y as a gauge of democratization within the social-welfare state. The concept of public opinion should remain, because the social-welfare state must be seen as one in which the public sphere authorizes the exercise of power. Within this model, two politically relevant areas of communication can be contrasted to each other: informal, non-public opinions and formal, institutionally authorized opinions. Various subdivisions of informal opinion operate; the taken-for-granted, the experiences of your own biography and the things discussed as self-evident by the culture industry. All operate within a group's communication processes.
Formal opinions relate to specific institutions, and circulate narrowly between press and government. They achieve no mutual correspondence with the non- organized mass public. The two spheres are linked by manipulative publicity aimed at creating a following amongst a mediated public. A rare relationship exists between a few critical journals and those few individuals who form their opinions through literature. Strictly public opinion is possible only if the two domains are mediated by critical publicity. acting in intra-organized public spheres. The degree to which opinion is public depends on the degree to which it emerges from this intra-organizational public sphere of an organization's members, and the extent to which that sphere communicates with another public sphere formed by the mass media between state and society. In the conditions of a large social-democratic state, the communicative interconnection of the public can be created only by critical publicity brought to life within intra- organizational public spheres. Modern forms of consensus and conflict could also be altered, because they change as society develops historically. In the case of the structural transformation of the public sphere, we can study the extent, and the way, that it assumes its proper function determines whether the exercise of power and domination remain as negative forces, or are subject to change.
In this final section, Habermas analyses the term "public opinion" in its two key forms, and conducts a review of scholarly opinion about it. The two forms of public opinion are critical publicity and manipulative publicity. Critical publicity is that of the public sphere. It is based on true public opinion. It existed in its proper form in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but is still a central part of the modern democratic state.
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