European University Institute Library

Weber, Habermas, and transformations of the European state, constitutional, social, and supranational democracy, John P. McCormick

eng

index present

non fiction

Weber, Habermas, and transformations of the European state

electronic resource

dictionaries

213380381

John P. McCormick

Cambridge Social Sciences eBooks

constitutional, social, and supranational democracy

This book critically engages Jürgen Habermas's comprehensive vision of constitutional democracy in the European Union. John P. McCormick draws on the writings of Max Weber (and Habermas's own critique of them) to confront the difficulty of theorizing progressive politics during moments of radical state transformation. Both theorists employ normative and empirical categories, drawn from earlier historical epochs, to analyze contemporary structural transformations: Weber evaluated the emergence of the Sozialstaat with antedated categories derived from nineteenth-century and premodern historical examples; while Habermas understands the EU almost exclusively in terms of the liberal (Rechtsstaat) and welfare state (Sozialstaat) paradigms. Largely forsaking the focus on structural transformation that characterized his early work, Habermas conceptualizes the EU as a territorially expanded nation-state. McCormick demonstrates the deficiencies of such an approach and outlines a more appropriate normative-empirical model, the supranational Sektoralstaat, for evaluating prospects for constitutional and social democracy in the EU.--, Provided by publisher

Introduction: theorizing modern transformations of law and democracy -- Critical theory and structural transformations -- Critical theory and the supranational constellation -- Law, democracy and state transformation today -- The historical logic(s) of Habermas's critique of Weber's "sociology of law" -- The fragility of legal-rational legitimacy -- Moral underpinnings of formal law -- The possibility of rationally coherent Sozialstaat law -- Secularization, commodification and history -- Excursus: the transformation of Habermas's theory of history -- Philosophy of history and the sociology of law -- Conclusion -- The puzzle of law, democracy and historical change in Weber's "sociology of law" -- The public/private law distinction and "modern" law -- History as confirmation -- Contestation of legal categories -- Legal history as contrast -- Continuity with the Present -- Legal limits on power: separation and application -- Organizations, special law and the law of the land -- Weber, law and social change -- Formal and substantive rationalization of law -- Formal v. substantive law and the Sozialstaat -- Conclusion -- Habermas's deliberatively legal Sozialstaat: democracy, adjudication and reflexive law -- Habermas on language and law, lifeworld and system -- Beyond formalist and vitalist notions of constitutional democracy -- Rational and democratically accessible adjudication -- Selecting 19th or 20th century paradigms of law -- Conceptual paradigms and historical configurations of law -- Conclusion -- Habermas on the European union: normative aspirations, empirical questions and historical assumptions -- Global problems to be solved by EU democracy -- The history of the state as guide to the present -- The form and content of EU democracy -- Limits of Habermas's theory of EU democracy -- Conclusion -- The structural transformation to the supranational Sektoralstaat and prospects for democracy in the EU -- Legal integration and the supranationalist model -- State-centrism--EU law constrained -- The European Sektoralstaat model -- (a) Legally facilitated race to the bottom or march to the top? -- (b) Comitology---open, public and equitable deliberation? -- (c) Multiple policy Europes -- Democracy, the EU Sektoralstaat and further questions -- Conclusion -- Conclusion: Habermas's philosophy of history and the future of Europe -- Index

Weber, Habermas & Transformations of the European State