Piet Strydom

The Counterfactual Imagination Punctuated by Triple Contingency:

On Klaus Eder’s Theory of the New Public Sphere

Klaus Eder’s theory of the public sphere owes much to Jürgen Habermas from whom

he inherited both the concept of the public sphere and, more generally, the critically-oriented

communication paradigm. By the time of the formulation of Eder’s own theory, however, this

inheritance had been conditioned more or less significantly by a range of theorists concerned

with such diverse issues as contestation and conflict, cognitive and symbolic organisation,

self-impelled reproduction processes and emergent properties, as well collective learning

processes and interventions disrupting them. In this chapter, I propose to disentangle Eder’s

very impressive, highly qualified version of the communication paradigm in order to show

that his critical-sociological theory of the public sphere is best grasped in terms of the

counterfactual presuppositions and threefold structure of communication.i

The New Transformed Public Sphere

Having shifted his focus to the public sphere in its own right in the 1990s, by the

middle of the decade Eder was able to articulate his own position – the theory of ‘the new

form of public sphere’ (1995a:271). Implying a drastic transformation of the extant

understanding of the concept, he contrasted it to Habermas’ conception which he saw as still

anchored in the classical discursive utopia of the educated bourgeoisie. In the late twentieth

century, the process of strongly rule-governed political opinion and will-formation has been

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reduced significantly by competing communication structures in a fluid field of relations

exhibiting signs of a ‘chaotic lack of coordination’ (1995a:272). This fundamental

discontinuity Eder called ‘the second transformation of the public sphere’ (1996b) – the first

referring to Habermas’ original reconstruction of the transformation of the liberal public

sphere during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The thrust of Eder’s idea, however, was by no means confined to simply identifying a

new phase in the development of modern society and the need to adjust social scientific

concepts accordingly. It was explicitly directed against the theoretical assumption inspiring

Habermas’ ‘classical and utopian conception’ (Eder 1995a:275) of a ‘closed and radically

hegemonic public sphere’ (Eder 1996a:214). Meanwhile, it has also become necessary to

consider the increasing complexity of the traditional system of intermediation. Another

collective actor – the new social movements – entered between the political system and civil

society, giving rise to emergent effects and non-linear dynamics, thereby increasing general

public communication and intensifying contestation and conflict around issues. At the core of

these developments are the changed structure and dynamics of communication, including the

increasing rate at which ‘good reasons’ or legitimating grounds are devalued and,

consequently, in need of being replaced.

Institutionalisation of communicative power

Rather than interpreting these new conditions as suggesting uncoordinated chaos and

thereby justifying a postmodernist view of opacity and unintelligibility, Eder instead

proceeded from a novel theoretical premise. Once reflexivity sets in, once awareness

develops of the significance of free-floating informal processes for the development of

society, communicative power becomes institutionalised. Not only do communicative

processes generate random variation, a variety of ideas enriching the contingently available

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environmental conditions, but by helping to stake out the parameters within which identities

are formed and decision-making is able to gain legitimacy, they also impact on the conditions

of selection. The institutionalisation of communicative power entails the permanent

establishment of the process of production of variation and selection parameters which was

initially borne largely by social movements but as a consequence has now been taken over by

a new social reality – the drastically transformed public sphere.

Here the unmistakable fingerprints of both Habermas and Luhmann are visible. Yet

the fact that Eder interchangeably speaks of ‘public sphere’ and ‘public space’ (1995a:280)

indicates his conviction that this new reality needs to be conceptualised by tempering

Habermas’ assumption of free and equal participants in public deliberation and Luhmann’s

notion of a purely subjectless process with Bourdieu’s and Touraine’s ideas of a social space

of unequal positions in contestation and conflict.

Basic assumptions

Eder’s lateral shift from the official communication paradigm to defining his own

theory of the public sphere was presaged in his writings dating from the early 1980s. There

he employed the concept of ‘social imagination’ (1982:131) in relation to the collective

learning processes borne by associational movements – effectively articulating the left-

Hegelian assumption underpinning Habermas’ position regarding the counterfactual force of

the idea of a common moral world transcending the existing social order. But he

simultaneously took issue with Habermas regarding his inability to explain the normative

development of society due to his recourse to contextual conditions instead of attending to

solutions to problems of moral order themselves. In response, Eder (1983/84:24) highlighted

the neglected social dimension of ‘dissensus’ toward norms and the resultant ‘class struggle’

and concomitant collective learning as mediating between the internal logic of moral ideas

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and external conditions. It is this position, reinforced by Max Miller’s work, that he first

elaborated in his habilitation thesis, Geschichte als Lernprozess? (Eder 1985), and then

considerably refined in Die Vergesellschaftung der Natur (Eder 1988). Whereas in the former

he advanced a theory of institutionalisation based on practice-based communicative collective

learning, the latter was devoted to a theory of practical rationality present in everyday

practices and morality as well as the resultant learning processes which, in turn, influence

social evolution.

