With the growing role of an intrusive state, the mass democracy of the less educated (as contrasted with a more republican ideal), and finally with the growth of a profit-driven media, this public debate was stifled or rendered meaningless.
For a constructive debate to occur, an 'ideal speech situation' - in other words a generally observed set of rules governing debate - must exist in the public sphere. These rules are as follows (as laid out in his Discourse Ethics: Notes on Philosophical Justification, quoted by Bass):.
1. Every subject with the competence to speak and act is allowed to take part in a discourse. .
2a. Everyone is allowed to question any assertion whatever. .
2b. Everyone is allowed to introduce any assertion whatever into the discourse. .
2c. Everyone is allowed to express his attitudes, desires and needs. .
3. No speaker may be prevented, by internal or external coercion, from exercising his rights as laid down in (1) and (2). .
He advocates an equality of access and voice, a representation of society's different interests through public debate, ensuring that the public enter these debates well informed and able to resist state control (or coercion by any interest groups).
Of course it has been pointed out by his critics (e.g. Curran, 1993), that an ideal public sphere never really existed and hence Habermas' perceived decline of this public sphere is similarly exaggerated. The 'gentlemen's clubs', the casinos, the coffee houses and other venues for public discourse were quite limited in their scope to upper-middle class males, whose interests were also too narrow for any debate to result in a truly public consensus. At the same time, his critics argue that today's media comes close to fulfilling the role of the public sphere, as it represents the different interests in society in public debates and keeps the public informed.
One apparent point of contention in Habermas' theory of the public sphere is in his emphasis on rationality in the discourse.