ABSTRACT
In his provocative essay "Why Europe Needs a Constitution," Jürgen Habermas develops an account of the core challenges—economic, political, cultural, moral—facing the European Union (EU) as a consequence of globalization and transnational financial markets. According to Habermas, analysis and critique of European networks of interaction have, for the most part, tended to center on economic matters—for instance, debates on monetary union and global consumer capitalism, Habermas, by contrast, elaborates a less economistic view of the EU as a transnational institution. "The economic advantages of European unification are valid as arguments for further construction of the EU," writes Habermas (2001c: 9), "only if they can appeal to a cultural power of attraction extending far beyond material gains alone." For Habermas, it is clear that what bridges economy and culture, materialism and the political, is social solidarity, which in his conception operates as "deliberative discourse" within democratic procedures promoting rationally grounded agreements. Only in the context of European deliberative democracy, where a plurality of national publics congeals to transform classical international law into some kind of cosmopolitan order, will cultural resources for the advancement of social identity flourish. "Economic justifications," notes Habermas (2001c: 8), "must at the very least be combined with ideas of a different kind—let us say, an interest in an affective attachment to a particular ethos: in other words, the attraction of a specific way of life."