Although not using the term, Eder (1988:321) adopted the characteristic left-Hegelian

idea of immanent transcendence by explicitly identifying with Marx’s critique of Hegel and,

on that basis, insisting against Habermas that the apriori of practical rationality – that is,

society’s historically accumulated generative-regulative potential – does not reside

exclusively in transcendent pragmatic forms, but must also be located immanently in social

practices and learning processes. This assumption was theoretically strengthened not only by

Bourdieu’s sociological transformation of structuralism which shifted the focus from cultural

rules to the practical rules through which they are employed and thus produced and

reproduced, but also by Touraine’s conception of the conflictive mediation of cultural

orientations and social norms. Through these authors, the culture-practice distinction became

central to Eder’s reconfigured theoretical framework, simultaneously allowing for a critical

distance from Habermas and for the development of a conflict theory of the production and

reproduction of culture without which his own theory of the public sphere remains

incomprehensible. Against the conventional idealistic assumption that shared values and

norms form the foundation of social order, he advanced the alternative view that culture

conceived as the medium of collective action requires disagreement or contestation to be

recognised as having a constitutive role in the societal formation process (Eder 1994a; 1994b;

1999; 2001a). This view was emphatically summarised in the apparently un-Habermasian

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vein of ‘Dissent generates…commonality’ (Eder 2000a:220). What Eder kept in mind beyond

sheer conflict and dissensus, however, is the intervening process of learning.

The Nascent Reflexive Order

Eder’s (1995a; 1996b) theory arose from his investigation into the institutionalisation

of new social movements and its implications for the self-production of society. He found

that this event accelerated the pace of social change in advanced capitalist societies by

opening new forms of institutionalised public communication. This drastic transformation of

the public sphere harbours momentous implications since it entails the alteration of the

conditions of social change and societal development – that is, of both history and evolution.

Luhmann’s autopoietic systems theory assisted Eder in seeing that this new infrastructure

provides a self-generating, self-organising and self-substituting experiential, communication

and argumentation context. For Eder, the increase and intensification of communication

stimulates a heterogenisation of society and a pluralisation of group and movement formation

which, in turn, are further strengthened and dynamised by unequal group and class positions.

Increasing contestation and conflict around the identification, interpretation and definition of

issues and the implicated direction of societal development give evidence of the incessant

struggles in which collective actors with different cultural, social-structural and institutional

characteristics engage with one-another over the recognition of their arguments and good

reasons. The emergent effects, including unintended consequences and unexpected

eventualities, are a vehicle for the acceleration of societal learning processes and evolutionary

shifts in the structures of the communicative context. Under these conditions, the

transgression of traditional, familiar and previously unappreciated boundaries becomes the

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order of the day. It is to the exploration of these various implications that ‘The Modern

Politics of Nature’, third part of The Social Construction of Nature (Eder 1996a:162-212; also

1996b), is devoted. What it added to Eder’s theory, however, is a sophisticated cognitive-

theoretical component.

Cognitive-theoretical exploration of public communication

Inspired by authors like Goffman, Gamson and Snow, Eder picked up the cognitive

thread in his earlier work and developed it further with the assistance of Habermas’ concept

of the cultural dimension of the lifeworld. As Eder (2007a) later confirmed, this is in effect a

cognitive – rather than purely symbolic – conception of culture, capturing the cognitive order

of society, and consisting of three components. Whereas Habermas followed the traditional

practice of misnaming them the cognitive, normative and aesthetic components, Eder

(1996a:167) conceived them strictly cognitively as cultural tools used by actors for the

construction of their own specific frames, and thus renamed them the factual, moral and

aesthetic ‘cognitive framing devices’. The symbolic dimension was nevertheless given its due

as the necessary element rendering different combinations of factual, moral and aesthetic

components coherent as identifiable social movement, business or political actor frames,

facilitating their communicability and narrative propagation, and linking the cognitive order

to social practices governed by specific values and norms. Filling a conspicuous gap in

Habermas’s theory, this allowed Eder to trace the process of structure formation and change

occurring within the new public sphere characterised by pluralism and competition between

publicly communicated frames.

With the focus on the growing, practice-generated complexity of the social world,

attention could be given both to learning in the sense of the increasing reflexivity regarding

the rules of interaction and coordination, and to evolution in the sense of the transformation

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of the historically-specific situational structures shaping society’s generative and

reproductive practices. The process was made visible through highlighting the trajectory of

structure formation and transformation from micro-level frame construction, via meso-level

frame competition, to the historical macro-level shift in the form of practices and its recursive

impact on the lower levels. The change in the cognitive form of social practices occurred as a

shift from the industrial cultural model to the ecological cultural model. In turn, these

promising beginnings of an evolutionary shift encouraged ecological changes in identity and

ethical orientations which had earlier already begun to occur at the level of social practices.

This raised the question of whether a spurt of specifically social evolution had been

inaugurated – that is, whether the constitutive condition of social practices, namely ‘the

regulative idea of practical reason’ (Eder 1988:306), would continue to be reproduced under

these more complex conditions, rather than being instrumentalised for the continuation of the

kind of natural evolution which had brought modern society face-to-face with ecological

disaster.

