Habermas and Global Power Policy

Abstract

If economic globalization is shrinking the authority of the state — if states appear to have less of a capacity to preserve social standards and to address social inequities — how might politics be expected to catch up with markets? In contrast to the theorists discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 who consider it futile to have national states harness global political processes that are autonomous and self-reproducing,¹ Jürgen Habermas expects the leading states of the G8 and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — those countries with deep democratic currents — to take the lead in taming global markets via new transnational legal institutions. It is the citizens of democratic states, working with global civil society actors and international organizations, who will provide the impetus for a new politics that matches the strength of markets.