Modern citizens, Habermas argued, had become alienated from the institutions of deliberative democracy to become passive consumers of the welfare state, of corporate capitalism and of the multi ple outputs of modern media culture, their lives subordinated to the institutional prerogatives of efficiency and control. The Lifeworld' of free individuals connected to each other by bonds of solidarity, he argued, had become detached from the system embodied in the distinct institutions of the state and the market economy (both of which had, in their different ways, undermined the social connections between people) and between the Lifeworld and system. But against this backdrop, Habermas offered a rich and complex theory of communi- cative action as a means to active citizenship and public understanding, opening up new opportunities for societal learning and for human liberation.