The Concept of the Public Sphere According to social critic and philosopher Jürgen Habermas "public sphere" first of all means "... a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed. Access to the public sphere is open in principle to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public. They are then acting neither as business or professional people conducting their private affairs, nor as legal consociates subject to the legal regulations of a state bureaucracy and obligated to obedience. Citizens act as a public when they deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion; thus with the guarantee that they may assemble and unite freely, and express and publicize their opinions freely." The system of the public sphere is extremely complex, consisting of spatial and communicational publics of different sizes, which can overlap, exclude and cover, but also mutually influence each other. Public sphere is not something that just happens, but also produced through social norms and rules, and channeled via the construction of spaces and the media. In the ideal situation the public sphere is transparent and accessible for all citizens, issues and opinions. For democratic societies the public sphere constitutes an extremely important element within the process of public opinion formation.

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Abolition of Resale Price Maintenance The London-based Institute for Economic Affairs (AEI) from its beginning undertook an extensive publishing program to push forward its free-market ideology. Among its publications was one particular paper, which had a direct and immediate political impact. Published in 1960 "Resale Price Maintenance and Shoppers' Choice" by Basil Yamey argued for the abolition of Resale Price Maintenance, which by fixing prices in shops prevented large stores from necessarily under-cutting smaller shops. Yamey argued that a free market in shop prices would save the shoppers £180,000,000 a year, and prices would fall by five percent. The publication of Yamey's paper was timed to coincide with a period of public debate on the subject to ensure maximum impact, and Yamey's suggestions were taken up by the incumbent Conservative Government. Although the Abolition of Resale Price Maintenance by Edward Heath in 1964, can not only be attributed to Yamey's paper, it for sure had a substantial impact.

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