Babinbach, Anson. "The Good European: On Jurgen Habermas." The Nation. July 10, 2012.

Excerpt:

Jürgen Habermas, Germany’s most famous contemporary philosopher, first contemplated the possibility of the European Union’s collapse in May 2010, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel dithered for weeks over the EU’s bailout of Greece as she tried to secure victory for her party, the Christian Democratic Union, in state elections in North-Rhine Westphalia, a CDU stronghold for six decades. For Habermas, the jarring disproportion between Merkel’s domestic politicking, which proved to be in vain, and the seriousness of the debt crisis revealed the absence of a legitimate institutional mechanism for a Europe-wide solution to the financial crisis. It also exposed the faltering of “ordoliberalism,” the peculiarly German economic policy established in the 1950s, whereby the state reconciles the imperatives of social welfare, efficiency and orderliness to ensure the optimal performance of the market. Administrative and technical adjustments proved inadequate to maintaining stability. In a flurry of articles and interviews that appeared in the German media, Habermas called the Greek debacle a “clear warning of the post-democratic road taken” by Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy (who in May lost his re-election bid), a consolidation of power in the hands of a few government leaders.

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