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Abstract:
In a previous issue of this journal, Mark Murphy critically examined Jurgen Habermas' engagement with the process of European integration. In particular, Murphy questioned Habermas' faith in EU law and social policy as instruments for the promotion of democracy and cosmopolitan solidarity. This article challenges the theoretical presuppositions of Murphy's account, and hence the argument he builds on them. First, it is argued, Murphy provides only a partial exposition of Habermas' conception of European integration. With reference to EU social policy, for example, the Habermasian perspective is found to have more in common with the influential work of Stephan Leibfried than with the account of it provided by Murphy. Second, Murphy neglects the centrality to Habermas' thought of the phenomenological 'lifeworld'. As a result, Habermas is depicted, somewhat misleadingly, as a productivist social democrat, while the implications of his thought for analysis of the democratic deficit are left unexplored.
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