Post-corporatism and democratic class conflict

In his work on environmentalism, Eder operationalised his assumption of immanent

transcendence through the neo-institutionalist theorem that no organisation is possible

without a structural element taking the form of a counterfactual, context-transcendent idea.

To make sense of the institutionalisation of the environmental movement as well as of its

consequences and implications for the cultural, social and political order of modern societies,

he drew on a previously established distinction to develop a theory of cognitive and

normative institutionalisation. Eder’s (1996a: 199) subsequent theory of the new public

sphere relied heavily on the concept of the ‘post-corporatist order’, which he regarded as

being the signature of the post-environmental condition.

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In contrast to negativistic, pessimistic and apocalyptic diagnoses of the decline or

death of democracy, Eder’s (1996a:212; also 1995b) immanently-rooted counterfactual mode

of analysis led him to conceptualise a new form of ‘democratic class conflict’, one that

enables modern societies to leave behind failed forms of moralistic, charismatic, liberal-

pluralist and neo-corporatist order in favour of a nascent reflexive one. This new reflexive

order is not only sensitive to time constraints and consequences, but also provides a public

communicative context and concomitant procedural means needed to mediate between two

typically modern sets of conflicting cultural orientations and social practices – namely,

maximising liberties and minimising the endangerment of common goods. An essential

element of this emerging order that Eder (1996a:194) identified without developing at this

point is the role of ‘the public as a third party observer’. At this stage, evidently, he sensed

the necessity of having to conceptualise a previously unacknowledged level of contingency

which intervenes in the new public sphere in the form of a reflexively available set of options

for the immanent embodiment of its constitutive counterfactual condition, namely practical

reason.

Third point of view

Eder first investigated the third point of view and the dimension of contingency it

introduces into communication - beyond the relation of double contingency between ego and

alter – in a collaborative work influenced by Bernhard Giesen which was written in 1998 but

published four years later (Eder, Giesen, Schmidtke and Tambini 2002). Thematically

focusing on ethnicity, it sought to provide an explanatory model for mobilisation and conflict

by developing a theory of the construction and transformation of collective identity. The

theory’s basic framework consists of macro-cognitive situational structures and micro-

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cognitive competences which are regarded as being mediated under given conditions by

social practices following different values and norms. The symbolic articulation of these

components was presented as establishing a boundary between the included and excluded as

well as affecting both the macro- and micro-structures that represent the parameters of the

normative order. Theoretically, this called for a model of structure formation. It was

developed in terms of different situational contexts, reminiscent of Eder’s earlier

communicatively organised experiential contexts (Eder 1985) and structural models of praxis

(Eder 1988), depending on the configuration assumed by the relations between the first

collective actor (ego), the second collective actor (alter) and the public (third party observer

or other).

Eder and Oliver Schmidtke (1998) employed this model in their criticism of an

earlier, narrowly cognitivist, rational choice explanation of ethnic conflict. They deemed this

particular rational choice perspective as being doomed to failure not only because it ignored

the cognitive dimension represented by Goffman’s concept of an ‘interaction order’ and

Touraine’s macro-theoretical concept of a ‘cultural model’, but also because it neglected to

link the cognitive dimension to the communication process through which it is produced and

reproduced. It is in the context of dealing with the multileveled nature of communication that

Eder and Schmidtke (1998:429) related the third point of view to the idea of a ‘dreifache

Kontingenz’ going beyond the traditional sociological concept of the double contingency of

social interaction.

Resonance structures and societal learning

This growing concern with the nature of communication led Eder to generalise the

problem to the level of the resonance structures of the public sphere. This allowed him to

investigate the difference in the quality of relations between the various active participants

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and the public in the process of democratic conflict and, in a further elaboration, also the

situation-transcending transnational implications and effects of the latter in Europe (Eder

2000b; Eder and Kantner 2000). The next step, taken with Hans-Jørg Trenz (Trenz and Eder

2004), was to apply this model to learning processes transpiring in communication processes

under varying conditions. The focus was on ‘learning by triple contingency’ (Trenz and Eder

2004:12 and 18), the most demanding yet democratically the most promising kind of

learning, which corresponds to the potential of the new public sphere. It is enabled by a fully-

fledged communicative experiential context in which ego and alter – the institutional and

non-institutional actors on ‘the public stage’ (Trenz and Eder 2004:13) – relate to one another

via recourse to the socially constitutive and civilising impact of the observing public or ‘the

other’. The presupposition is that the threefold structure of public communication is activated

in such a way that the reference to the public opens a horizon of expectations on the part of

the active agents and, recursively, of the public itself. Those involved are compelled to

develop ‘collective identifications and representations of a shared world’ (Trenz and Eder

2004:12).

Starting from the problem of the democratic deficit in Europe and drawing on neo-

institutional theory, Trenz and Eder (2004:19) concretised these expectations and societal

learning spurts by conceptualizing democracy as a ‘symbolic device’ to which those involved

appeal and which thus not only guides public sentiments and actions, but also contributes to

advancing democratisation. The vision of democracy is converted through social learning into

a force which presses for its realisation in a corresponding institutional design. Theoretically,

the new public sphere, now referred to as the ‘media-constituted public sphere’ providing a

‘competitive public space’ (Trenz and Eder 2004:10-11), makes sense only in terms of this

triple contingency structure of public communication.

