One of the distinctive features of Habermas's work has been its approach to the problem of political legitimacy through a sustained reflection on the dual legitimating and regulating function of modern legal systems. Extending his discourse theory of normative validity to the legal-political domain, Habermas has defended a proceduralist conception of deliberative democracy in which the burden of legitimating state power is borne by informal and legally institutionalized processes of political deliberation. Its guiding intuition is the radical democratic idea that there is an internal relation between the rule of law and popular sovereignty. In these essays he brings this discursive and proceduralist analysis of political legitimacy to bear on such urgent contemporary issues as the enduring legacy of the welfare state, the future of the nation state, and the prospects of a global politics of human rights.

This book will be essential reading for students and academics in sociology and social theory, politics and political theory, philosophy and the social sciences generally.

Translator's Note. Preface.

Part I: How Rational is the Authority of the Ought?:.

1. A Genealogical Analysis of the Cognitive Content of Morality.

Part II: Political Liberalism: A Debate with John Rawls: .

2. Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason.

3."Reasonable" versus "True," or the Morality of Worldviews.

Part III: Is There a Future for the Nation-State? .

4. The European Nation-State: On the Past and Future of Sovereignty and Citizenship.

5. On the Relation between the Nation, The Rule of Law, and Democracy.

6. Does Europe Need a Constitution?Response to Dieter Grimm.

Part IV: Human Rights: Global and Internal.

7. Kant's Idea of Perpetual Peace: At Two Hundred Years' Historical Remove.

8. Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State.

Part V: What Is Meant by "Deliberative Politics"?:.

9. Three Normative Models of Democracy.

10. On the Internal Relation between the Rule of Law and Democracy.

Notes.

Index.