Over the last several years, the debate about publics seems to have newly emerged. This debate critically reflects the Habermasian ideal of a (national) public sphere in a transnational context. However, it seems that the issue of a reconstruction of a global public sphere is more complex. In this brilliant and provocative book, Ingrid Volkmer argues that a reflective approach of globalization is required in order to identify and deconstruct key strata of deliberate public discourse in supra- and subnational societal formations. This construction helps to understand the new processes of legitimacy at the beginning of the 21st century in which the traditional conception of a ‘public’ and its role as a legitimizing force are being challenged and transformed. The book unfolds this key phenomenon of global deliberate interconnectedness as a discursive and negotiated dimension within ‘reflective’ globalization, i.e. continuously constituting, maintaining and refining the ‘life’ of the global public and conceptualizes a global public sphere. Offering insightful case studies to illustrate this new theory of the global public sphere, the book will be essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication studies , and social and political theory.

Is Habermas’s concept of the public sphere still relevant in an age of globalization, when the transnational flows of people and information have become increasingly intensive and when the nation-state can no longer be taken granted as the natural frame for social and political debate? This is the question posed with characteristic acuity by Nancy Fraser in her influential article ‘Transnationalizing the Public Sphere?’ Challenging careless uses of the term ‘global public sphere’, Fraser raises the debate about the nature and role of the public sphere in a global age to a new level. While drawing on the richness of Habermas’s conception and remaining faithful to the spirit of critical theory, Fraser thoroughly reconstructs the concepts of inclusion, legitimacy and efficacy for our globalizing times. This book includes Fraser’s original article as well as specially commissioned contributions that raise searching questions about the theoretical assumptions and empirical grounds of Fraser’s argument. They are concerned with the fundamental premises of Habermas’s development of the concept of the public sphere as a normative ideal in complex societies; the significance of the fact that the public sphere emerged in modern states that were also imperial; whether ‘scaling up’ to a global public sphere means giving up on local and national publics; the role of ‘counterpublics’ in developing alternative globalization; and what inclusion might possibly mean for a global public. Fraser responds to these questions in detail in an extended reply to her critics. An invaluable resource for students and scholars concerned with the role of the public sphere beyond the nation-state, this book will also be welcomed by anyone interested in globalization and democracy today.

Ingrid Volkmer argues that the new global exchange can be regarded as a trans-societal sphere of mediation, which involves a global exchange of universal but also - increasingly - particular news and political information issues. This new diverse global information flow provides the communication platform, on which a global civil society emerges.

Global policy making is unfurling in distinctive ways above traditional nation-state policy processes. New practices of transnational administration are emerging inside international organizations but also alongside the trans-governmental networks of regulators and inside global public private partnerships. Mainstream policy and public administration studies have tended to analyse the capacity of public sector hierarchies to globalize national policies. By contrast, this Handbook investigates new public spaces of transnational policy-making, the design and delivery of global public goods and services, and the interdependent roles of transnational administrators who move between business bodies, government agencies, international organizations, and professional associations. This Handbook is novel in taking the concepts and theories of public administration and policy studies to get inside the black box of global governance. Transnational administration is a multi-actor and multi-scalar endeavour having manifestations, depending on the policy issue or problems, at the local, urban, sub-regional, sub-national, regional, national, supranational, supra-regional, transnational, international, and global scales. These scales of 'local' and 'global' are not neatly bounded and nested spaces but are articulated together in complex patterns of policy activity. These transnational patterns represent a reinvigoration of public administration and policy studies as the Handbook authors advance their analysis beyond the methodological nationalism of the nation-state.

This book brings together key perspectives from scholars in the Global South and Global North to illustrate diverse ways in which the UN’s Global Citizenship Education (GCED) agenda can promote social justice and be used as a vehicle for negotiating and learning about diverse and shared objectives in education and the global public sphere. Recognizing the historical function of education as a prominent public sphere site, this book addresses questions around how forms of global education can serve as public sphere sites in various contexts today and in the future. Specifically, it questions established notions of education and proposes new interpretations of the relationship between practices of education and the public sphere to meet the needs of our contemporary turbulent era and a post-2020 world. By offering conceptual analyses, examples of policy and educational practices which promote global learning, democratic citizenship, common good, and perspective-taking, the text offers new critical understandings of how GCED can contribute to the public responsibilities and roles of education. Chapters consider examples such as non-formal adult education at the Mexico–US border, teachers’ responsibilities in Japan and Finland, developments in education policy and practices in Brazil, civic religious teachings in Canada, online learning in the United States and China, and support to the participation of women in higher education in Pakistan. Given its unique approach, and the range of case studies it brings together, this book is a timely addition to the literature on education in the global public sphere. It will prove to be an invaluable resource for scholars working at the intersections of global education and transnational education policies, and for teachers involved in global education.

Universities have been propelled into the center of the global political economy of knowledge production by a number of factors: mass education, academic capitalism, the globalization of knowledge, the democratization of communication in the era of the Internet, and the emergence of the knowledge and innovation economy. The latest book in the International Studies in Higher Education series, Universities and the Public Sphere addresses the vital role of research universities as global public spheres, sites where public interaction, conversation and deliberation take place, where the nature of the State and private interests can be openly debated and contested. At a time of increased privatization, open markets, and government involvement in higher education, the book also addresses the challenges facing the university in its role as a global public sphere. In this volume, international contributors challenge prevalent views of the global marketplace to create a deeper understanding of higher education's role in knowledge creation and nation building. In nearly every national context the pressures of globalization, neo-liberal economic restructuring, and new managerial imperatives challenge traditional norms of autonomy, academic freedom, access and affordability. The authors in Universities and the Public Sphere argue that universities are uniquely suited to have transformative democratic potential as global public spheres.

During the 1960s the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas introduced the notion of a "bourgeois public sphere" in order to describe the symbolic arena of political life and conversation that originated with the cultural institutions of the early eighteenth-century; since then the "public sphere" itself has become perhaps one of the most debated concepts at the very heart of modernity. For Habermas, the tension between the administrative power of the state, with its understanding of sovereignty, and the emerging institutions of the bourgeoisie--coffee houses, periodicals, encyclopedias, literary culture, etc.--was seen as being mediated by the public sphere, making it a symbolic site of public reasoning. This volume examines whether the "public sphere" remains a central explanatory model in the social sciences, political theory, and the humanities.