Public

Public (ˈpə-blik) is an important, but sometimes controversial, term widely used in political, social and legal theory, research and conversation, with many different nuances and subtleties of meaning, most of which are in some way related to notions of openness, generality and connecting independent parts with a larger whole. The term is used regularly by political scientists and philosophers, politicians, journalists, policy analysts, economists, lawyers and members of the general public.

It is ordinarily used as an adjective to characterize things which are shared by, open or available to everyone, well or generally known, universally available or without limit, done or made on behalf of the community as a whole, open to general or unlimited viewing or disclosure, frequented by large numbers of people or for general use, a place generally open or visible to all pertaining to official matters or maintained at taxpayer expense. (A list of more than 50 instances of such terms is included on the Related Articles page of this entry.)

Public can also be used as a noun to refer to an undifferentiated group of people, often sharing some interest in common. For example, the public might be everyone or all citizens of a nation-state (two uses of the general public), members of a particular community, state, dominion, district, precinct or other political jurisdiction (e.g., the citizens of Canada are the Canadian public), those who share a particular interest or activity (those who watch television are called the viewing public), fans or followers or an audience, particularly of a widely-known figure (Cher came out to greet her public).

Public can also be used in other ways. To go public, for example, can mean to offer for open or general sale something (e.g. a stock offering) that was previously held or sold privately, or to publish, print, broadcast or distribute news or information, or disclose previously private, confidential, secret or concealed information. Publicize also has many different uses which come down to the idea of making, transforming or converting something from private to public.

Origins

The modern [English term] is derived from the Middle English (14th century) publique, which in turn comes from Anglo-French, and ultimately from the Latin publicus; akin to Latin populus, or people.

Using published instances, the Online Etymological Dictionary traces the connotation "of or pertaining to the people," from 1436 and the connotation "open to all in the community" from 1542 and reference to "the community" from 1611. The same source also lists a number of later connotations. As noted in the section on res publica below, statecraft in the medieval and early modern period frequently rejected such ancient and contemporary connotations in their use of the term.

Res Publica

Res publica is a Latin term, originating in ancient Roman politics and law, and meaning, literally "public thing" or "public matter". Most modern sources take that to correspond closely to the meaning of contemporary phrases like "public issue" or "public concern". While the original Latin phrase itself has drawn attention from a wide variety of political philosophers, the term is of greatest and most far-reaching importance as the root of the term republic.

Eighteenth Century Meaning

Although the term public has been in widespread use for a long time, there has been at least one major transformation in its meaning in the specific context of government that appears to be related to the emergence of modern democracy (“government of the people, by the people and for the people.”). In several seventeenth and eighteenth century European monarchies under the influence of absolutism and the idea that the political authority of a sovereign ruler was derived directly from God, many statements were made that sound paradoxical to contemporary ears: Statements like “This is a public matter. The people have no right to express a view on the issue, or even to know about it.” made perfect sense at the time. Public interest, in other words, referred to the interests of the state, but for autocracies, strong monarchies, oligarchies and other non-democratic political states, public interest (as state interest) was not equated with the interest of the people.

Publicity

Publicity is a term which has also experienced a major transformation. Originally meaning (and still occasionally used in the sense of) something like the inherent quality of "publicness" attributed to someone or something, publicity is now much more commonly used to describe the process of or procedures for making something known to the public, particularly when it is done by an organization, committee or public relations agency or professional. Thus, when one hears, for example, of "the publicity of legislative acts" the phrase is much more likely to refer to actions or activities publicizing those acts than to the inherent qualities of actions by a group of persons functioning as a legislative body.

Public Domain

The term public domain is a legal concept referring to the full set of public objects res publica. This may include public property, information and knowledge not subject to copyright or patent and a wide range of other public matters. News is a particularly tricky aspect of the public domain, in large part, because what is news is defined largely by private, proprietary institutions (newspapers, news magazines, and broadcast news) under circumstances that allow them to retain limited and formal copyrights. Thus, the outcome of an election, for example, is generally in the public domain, both in terms of who won and the vote totals. Particular news stories reporting those outcomes, however, may be only partly in the public domain.

The Internet and the Public Domain

One of the principal reasons for controversy over the nature of the public domain in the past two decades has been the evolution of the internet.

Public Good

The term public good is also used in several different senses. For economists, public good is a technical term for goods (commodities and services that possess two defining characteristics: non-exclusion and non-rivalry. In general political usage, the term is used in a less technical, more normative, sense to characterize positive or desired outcomes of public or governmental action.

Public Sphere

The phrase public sphere has come into widespread use in recent decades in the context of the rediscovery of civil society to describe or characterize open or unconstrained social and political spaces, particularly those for purposes of assembly and [public deliberation]]. In a broader sense, the public sphere also extends to a much broader range of phenomena also including public sidewalks, public lands and the full range of public facilities.

The Structural Transformations

Jurgen Habermas traced what he identified as two subsequent "structural transformations" of the public sphere and related changes in social and political structure in a book entitled The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. This work was first published in German in 1962 as Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit but not published in English translation until 1989.

Habermas argued that an unprecedented "bourgeois public sphere" emerged in certain European cities (in particular, London, Paris and Berlin) in the late 18th century centered on newspapers and periodicals and other venues like the salons found in all three cities, coffeehouses of London, cafes of Paris and tischgesellschaften ("table societies") of Berlin. This emergence, he argued, came about in response to the new prospects for new prospects for democracy and republican politics arising from the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions. This was followed late in the 19th century by a second transformation adding up to the decline and dissolution of this bourgeois public sphere under the forces of bureaucratic industrial society in which corporate media and political elites came to dominate the public sphere.