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To avoid the pitfalls of a purely normative theory, Trenz and Eder (2004:20)

articulated this model as a ‘theory of democratic functionalism’ capable of grasping the

process generated by deliberation, including the institutional, normative and symbolic-

narrative democratic practices carried out by the European bureaucracy, non-institutional

actors and a multitude of publics. The focus is precisely on the social dynamics of this

process which, depending on the new competitive media-constituted public sphere, push a

variety of diffuse claims, ideas and arguments about good governance and democracy,

encourage societal learning, and compel institutional reform. It is the centrality of this self-

impelled and self-substituting process to the expansion of the public sphere that leads Trenz

and Eder (2004:21) to regard democratic functionalism as entailing a ‘procedural account of

democratization’.

Here questions arise regarding the symbolist, functionalist and proceduralist elements

of Trenz and Eder’s model. First, since the idea of democracy is simultaneously immanently

rooted in the reflexive and critical capacities of actors, as well as takes the form of an

incursive, counterfactual, context-transcendent meta-rule, it is doubtful whether its cognitive

dimension can be wholly absorbed by symbolism and narrative elaboration. Second, the

question arises whether Trenz and Eder’s avoidance of normative imperialism ultimately

leaves sheer functionalism and proceduralism shorn of all substance as the only remaining

option. As regards functionalism, democracy appears as a subjectless autopoietic process

only because its account of the emergence of a social system fails, as in Luhmann’s case, to

specify the conclusive mechanism – namely, the appropriation of the structure-forming

achievement by those involved. Proceduralism indeed grasps the importance of discursive

synthesis, but it comparably underplays, as in Habermas’ case, the substantive dimension of

such synthesis. In sum, then, an approach that tends toward overemphasising symbolism,

functionalism and proceduralism is in danger of obscuring precisely what is at stake in the

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self-induced process of democratisation. Crucially, rather than stressing ‘the empirical

plurality and contingency of the public’ which is overcome by ‘the effects of transnational

resonance’ (Trenz and Eder 2004:21), the public needs to be conceived theoretically as the

vehicle of a counterfactual incursion which is cognitive-symbolically more palpable than

resonating symbols, procedures and functional connections. Eder’s concern with identity,

however, is a counterweight to this tendency.

Identity in the New Public Sphere

Identity serves as Eder’s immanent reality check since it marks the tensions demanding

collective processing in the constitution of society. Its study reveals the transgression of

boundaries and the concomitant transformations both made possible and compelled by a

society’s increasing communicative self-organisation. Unsurprisingly, therefore, identity is at

the core not only of the decrease in distributional conflicts in favour of collective goods

problems during the late twentieth-century, but also of the more general shift from the

national to the transnational level and, hence, the process of Europeanisation.

In several works, Eder contributed to the investigation of identity formation,

specifically, the tensions between identity-bound legacies and transnational trends. Among

these is the shift from the predominance of collective identities in the nineteenth and first half

of the twentieth century, through the ascendancy of individual identity during the age of new

social movements, to the return in recent years of the need for individual identities to be

linked with collective identities (Eder 1996a; 1996b; 2000a; 2001b). The first boundaries to

be challenged were those represented by bourgeois and proletarian identities. Although the

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succeeding individual identities in principle presupposed the post-conventional type of

identity formation, the process of individualisation was nevertheless accompanied by the

widespread appearance of pathologies of individualism in the late twentieth century.

The new type of reflexive identity construction encouraged by the communicative

mode of self-organisation meanwhile engendered diverse outcomes – from distance to

identities of origin, via a plurality of group identities embroiled in identity politics which

ironically generated the sobering experience of the contingency of collective identity, to

attempts to resolve pathologies of individualism by linking them to new collective

possibilities of identity formation. An example of the latter is the communicatively

engendered ‘counterfactual…reference to the associational community among human beings’

(Eder 1996a:212-213), which can be defined through such flexible terms as religion,

ecologism, citizenship and so forth. Of these, Eder’s (1996a, 1996b) detailed study of

environmentalism referred to above demonstrated how a novel emergent basis for identity

formation, namely the new ecological cultural model, burst the bounds of the by now

problematic and ineffective ideologies of liberalism, socialism and conservatism. Of

particular interest to him, however, is European identity, as well as the fate of national

identities in Europe in the vortex of the transgressive thrust of communicative self-

constitution in the transformed public sphere. Two studies, one of European environmental

policy-making (Eder 2001b) and another of postnational European citizenship (Eder 1999;

Eder 2001a; Eder and Giesen 2001), are of particular interest in terms of highlighting the

most characteristic features of Eder’s theory of the public sphere.

Ecologism

The abductive inference underlying Eder’s study of environmental policy and its

consequences in Europe points toward some of his most basic metatheoretical assumptions.

