Petitions and the "Invention" of Public Opinion in the English Revolution

Abstract

Current accounts of the capitalist and Protestant origins of the democratic public sphere are inconsistent and speculative. This empirical account explains the transition in political communication from norms of secrecy to appeals to public opinion. Popular communicative change in the English Revolution anticipated, in practice, the democratic theory of the public sphere when printing transformed a traditional instrument of communication-the petition. Petitions had medieval origins and traditions that upheld norms of secrecy and privilege in political communication. Economic and technical properties of printing-namely, heightened commercialism and the capacity to reproduce texts-demolished these norms by changing the scope and content of communication by petition. This practical innovation appears in all factions in the revolution. But among radical groups, the political use of printed petitions led to novel theories and to democratic speculation on constitutional provisions that would ensure the authority of public opinion in politics. This analysis contradicts key assumptions on communicative change that fuel pessimistic assessments of the modern public sphere in post-modernism and critical theory.

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