Not healthy, answers J rgen Habermas. The diagnosis and the cure are an object of study. In doing so, his work contrasts with those who see themselves as political scientists , and most sociologists of our century who view public life in terms of structures and institutions.
Government is merely a particular solution to the public problem.
Typically today politics is viewed as a subject of study in social contexts from the family to the office to the nation-state. Viewed this way, problems of social identity are fundamentally problems in our rhetoric. This opens up so many new ways of thinking about social relationships and political communication that the studies are practically reinvented. The diagnosis has now crossed from the academic to the public media. Laments for the low state of public discourse are a part of editorial pages and talk shows.