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Considering his relational mode of thinking bringing together the micro, macro and

normatively relevant cognitive dimensions, it is evident that he continues the classically

informed high tradition in sociology. While C Wright Mills famously encapsulated it by the

concept of ‘the sociological imagination’, in Eder it appears with reference to its historical

origin in left-Hegelianism as the counterfactual imagination. Accordingly, the experience and

protests of farmers, workers and the unemployed who are negatively affected by European

policy-making are related to the action of the bureaucratic elites in Brussels who force

through administrative decisions, while the idea of sustainability that is central to this policy-

making is treated as the legitimating link between the two levels.

The way in which Eder develops his inquiry moreover shows that he is proceeding

from the still more fundamental assumption of the relation between the immanent generation

and organisation of social life and the context-transcendent ideas playing a regulative role in

that social life. While keeping in mind the practical rationality inspired by the ‘regulative

idea’ of sustainability (Eder 2001b:50), his study takes the form of a reconstructive analysis

of the practical actualisation and realisation of this regulative idea, with special attention

given to the conflicting uses made of it by the different actors. Access to this democratic class

conflict is gained through cognitive-symbolic analysis of the sustainability discourse. Such

analysis is possible only by placing the actions of policy-making and the reactions of both

national political elites and various sections of the population into the context of the

communicatively mediated process of societal constitution, in the course of which the

contending actors draw on the cognitive order and practically actualise it in keeping with

their own particular norms and values or ‘worlds of sustainability’ (Eder 2001b: 44).

A usually neglected dimension essential for grasping the communicative mediation

and coordination of a plurality of actors, their competition and conflict with one-another, as

well as the resonances thus produced, is the role of the public as a vehicle of the third point of

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view. Starting from the idea of concerned observers and bystanders forming evaluations and

opinions, Eder identified three relevant publics – an elite, a national and a popular public.

Each of these publics has a structuring effect on the sustainability discourse through

embodying the collective goods interest in a sustainable society according to its own

particular identity, interests and concerns. The context-transcendent idea of sustainability is

thus made concrete in terms of the conflicting ways in which it is employed. By the same

token, Eder exposed the tension between the context-immanent and context-transcendent

moments with which the practical realisation of the idea consequently has to contend. This

innovative conceptualisation of the diversity of the public, however, did not yet adequately

grasp the idea of triple contingency. Beyond diversity, it indicates a contextualising third

viewpoint which coincides neither with ego’s nor alter’s, but rather is a reflexive epi-level

perspective supporting the cognitive ability to assess and judge reasons.

The differentiated analysis of sustainability nevertheless accords with Eder’s concept

of the new public sphere and also serves to clarify its generative process and its practical

democratic potential. It could equally inform the Brussels bureaucracy’s, the national

political elites’ and the civic movement actors’ respective understandings of the European

policy-making situation. To be convincing, however, its transforming effect had to be

demonstrated. Action-theoretically, environmental policy-making opens opportunities which

stimulate mobilization and draw in an increasing number of actors with competing cultural

and social orientations whose mutual engagement gives rise to a social field of struggle in

which the likelihood of conflict grows. Cognitive-theoretically, the actions of interrelated

actors reflexively generate the normatively relevant regulative idea or legitimating symbol of

sustainability which comes to direct and guide the various practices. Lastly, structural-

theoretically, the field of struggle expands, generates transnational class structures and

associated resonance structures, increasingly transgresses national boundaries, and by

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forming new structures feeds into the process of Europeanisation. The eventual nature and

character of the nascent European society unleashed by this non-linear development is

uncertain, but it is clear that what is at stake is whether it is going to be a ‘self-organizing

European society’ or a ‘European society made in Brussels’ (Eder 2001b: 26). Had it not

been for the new public sphere, Europe would be languishing in an unenviable state of

stagnation.

Citizenship

Eder’s work with Giesen on citizenship was motivated by the problems plaguing

European integration. Among these are the disputed status of transnational institutions, the

urgent need to support legal, economic and political integration with a social foundation, and

especially the lack of some form of postnational culture. Given the less than promising

prospect of resolving them by an approach based on either the liberal individualist, the

republican-communitarian or the culturalist – whether primordialist or universalist –

collective identity paradigms, and given further the urgent need for sociocultural integration,

Eder sought a feasible project for the construction of a European collective identity that

avoids the limitations of both the primordialist and universalist versions. His proposal

(2001a) is based on his previously established position according to which it is not culture in

the sense of common values and norms, shared interpretations or consensus on principles that

secures social integration, but rather dissensus through which such a state is achieved. This

proposition can be made plausible only in terms of a reflexive process: permanent

communication punctuated by temporary moments of institutionalisation in the course of

which dissensus towards consensus is generated and then, in turn, transformed into a new

consensus, which sets in train a renewed cycle of dissensus and so forth. Only thus can a

minimalist collective identity appropriate to the emerging postnational age be constructed.

