theory of communicative action, 2008

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The times are amazing. This season, are we witnessing the original emergence of a truly global “conversation” (among Euro-American and Euro-Asian ministries) on the governance of democratic economies? The recent globality of finance-capitalistic advents have relied on a notion of inherently (or natural, social-darwinist) self-corrective rationality, what Alan Greenspan calls “the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works” (10/23) that fails with exotic financial instruments. (That “critical functioning“ always was, since Bretton Woods, more regulatorily constrained than pure free marketers wanted to admit.) All leading and emerging economies now anticipate formation of a new Bretton-Woods-like balance between innovation and regulation through tighter interregional coordination of economic policies.