Editing Public sphere (section)

==History==
Describing the emergence of the public sphere in the 18th century, Habermas noted that the public realm, or sphere, originally was "coextensive with public authority",<ref name=":0">{{Citation | last =Habermas | first =Jürgen | author-link =Jürgen Habermas | title =The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society | publisher =The MIT Press | date =1989 | location =Cambridge Massachusetts | page =30 | isbn =978-0-262-58108-0 | others =Thomas Burger}} Translation from the original German, published 1962.</ref> while "the [[private sphere]] comprised [[civil society]] in the narrower sense, that is to say, the realm of commodity exchange and of social labor".<ref name="Habermas 1989, p.30">Habermas 1989, p. 30.</ref> Whereas the "sphere of public authority" dealt with the state, or realm of the police, and the ruling class,<ref name="Habermas 1989, p.30"/> or the feudal authorities (church, princes and nobility) the "authentic 'public sphere{{'"}}, in a political sense, arose at that time from within the private realm, specifically, in connection with literary activities, the world of letters.<ref>Habermas 1989, pp. 30-31.</ref> This new public sphere spanned the public and the private realms, and "through the vehicle of public opinion it put the state in touch with the needs of society".<ref>Habermas 1989, p. 31.</ref> "This area is conceptually distinct from the state: it [is] a site for the production and circulation of discourses that can in principle be critical of the state."<ref name="Fraser 1990, p. 57">{{Harvnb|Fraser|1990|p=57}}</ref> The public sphere "is also distinct from the official economy; it is not an arena of market relations but rather one of the discursive relations, a theater for debating and deliberating rather than for buying and selling".<ref name="Fraser 1990, p. 57"/> These distinctions between "state apparatuses, economic markets, and democratic associations... are essential to democratic theory".<ref name="Fraser 1990, p. 57" /> The people themselves came to see the public sphere as a regulatory institution against the authority of the state.<ref>Habermas 1989, p. 27.</ref> The study of the public sphere centers on the idea of [[participatory democracy]], and how [[public opinion]] becomes political action. 

The [[ideology]] of the public sphere theory is that the government's laws and policies should be steered by the public sphere and that the only legitimate governments are those that listen to the public sphere.<ref>{{Citation
 | last =Benhabib
 | first =Seyla
 | author-link =Seyla Benhabib
 | editor-link =Craig Calhoun
 | chapter=Models of Public Space
 | place=Cambridge Mass.
 | publisher =MIT Press
 | year =1992
 | pages=73–98 [87]
 | title=Habermas and the Public Sphere
 | isbn = 978-0-262-53114-6|editor-last =Calhoun
 | editor-first =Craig}}</ref> "Democratic governance rests on the capacity of and opportunity for citizens to engage in enlightened debate".<ref>{{Harvnb|Hauser|1998|p=83}}</ref> Much of the debate over the public sphere involves what is the basic theoretical structure of the public sphere, how information is deliberated in the public sphere, and what influence the public sphere has over society.