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The idea of culture as the medium for the production and coordination of differences implies

that national legacies of a social, political and cultural kind as well as cross-cutting class

cleavages are all inputs into the process and, hence, facilitate the construction of collective

identity. European citizenship is seen as having the potential of functioning as a directing and

guiding idea in this dynamic process of integration.

The centrality assigned to citizenship becomes fully intelligible when one reflects on

the overall framework adopted in the study. The basic metatheoretical assumption is stated in

neo-institutional terms, but there are indications of links with its historical origin – namely,

the left-Hegelian principle according to which social practices harbour a historically

accumulated potential that exerts pressure toward its practical realisation appropriate to the

changed historical circumstances. On one occasion, Eder and Giesen (2001:246) speak of

‘social relations that carry with them…a semantic load’ which has yet to be realised. On

another, European citizenship is described as ‘a historically loaded idée directrice’ (Eder and

Giesen 2001:261) that ‘could serve as a foundation myth for further European integration by

providing a model for a collective identity of the people in Europe’ (Eder and Giesen

2001:262) – the model being ‘the myth of an association of free and equal beings living

together in peace’ (Eder and Giesen 2001:263). The mention of ‘myth’ reveals the impact of

neo-institutional thinking, the central point of which they summarise as follows:

‘there is no organizational form that is not linked to some ideal referent that

transcends it. Such “transcendence” can be an illusory, a utopian or any normative

ideal that is used in the making and reproduction of organizational forms. Such a

model is analytical, not tied to a specific historical constellation and does not

presuppose any empirical assumptions’ (Eder and Giesen 2001:268).ii

The term ‘innerworldly transcendence’ (Eder and Giesen 2001:263) is actually employed but

strangely confined to a particular historical type, namely the Enlightenment appeal to

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scientific progress and education as invoking a rational and reasonable society. Although

restricted in this sense, it is nonetheless the case that Eder and Giesen cast their position

throughout in terms of immanent transcendence. The idea of Europe as the longstanding

historical project of a visionary cultural movement involves both reference to a transcendent

realm, ‘a transcendental world’ or ‘other-worldly sphere’, which is nevertheless rooted ‘in the

mundane world’ (Eder and Giesen 2001:247) as something that is practically realisable.

Citizenship is conceived, accordingly, as a new manifestation of this representation of the

transcendent in the immanent. That this basic left-Hegelian conceptual structure is the

organising principle of Eder and Giesen’s piece is borne out by recurrent restatement

throughout.

To clarify the place and role of citizenship, Eder and Giesen (2001:258) adopt a

historical typology to identify a sequence of organisational forms designed as ‘an interface’

to bridge the gap and overcome the ‘axial tension’ (Eder and Giesen 2001:247) between the

transcendent and immanent by practically realising the former in the latter. The Church, with

its cognitive framing of a community of souls, offered salvation; the Enlightenment, oriented

toward a rational and reasonable society, developed a system of science and education; the

nation-state, envisaging a civic community, pursued either ethnic homogeneity or admitted

critical participation in public discourse; and finally, in the nascent postnational Europe, with

its framing of the self-creation of a community through citizenship practices, the proposal is

that European citizenship should be adopted.

This classification is plausible on the whole, yet it invites comment. It seems that

neither the public sphere is properly addressed, nor the status of citizenship adequately

clarified. Both points are surprising, considering Eder’s theory of the public sphere and his

concern with the third point of view. The concept of ‘interface’ with its stereoscopic

immanent organisational and transcendent institutional references is given a central role.

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Standing between the concretisation imperative built into the ideal and the transformation

imperative inherent in the organisational form on the ground, it marks the meeting point

where practical actualisation and realisation occur. Here Eder and Giesen locate the

organisational-institutional forms that have been designed to manage the tension over time.

The salvation practices of the Church were replaced by the Enlightenment’s scientific-

educational practices and the latter by the nation-state’s public discursive practices, while

today ‘the discourse about citizenship’ (Eder and Giesen 2001:258) is assuming the burden of

interfacing.

Eder and Giesen, however, fail to draw the obvious contrast between the classical

public sphere of the nation-state and the transformed public sphere of the emerging

transnational and postnational age. Had this happened, it would have become clear that the

mediation between the immanent and the transcendent, rather than simply taking place

through the discourse of citizenship, is basically borne by democratic class conflict. The

principle of immanent transcendence requires precisely the theoretical specification of the

immanent instance that exerts pressure toward transcending the status quo. Above all,

however, had the implicit public sphere theory been spelled out, the status of citizenship

would have become more sharply profiled.

Eder and Giesen (2001:262) describe European citizenship as ‘a strong idée

directrice’ and potential ‘foundation myth of a new European collective identity’. While it is

highly plausible to conceptualise citizenship as this type of generative regulative idea, it does

not however coincide with Eder and Giesen’s transcendent idea proper, namely, the ideal of

human rights. At best, citizenship is only a historically specific, situational refraction and

embodiment of the transcendent idea proper. Its location is somewhere between the

transcendent idea and the interface. It acquires its specific character and location thanks to the

incursion of the third point of view. Its status is therefore best captured by means of the

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concept of triple contingency. It is a contingency that derives from the threefold structure of

communication and it provides a moment of fragile temporary coordination between the

competing frames of the different actors.

