Jürgen Habermas on the state of the Political

"In the welfare state democracies of the latter half of the twentieth century, politics was still able to wield a steering influence on the diverging subsystems; it could still counterbalance tendencies toward social disintegration. ,' politics could succeed in this effort within the framework of the nation state. Thus under the conditions of 'embedded capitalism Today, under conditions of globalized capitalism, the political capacities for protecting social integration are becoming dangerously restricted."

Jürgen Habermas, "The Political": The Rational Meaning of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology, in The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, eds. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan Vananthwerpen (New York: COlumbia University Press, 2011), p. 15.