Why does publicity matter? Power, not deliberation

Why does publicity matter for democratic politics? This article challenges the deliberative view of publicity’s democratic value, making the case that publicity matters because it brings together people who stand to one another in relations of power, constraining the powerful to engage politically those whose action they affect, and enabling the oppressed to form new, oppositional identities. It underscores the centrality of the study of power to debates about democracy and shows that answering the question of publicity’s democratic value requires careful power analysis of the sort that contributors to this special issue have developed over the past quarter century.