European citizenship is a synthetic idea in the form of a cultural model that is today

emerging concurrently with consciousness of human rights, on the one hand, and the

intersection of the different national, class and political viewpoints in Europe, on the other.

As such, it is a contextualising epi-level refraction in the concrete situation of human rights as

a transcendent cognitive meta-rule. As a cognitive perspective that becomes laden with

normative import and that shapes all the viewpoints in the new public sphere, it represents the

third point of view which allows for the situational realisation of the transcendent vision of

the ideal community that Europe tends toward becoming in the nascent transnational age.

Tying the Loose Ends Together

In two recent essays, Eder decisively consolidates his position on vital aspects of his

theory of the public sphere: the counterfactual and triple contingency.

The first essay ostensibly offers a wide-ranging critical overview of the debates

surrounding the status of the public sphere arising from Habermas’ seminal contributions. In

the essay, Eder (2006:343) endorses Habermas’ core theoretical premise, albeit pursues it in

what he calls a ‘post-Habermasian’ key. In a spirited defence, he argues that what makes

Habermas’ theory the most radical and adequate one presently available is precisely its

largely misunderstood counterfactual nature. The public sphere is a social form that through

counterfactual assumptions allows a rational force to enter and influence society, especially

under crisis conditions, thus opening possibilities and paths for further societal

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transformation. Rooted in the human cognitive inheritance and structurally forming part of

thought, language and culture, this counterfactual quality plays a crucial role in public

communication and thus becomes manifest in communicative understanding. It is identifiable

as a counterfactual construction of the world in which free and equal people are able to

engage in public communication subject to the logic of discursive rationality. For the social

scientist, according to Eder, counterfactual conceptualisation is a valuable methodological

device allowing for the reconstruction of communication in the public sphere, for the

purposes of both the positive evaluation of potential openings and the critique of unjustifiable

closures.

The second essay is specifically devoted to a systematic investigation of the

mechanisms making democratisation possible – from micro-cognitive via social relational to

intervening contextual mechanisms (Eder 2007b). These are mechanisms that operate within

the public sphere or that influence it from the outside, either enabling the propagation of its

effects or distorting and blocking them. Here one of these mechanisms is of particular

interest. It is indicated by Eder’s (2007b:53) unequivocal distinction between ‘the stage of

public space’ where the active collective agents engage with one another and ‘the public’

observing the actors, as well as his explicit registering of the resulting ‘situation of triple

contingency’ and the counterfactual force of which it is the bearer. He describes the

concretisation of this threefold structure of communication as ‘the institutional form of a

script that regulates the exchange of arguments in front of a third person, the observing

public’ (Eder 2007b:53). This, in his judgement, is the institutional variant of Habermas’

model of the ideal speech situation which is of course deeply indebted to the left-Hegelian

tradition in both its Marxian and Peircean variants.

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Within the parameters of this institutionally secured triple contingency situation those

acting according to the script have to do so while simultaneously taking their cues from the

public. Whereas under the conditions of the nation-state it had been possible for the actors

more readily to identify and honour ‘the moral and affective coherence of the people who

make up the public’ (Eder 2007b:55), the triple contingency effect has multiplied under the

conditions of transnational pluralisation, thus rendering compliance with the situational

embodiment of the public considerably more complex. Yet, the basic pattern of the triple

contingency situation remains.

The actors on the stage, ego and alter, follow the script in the sense of the

transcendent idea, for instance ‘the common good’ (Eder 2007b:53), while the public through

their observation, evaluation, judgement and monitoring of the actors lays down the

parameters for the collective understanding and construction of the common good in a

particular situation. The public, over and above its pluralisation and fragmentation, is the

condition for the reflexive emergence of a contextualising perspective which allows the

ethical-affective, moral and factual incarnation of the leading idea in a manner specific and

appropriate to the actual situation. In so doing, it only mediately brings the counterfactual

force to bear on the actors. The triple contingency incursion borne by the public in the form

of a symbolically facilitated epi-level cognitive cultural model is but an immanently refracted

version of the meta-level generative and regulative transcendent idea.

To conclude, then, Eder’s astonishingly innovative, critical-sociological theory of the

new transformed public sphere is best understood theoretically, in my view, in terms of the

formula: the counterfactual imagination punctuated by triple contingency. Its inspirational

power and hence immense promise for substantive research and practical efficacy resides

precisely in this formulation.

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References

Eder, Klaus. 1982. ‘Kollektive Lernprozesse und Geschichte: Zur Evolution der moralischen

Grundlagen politischer Herrschaft.’ Saeculum 33:116-32.

Eder, Klaus. 1983/84. ‘Collective Learning Processes and Social Evolution: Towards a

Theory of Class Conflict in Modern Society.’ Tidskrift för Rättssociologi 1(1):23-36.

