Habermas vs. Weber on democracy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6251405 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Reihan Salam (Council on Foreign Relations, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 59-85 |
| Publication date | 2003-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0891-3811 • E-ISSN: 1933-8007 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/08913810308443574 |
| OpenAlex | W1974920510 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 19 |
Habermas endorses democracy as a way to rescue modern life from the economic and bureaucratic compulsion that Weber saw as an inescapable condition of modernity. This rescue mission requires that Habermas subordinate democracy to people's true interests, by liberating their political deliberations from incursions of money or power that could interfere with the formation of policy preferences that clearly reflect those interests. But Habermas overlooks the opaque nature of our interests under complex modern conditions, and the difficulty of even knowing what the modern state is doing—let alone judging whether what it is doing serves our interests well. These overlooked sources of public ignorance buttress Weber's more pessimistic understanding of democracy, and like the theatrics surrounding popular sovereignty, public ignorance both enables and masks the autonomy that allows state officials and non‐state opinion leaders to shape public policy undemocratically
Autonomy · Bureaucracy · Democracy · Epistemology · Ignorance · Law and economics · Modernity · Pessimism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Popular sovereignty · Power (physics · Sociology · Sovereignty · State (computer science · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory
Collectivist economic planning
The symbolic uses of politics
The Rational Public
Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State
Bringing the State Back In
Constructing the political spectacle
The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
The Inclusion of the Other
Public ignorance and democratic theory
Democracy despite voter ignorance
Means, ends, and public ignorance in Habermas's theory of democracy
Voter ignorance and the democratic ideal
After democracy, bureaucracy? Rejoinder to Ciepley
From Max Weber
Between Facts and Norms
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,22 |
| Citation span | 2003 - 2010 (8) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |