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Cover of: Europe at Crossroads
Hauke Brunkhorst

Europe at Crossroads

[Europe at Crossroads: Between the Kantian Mindset of Democratic Capitalism and the Managerial Mindset of Capitalist Democracy]
Section: Articles
Volume 52 (2014) / Issue 1, pp. 25-48 (24)
Published 09.07.2018
DOI 10.1628/000389214X14056754359464
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Summary
The European Union today finds itself in the midst of its greatest crisis. The crisis is due not only to one of the greatest breakdowns in the history of the global economy, but also to the fascinating internal evolution of the European constitution since its beginning, shortly after World War II. Parallel to the growth of constitutional law, latent legitimation problems began to arise and grow cumulatively. However, once the big global banks, corporations and hedge-funds began a concerted attack on the European periphery, the long lasting neoliberal turn from democratic capitalism to capitalist democracy has reached whole Europe, and thelegitimation crisis becomes manifest.