Eder, Klaus. 1985. Geschichte als Lernprozess? Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Eder, Klaus. 1988. Die Vergesellschaftung der Natur. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Eder, Klaus. 1994a. ‘Das Paradox der “Kultur”: Jenseits einer Konsensustheorie der Kultur.’

Paragrana 1:148-73.

Eder, Klaus. 1994b. ‘Integration durch Kultur? Überlegungen zur Suche nach einer

europäischen Identität.’ Theoria Sociologica 2(3):123-49.

Eder, Klaus. 1995a. ‘Die Institutionalisierung sozialer Bewegungen: Zur Beschleunigung von

Wandlungsprozessen in fortgeschrittenen Industriegesellschaften.’ Pp. 276-90 in

Sozialer Wandel, edited by H.-P. Müller and M. Schmid. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Eder, Klaus. 1995b. ‘Die Dynamik demokratischer Institutionenbildung: Strukturale

Voraussetzungen deliberativer Demokratie in fortgeschrittenen

Industriegesellschaften.’ Pp. 327-45 in Politische Institutionen im Wandel edited by

B. Nedelman. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Eder, Klaus. 1996a. The Social Construction of Nature. London: Sage.

Eder, Klaus. 1996b. ‘The Institutionalisation of Environmentalism: Ecological Discourse and

the Second Transformation of the Public Sphere.’ Pp. 203-23 in Risk, Environment

and Modernity edited by S. Lash, B. Szerszynski, and B. Wynne. London: Sage.

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Eder, Klaus. 1999. ‘Integration durch Kultur? Das Paradox der Suche nach einer

europäischen Identität.’ Pp. 147-79 in Kultur, Identität, Europa edited by R. Viehoff

and R. T. Siegers. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Eder, Klaus. 2000a. Kulturelle Identität zwischen Tradition und Utopie. Frankfurt: Campus.

Eder, Klaus. 2000b. ‘Zur Transformation nationalstaatlicher Öffentlichkeit in Europa: Von

der Sprachgemeinschaft zur issuespezifischen Kommunikationsgemeinschaft.’

Berliner Journal für Soziologie 10(2):167-84.

Eder, Klaus. 2001a. ‘Integration through Culture: The Paradox of the Search for a European

Identity.’ Pp. 222-44 in European Citizenship: Between National Legacies and

Postnational Projects, edited by K. Eder and B. Giesen. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Eder, Klaus. 2001b. ‘Sustainability as a Discursive Device for Mobilizing European Publics.’

Pp. 25-52 in Environmental Politics in Southern Europe, edited by K. Eder and M.

Kousis. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Eder, Klaus. 2006. ‘Making Sense of the Public Sphere.’ Pp. 333-46 in Handbook of

Contemporary European Social Theory, edited by G. Delanty. London: Routledge.

Eder, Klaus. 2007a. ‘Cognitive Sociology and the Theory of Communicative Action: The

Role of Communication and Language in the Making of the Social Bond.’ European

Journal of Social Theory 10:389-408.

Eder, Klaus. 2007b. ‘The Public Sphere and European Democracy: Mechanisms of

Democratisation in the Transnational Situation.’ Pp. 44-64 in The European Union

and the Public Sphere, edited by J. E. Fossum and P. Schlesinger. London: Routledge.

Eder, Klaus and Bernhard Giesen. 2001. ‘Conclusion: Citizenship and the Making of a

European Society: From the Political to the Social Integration of Europe.’ Pp. 245-69

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in European Citizenship: Between National Legacies and Postnational Projects,

edited by K. Eder and B. Giesen. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Eder, Klaus, Bernd Giesen, Oliver Schmidtke, and Damian Tambini. 2002. Collective

Identities in Action: A Sociological Approach to Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Eder, Klaus and Cathleen Kantner. 2000. ‘Transnationale Resonanzstrukturen in Europa:

Eine Kritik der Rede vom Öffentlichkeitsdefizit.’ Pp. 306-31 in Die Europäisierung

nationaler Gesellschaften. Special Issue 40, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und

Sozialpsychologie, edited by M. Bach. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Eder, Klaus and Oliver Schmidtke. 1998. ‘Ethnische Mobilisierung und die Logik von

Identitätskämpfen: Eine situationstheoretische Perspektive jenseits von “Rational

Choice”.’ Zeitschrift für Soziologie 27(6):418-37.

Trenz, Hans-Jørg and Klaus Eder. 2004. ‘The Democratizing Dynamics of a European Public

Sphere.’ European Journal of Social Theory 7(1):5-25.

i Lack of space prevents a full scholarly presentation of references and bibliographical details of authors other than Eder. ii Although neo-institutionalism lacks a critical pretension, this description is in accord with the left-Hegelian and thus critical theory’s understanding of transcendent socio-practical ideas of reason as both orienting norm-setting ideals and concealing illusions calling for critique. The critical dimension of Eder’s sociology which leads him to focus on political pathogenesis, social pathologies, blocked learning processes and so forth (see for example: Eder 1985; 1996a; 2007b) is obviously informed by left-Hegelianism, not neo-institutionalism. Accordingly, the use of the term ‘myth’ should be treated with caution.

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