About the book
English title: A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics
ISBN: 978-3-518-58790-4
108 pages
Published: 12.09.2022

Rights sold to:
English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Trotta), Catalan rights (Edicions 62), Chinese simplex rights (CITIC Press), Russia (NLO), Brazilian Portuguese rights (UNESP), France (Gallimard), Italy (Cortina), Netherlands (Boom), Denmark (Samfundslitteratur), Sweden (Daidalos), Norway (Cappelen Damm Akademisk), Korea (Sechang), Japan (Iwanami Shoten), Bulgaria (KX – Critique and Humanism), Croatia (Politička Misao), Turkey (Iletisim), Greece (Crete UP), Albania (Dukagjini)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (John Verlag)

60 years later: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere revisited

»It is not a political choice of direction but a constitutional imperative to maintain a media structure that enables the inclusive character of the public sphere and a deliberative character of the formation of public opinion and will.«

Order Pour le Mérite for Jürgen Habermas in 2022

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Jürgen Habermas’ first book, was published in 1962. In it, he profiles a concept of the public sphere from a socio-historical and conceptual-historical perspective that assigns it a place between civil society and the political system. The Structural Transformation soon joined the ranks of the great classics of 20th-century sociology and inspired extensive research in the field of history and the social sciences. In later works, Habermas himself repeatedly addressed the role of the public sphere in ensuring the survival of the democratic polity. In view of a media structure changed by digitalisation and the crisis of democracy, he now returns to the topic once again.

The centrepiece of this book is an essay in which he examines in great detail the new media and their platform character, which are increasingly pushing traditional mass media – significant drivers of the »old« structural transformation – into the background. The vanishing point of his reflections is the assumption that the new forms of communication damage the self-perception of the political public as such. This would mean a new structural change of the public sphere, with serious consequences for the deliberative process of forming opinion and will in a democracy.


About the author
Jürgen Habermas was born in Düsseldorf in 1929. He has taught at the universities of Heidelberg and Frankfurt as well as at the University of California, Berkeley, among others. He is the recipient of numerous honorary doctorates and awards. In 2001 he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

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