an initial moment we aim at clarifying and exposing the premises (and hidden assumptions) upon which ‘democracy’ depends. Second, we will develop the argument that a contemporary understanding of democracy should be based on a particular conception of individual autonomy, which articulates the dimensions of legality, morality and eth- ics. Having the ‘public sphere’ literature as referential paradigm, we will argue that the concept of democracy needs to be redefined. Third, we will advance a concept of democracy, which finds the tools for actualization of its ideals in an expanded theoretical understanding of public sphere. With this, we want to emphasize the crucial role played by today’s technological development in the process of transforming and creating free and inclusive communicative spaces, which can have a political impact beyond traditional national boundaries.

I.

How should we determine the relationship between the ideal of democracy and other political ideals? How should we understand ‘liberal neutrality’ within a democratic context? What is the exact relationship between justice, fairness and democracy? Finally, how should we deal with a politics of identity and a politics of difference in societies which tend to become more and more layered and multicultural? These are some of the questions that will be raised in the first moment of this project. The discussion will be supported by the most relevant literature on Classical Democratic Theory.

Contemporary western democracies keep facing a tension between the ideal of democracy, the democratic process (or popular sovereignty) and the conception of justice or ‘political rightness’. On the one hand, legal rights can only be defined by the ‘people’ in their ‘collective will’; on the other hand, this definition can only happen if there is a legitimate political order, which must be assumed. But what is this ‘collective will’? A reference to the notion of ‘collective will’ discloses the assumptions that a) each individual is equally respected as a person and b) the interests of all are equally considered. However, how is this ‘equality’ granted by principle politically translated? What do we mean by ‘representation’, how is the ‘collective will’ formed and how is it manifested? Finally, can the concept of ‘collective will’ be equated with ‘justice’? In this stage of the project we aim at clarifying the link between collectivities and individuals, i.e., between self-determination as a ‘whole’ and self-determination as a particular citizen. Raising these questions will lead us to the conclusion that it is necessary to redefine the relationship between a rationalized politics, a theory of justice and a notion of ‘good’ which points to an ethical moral set of values. Confronted with the unavoidable tension between moral principles and fundamental procedures, we suggest that it is necessary to revise democratic theory and develop a secular conception of democracy for the future.

II.

The necessity of redefining the concept of democracy leads us to the second stage of our project, which will be dedicated to the critical reflection upon the role played by communication in the process of articulating traditional political bodies (in the shape of political parties and institutions) and civil society in its several layers. Here, we will turn to the discussion of a major body of literature related to theories of justice and ‘public sphere’, among which we would emphasize John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt. Having the structure and functioning of contemporary mass media as paradigm we will expose the direct (although not always visible) relationship between ‘democracy’ (and the interdependence between private and public realms in both legal and moral dimensions), ‘political power’ and ‘ideology’.

All three authors mentioned above have shown how public reason lies at the heart of democratizing processes and how decisive it is to the survival and good health of our political, social, economic and cultural institutions. The three authors share a common Kantian background, namely the universalistic and emancipatory conception of moral autonomy, which lies at the foundation of an understanding of publicity and political culture. However, none of the models provided by these authors seem to be able to account for the meanings of public sphere today nor its impact in reshaping the meaning of democracy and its practices.

In this moment of the project we decided to focus on the articulation between the concept of justice and public sphere because we believe that it is absolutely crucial to clarify the relationship between legality, morality and communication (qua expression of individual autonomy). Public sphere is a crucial concept because it points to the existence of critical spaces endowed with a particular quality of (free) communication. These spaces have the power to check and expose the validity of political arguments. However, in order for the public spheres to function properly it is necessary to assure a legal protection of fundamental democratic rights, among which the right of self-expression. Ultimately, the possibility of contestation of rightfulness of policies must be guaranteed by the political system itself.

If one looks into the structure and functioning of the ‘traditional’ public sphere, more precisely the mass media of today, one is confronted with the harsh reality that one does not participate nor is one included in it. If democracy depends on the right of self-expression (as correlation of the previous notion of authorship), which reflects the fundamental universal right of individual autonomy, we have a crucial challenge ahead of us: we need to design the path for change not only at theoretical, but also structural, institutional and ultimately psychological level of individuals themselves. This is one of the reasons why Habermasian theory is not sufficient to account for the reality of the twentieth first century. To accept Habermas’ own acknowledgment that civil society has, as a matter of fact, very little impact in real political life, leaves us with a theory that tells us nothing about how these public spheres should or could act in order to change political and social reality and come closer to the democratic ideals of individual autonomy, equality of participation and representation.

III.

With this in mind we enter the final stage of this project, which explores the relationship between universal human rights, democracy and justice. While universal human rights must have a priority over different conceptions of good life, these rights are only meaningful if and when they are embodied in concrete life. Therefore, we must look into the tools and techniques we have available today to restore spaces where the particular will of individuals can find their voice. Our goal in this moment of the project is to look for an alternative theoretical paradigm. Taking into consideration the structural transformations of social, political and cultural relations of our time we will look into the tools we have available to restore credibility of the political process as well as to define the necessary conditions to explore and meet the re- quired communicative sensitivity within a new democratic paradigm. This will lead us to an alternative conception of ‘public sphere’ and ‘democracy’ itself. We will argue that a possible approach lies in defining the role and potential liberating and democratizing power of technological development in contemporary democratic societies, via the maximization of new technologies of information and visual communication. The goal is to show how the new theoretical paradigm we encounter today brings a radical shift in the understanding of the meanings of ‘public sphere’, ‘participation’ and more fundamentally, ‘individuality’ in its social, political and cultural dimensions. Ultimately, we aim at reinforcing the power each individual has to par- ticipate and constitute her/himself as an autonomous being, who participates and who makes democracy a constitutive part of her/his own social experience.