Claus Offe Research Articles

Whose Good is the Common Good Anyway? A (Late) Response to Claus Offe

This paper answers Claus Offe’s question about the social referent of the common good, i.e., what kinds of entities are beneficiaries of common good-related public policy. I reject two individualistic answers, according to which the reference point of the common good is the totality or majority of individual community members, respectively. Instead, I opt for a holistic answer, according to which the community qua social entity is the beneficiary of the common good.

The welfare state between juridification and commodification: how the Frankfurt School gave up on economic democracy

AbstractThe aim of this contribution is to critically introduce and assess the Frankfurt School’s theory of late capitalism as it emerged in the 1970s, when a combined crisis of inflation and stagnation began to unravel the Keynesian orthodoxies of state-organised capitalism. In the process, Frankfurt theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Claus Offe developed powerful critiques of commodification and juridification. The origins of their theory of late capitalism are first traced to the interwar debates on the Weimar Constitution – Germany’s first experiment in both constitutional and economic democracy. The rest of the Article takes a closer look at the Frankfurt School’s changing posture towards economic democracy in the 1970s. Accordingly, I first reiterate how the theory of late capitalism converged with that of the other major crisis theory of the time – the neo-conservative theory of ‘ungovernability’. In diagnosing the ‘governability crisis’ as a crisis of democracy, the Frankfurt School’s increasing pessimism about democracy’s economic reach becomes apparent. Secondly, by looking at the way the Frankfurt School perceived the emergence of the ‘neoliberal’ alternative in the early 1980s, I also argue that the theory of late capitalism had, and did, little to resist the de-democratisation of the economy through the rise of economic constitutionalism in the 1980s. As the welfare state was caught between the two logics of commodification and juridification, economic democracy was its unwitting victim.

Examining Plogging in South Korea as a New Social Movement: From the Perspective of Claus Offe's New Social Movement Theory.

This study examines plogging as an environmental movement, using Claus Offe's new social movement theory to critically analyze why its value as an environmental movement has not been recognized in Korean society. Four rounds of in-depth interviews and narrative analysis were conducted between 2 October and 28 December 2022, which involved eight individuals who participated in and organized the plogging movement. The results revealed three reasons for plogging's failure to be appreciated by Korean society as an environmental movement: (1) the plogging movement overlaps with existing social movements; (2) the generational gap related to plogging movement participants stemming from the "new middle class"; and (3) conglomerates using the plogging movement as a marketing tool. The plogging movement has value as a new proactive, social movement for environmental protection that centers on people's participation. However, long-standing ideological and structural issues embedded in Korean society hinder the recognition of plogging's value.

Interview: Claus Offe and Helmut Anheier

In this interview, Claus Offe and Helmut Anheier examine the state of Eastern Europe 30 years after the fall of communism, explore the relationship between capitalism and democracy, and discuss what the social sciences mean today. They talk about the stresses liberalism is currently experiencing, current political developments in the US and UK, and the current relevance the fields of sociology and economics.

A CENTRALIDADE DO TRABALHO EM DEBATE: NOTAS PARA UM BALANÇO HISTÓRICO E APONTAMENTOS PARA O PRESENTE E FUTURO DA LUTA DE CLASSES

A reestruturação produtiva no último meio século e suas consequências no mundo do trabalho fizeram emergir no campo das Ciências Sociais debates que colocaram em questão a centralidade do trabalho para a compreensão das novas dinâmicas do capitalismo. Deste debate participaram nomes como André Gorz, Claus Offe e Jürgen Habermas, por um lado e por outro, autores como István Mészáros, Sérgio Lessa e Ricardo Antunes. Ao retomar na obra marxiana a dimensão mais ampliada da categoria trabalho e situá-lo em sua perspectiva ontológica, é possível compreender a complexidade das formas de trabalho no capitalismo contemporâneo analisando-o a partir das suas metamorfoses e do surgimento de novas – e precárias – formas de assalariamento.

Otto Kirchheimer and the Frankfurt School: Failed Collaborations in the Search for a Critical Theory of Politics

Abstract This article describes debates among members of the Frankfurt School during their years in exile in the United States about the status of political institutions within their analytic frameworks. The cited unpublished material in this article sheds new light on the complicated relationship between Otto Kirchheimer and the core of the Frankfurt School group on this issue. Kirchheimer’s biographical episode with the group exemplifies both the failure of interdisciplinary collaboration at the Institute of Social Research and the inability of its members to develop a joint theoretical perspective on political phenomena. In the context of the Frankfurt School, Kirchheimer’s works present a countermodel to the interpretation of modern mass democracy as an integrative regime of instrumental reason. He refused to accept such a global interpretation. In his work at the Institute of Social Research he accentuated the unequal power recourses of conflicting social groups and different institutional mechanisms to deal with these conflicts politically. This approach made his work interesting for authors of a later generation of Critical Theory like Jürgen Habermas and Claus Offe.

The Thatcher and Major Governments and the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, c. 1985–1992

Often now forgotten, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) is a breakaway organization formed after the 1984–85 miners’ strike, based primarily in Nottinghamshire. Formed in opposition to the policy and conduct of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the strike, newly available archival material has revealed that it received considerable support from the Conservative government, which sought to discourage ‘extremist’ trade unions such as the NUM and to promote ‘moderate’ unions. This article explores that relationship, demonstrating how the UDM was encouraged and rewarded for fitting the Thatcherite model of a ‘moderate’ trade union, and analyses its subsequent decline once that support was removed. Using the framework of Claus Offe and Helmut Wiesenthal, and Walther Muller-Jentsch, it assesses the extent to which the UDM was a ‘hybrid’ organization, displaying features of both an independent and company union

Stubborn Structures: A Path-Dependence Explanation of Transitions in the Postcommunist Region

Stubborn Structures:A Path-Dependence Explanation of Transitions in the Postcommunist Region1 Bálint Magyar (bio) and Bálint Madlovics (bio) the formula for regime change following the collapse of the Eurasian communist regimes in 1989–1990 seemed clear: to take the step from one-party communist dictatorship with a state monopoly on property to a multi-party parliamentary democracy based on private property ownership and a market economy. However, this idea has failed in several postcommunist countries, producing sui generis regime types without further movement toward the liberal democratic ideal (Zakaria 1997; Carothers 2002; Levitsky and Way 2010). In our view, the phenomena defining the development of the postcommunist region can be summarized by the term "stubborn structures," which is also the title of a new volume of studies edited by one of the authors of this paper (Magyar 2019b). Stubborn structures are a combination of culture and history—the cultural traits, way of life, and traditions of precommunist societies that had been developing until they were subjugated to communist systems, forming a kind of unifying "political lid" that was placed upon the different peoples. Under this lid, previous social development was arrested [End Page 113] and frozen. On the other hand, the decades under communist dictatorship also transformed existing social patterns and developed new ones, resulting in a special arrangement of sociological structures. The stubbornness of these structures has been most apparent in the former Soviet empire, specifically the liberated member states and satellite states of the Soviet Union. But such structures have been present in East Asian states as well, where dictatorship has not ended yet (such as China and North Korea). The stubborn structures argument embodies a form of path dependence, which refers to the idea that past events or institutional patterns have certain deterministic properties (Mahoney 2000). However, we refer not simply to a not-predetermined historical event—communist rule—but to certain initial conditions as well, that were combined with the repressive nature of communist dictatorship into a structurally stubborn mixture, which systemically distorted the democratic institutional setup of the new postcommunist countries. Naturally, stubbornness does not mean total determinism, but rather the assignment of certain probabilities to the different developmental outcomes. Indeed, after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the countries that had been under communist rule have shown a wide variety of development paths, ranging from remaining under dictatorship, to successful democratization, to the above-mentioned sui generis regimes. However, the past has shined through the newly built political systems almost invariably, and patterns of development are clearly visible along the lines of the structures we identify. BEFORE THE COLLAPSE: EURASIAN SOCIETIES AND COMMUNISM Basic Structures in Precommunist Societies2 As Karl Polányi explains in The Great Transformation, communality and reciprocity played an essential role in pre-modern economies, and it took the Industrial Revolution to separate the sphere of market action from that of communal action, which led to the development of capitalist markets in the modern sense (Polányi 2001, 45–70). However, [End Page 114] the transformative powers of the Industrial Revolution were particular to the West, where countries had also developed checks on monarchs and property rights protection, both of which are essential to the proper functioning of free enterprise systems (Acemoğlu, Johnson, and Robinson 2005). As a consequence, the nineteenth century saw a "great divergence" of the West from the East, where absolute monarchs enjoyed monopoly on land, legal protection of private property was weak, and industrialization itself took place, after several decades of lag, as a politics-driven process (Pomeranz 2000; Henderson 2013). This state of affairs amounts to the rudimentary or lack of separation of the spheres of social action in the East at the turn of the twentieth century. Claus Offe (2004, 78) divides social activities into three categories: political, market, and communal activities. Political action is embedded in a state structure and framed within features such as the acquisition and use of legitimate authority, accountability, hierarchy, and the use of rule-bound power for giving orders and extracting resources.… Market action is recognized by the contract–based pursuit of acquisitive interests within the framework of legal rules that specify, among...

O pulsar do centro da terra: interpretação do apoio zapatista à candidatura presidencial

Resumo Neste trabalho é realizada uma interpretação de um fato político ocorrido entre 2016 e 2017: o anúncio da candidatura de uma representante indígena, que pertence ao Congresso Nacional Indígena, e que tem o apoio dos povos zapatista e do próprio EZLN, para o pleito federal mexicano de 2018. Tal fato político é interpretado frente ao histórico de construção da autonomia pelos zapatistas mexicanos. Ao longo da década de 1990 e 2000, os zapatistas criaram autonomia territorial, bem como formas de organização local e regional (assembleias populares, caracóis, Juntas de buen gobierno etc). Assim, questiona-se: frente à centralidade da construção de autonomia nas práticas zapatistas, o que representa o apoio a participação na política institucional? Parte-se de autores que interpretam a contemporaneidade e principalmente as grandes transformações ocorridas no âmbito político, econômico e social da segunda metade do século XX em diante. Dessa forma, a interpretação de textos de Claus Offe servirá para a compreensão da crise do welfare state e do próprio Estado Nacional, frente ao processo de globalização e retomada do liberalismo econômico. Jürgen Habermas e Zygmunt Bauman foram as bases para a compreensão da crise política que é resultado de todo esse processo. Após essa qualificação teórica, analisa-se o contexto mexicano: a ascensão de governos neoliberais a partir da década de 1980 e o levante zapatista na década de 1990. Por fim, analisa-se o comunicado do CNI publicado no site Enlace Zapatista, no dia 14 de outubro de 2016, em que se propõe uma consulta popular sobre uma candidatura que represente o Congresso Nacional Indígena (CNI) e os zapatistas, bem como a escolha de Maria de Jesus Patricio, também denominada como Marichuy.

Book Review: Claus Offe and Ulrich K Preuß, Citizens in Europe: Essays on Democracy, Constitutionalism and European Integration

Book Review: Claus Offe and Ulrich K Preuß, <i>Citizens in Europe: Essays on Democracy, Constitutionalism and European Integration</i>

Theorizing crises and charting the realm of the possible Claus Offe in conversation with Laszlo Bruszt

Theorizing crises and charting the realm of the possible Claus Offe in conversation with Laszlo Bruszt

Constituent power and constitutionalization in Europe

In this article, I introduce a modified version of Koskenniemi’s distinction between two kinds of constitutional mindsets: Kantian v. managerial. I combine this distinction with evolutionary theory, and in particular with the distinction between evolutionary and revolutionary change (which is also used in constitutional history) and the distinction between selective adaptation and normative constraints of adaptation. I apply this theoretical framework to retrace the constitutional evolution of the European Union. Following Tuori, I distinguish five evolutionary stages: The revolutionary foundation laid in the battlefields of World War II was followed by an evolution of constitutionalism that was a result of the hegemony of the managerial mindset. Nevertheless, the revolutionary foundation was not forgotten, and the growing juridification of Europe produced an increasing need for democratic legitimization. With each stage, the relation between the Kantian and the managerial mindsets is increasingly antagonistic. The opposition becomes untenable once the constitutional evolution of Europe reaches stage five of the social-welfare constitution. The present collapse seems unavoidable. If there still is a way out of “Europe entrapped” (Claus Offe), it remains an open question and one of political praxis alone.

The Shadow of Colonialism on Europe’s Modern Past ed. by Róisín Healy, Enrico Dal Lago, and: Europe, Migration and Identity: Connecting Migration Experiences and Europeanness by Jan Logemann, Donna Gabaccia, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, and: Europe Entrapped by Claus Offe, and: The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century by David Reynolds, and: Goodbye to All

Reviewed by: The Shadow of Colonialism on Europe’s Modern Past ed. by Róisín Healy, Enrico Dal Lago, and: Europe, Migration and Identity: Connecting Migration Experiences and Europeanness by Jan Logemann, Donna Gabaccia, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, and: Europe Entrapped by Claus Offe, and: The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century by David Reynolds, and: Goodbye to All That? The Story of Europe since 1945 by Dan Stone, and: The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History ed. by Dan Stone Benjamin Lapp The Shadow of Colonialism on Europe’s Modern Past. Edited by Róisín Healy and Enrico Dal Lago. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 255pp. $90 (cloth). Europe, Migration and Identity: Connecting Migration Experiences and Europeanness. By Jan Logemann, Donna Gabaccia, and Sally Gregory Kohlstedt. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. 104pp. $160 (cloth). Europe Entrapped. By Claus Offe. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2015. 136pp. $19.95 (cloth). The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century. By David Reynolds. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2014. 514pp. $32.50 (cloth). Goodbye to All That? The Story of Europe since 1945. By Dan Stone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 379pp. $39.95 (cloth). The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History. Edited by Dan Stone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 767pp. $185 (cloth); $49.95 (paper). Standard textbooks on European history have generally divided the twentieth century into two halves: the first dominated by upheaval, turmoil, war, and genocide, and the second, characterized by peace and stability culminating in European unity. The books discussed in this review suggest the emergence of an alternative historical consensus, one that stresses certain continuities such as the continued significance of the memory of the First World War, combined with an emphasis on the fraught and complex nature of post-1945 Europe and the lack of any closure or resolution to historical change in contemporary Europe. To what extent can one refer to a “European” identity in today’s world? The contributions contained in the volume Europe, Migration and Identity: Connecting Migration Experiences and Europeanness offer some important insights into what “Europeanness” is, and to what extent one can discuss, in the wake of the postwar drive towards European unity, a common European identity. As the editors point out, transnational migration has always been a “constitutive element of European societies” despite a traditional historical emphasis on national demarcations (pp. 2–3). Following historian Konrad Jarausch, the contributors [End Page 429] problematize any notion of a homogenous European identity, instead emphasizing “multiple, shifting, and hybrid identities . . . transmigrants who oscillate between countries and between national, ethnic and cosmopolitan affiliations”(p. 2). In her essay, Saara Koikkalainen shows in the case of highly educated Finns who have shifted their residence within the European Union, 60 percent of these (internal) migrants saw themselves as “European,” thereby making their mobility that much easier. Nevertheless, she points out that “Europeanness” does not substitute for a Finnish identity (p. 97). It remains a “secondary identity marker” (p. 26). A European identity, concludes Kiran Klaus Patel, is a surprisingly “recent and fragile phenomenon” (p. 29). The rise of a xenophobic populism in response to mass migration from the Middle East and Africa also suggests the limits of a transnational identity. While the victims of imperialism have generally been viewed as non-European, the collection The Shadow of Colonialism on Europe’s Modern Past raises the issue of to what extent imperialism and the “reverberations of the colonial experience across the European continent in the modern period” have impacted the internal politics of Europe itself in the modern era (p. 3). The volume reformulates cases of national expansion (for instance, Germany’s annexation of Schleswig-Holstein in 1864 and Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina) as forms of Continental imperialism and also looks at such neglected historical phenomena as the return of former settlers from Algeria and their impact on France. The book contains a number of case studies concerning colonial practice within Europe itself during the process of national expansion in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, making nuanced distinctions among the various examples...

Arenas de formulação de políticas regionais: uma proposição metodológica

&lt;p&gt;Ao analisar a experiência da formulação mais recente de políticas regionais no país, pode-se chegar à conclusão de que nem haja política de desenvolvimento regional no Brasil. É o propósito do presente ensaio travar uma discussão crítica a respeito da suposição da existência, ou não, dessa política. Será mostrado como o julgamento relativo a uma aparente existência, ou não, dessa política precisa ser “desnaturalizada”, à medida que a possível ausência precisa ser compreendida enquanto “não-acontecimento”. Ou seja, ao invés de ficar analisando os elementos de uma proposta que não se reconhece como política regional, é preciso desvendar os mecanismos – as “seletividades” – que impediram seu “acontecimento”. Para essa investigação utilizam-se os conceitos de Claus Offe sobre Estado capitalista, seletividade e arenas politicas que permitirão uma primeira comparação entre diferentes “démarches” na formulação de políticas voltadas ao desenvolvimento regional, realizadas nos últimos 10 a 20 anos, no Brasil. Com isso, visa-se identificar alguns determinantes dessa formulação de políticas regionais que podem contribuir para compreender os seus eventuais “não acontecimentos”.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Código JEL&lt;/strong&gt; | O18; O20; R58.&lt;/p&gt;

The Imperative of a European Welfare State

Europe Entrapped. By Claus Offe. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015, 136 pp., hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-745-68751-3). With this concise and easily accessible book, Claus Offe presents a stimulating analysis of the European Union (EU) in the ongoing Euro crisis. Offe manages to provide this thanks to his mastery of the economics, political sociology, and constitutional situation of the EU. The book is the latest in a series published by Polity Press of German and European scholars and public intellectuals contributing to the political debate about the future of European integration (Habermas ⇓; Giddens ⇓; Streeck and Schafer ⇓; Zielonka ⇓). As a member of this select group of powerhouses in intellectual thought, Offe contributes a most welcome counterweight to all the short and simple arguments attributing blame for the crisis to a small group of people, persons, or institutions. For everyone interested in the Euro crisis and annoyed or confused by the barrage of media coverage on it, I highly recommend this book. Europe finds itself in a trap, so argues Offe, where no one has the capacity to exercise leadership anymore. This “agency” to help Europe respond to shocks, such as those of the financial and sovereign debt crisis, is nowhere to be found. The current path of institutionally enforced austerity will not solve the crisis for a variety of reasons. Economically, austerity aggravates rather than alleviates the macroeconomic crisis in Europe's periphery. More to the point, Offe draws attention to the economic and social hardships suffered by millions of Europeans in Greece, especially, but …

Europe Entrapped. By ClausOffe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014)

ConstellationsVolume 22, Issue 2 p. 328-331 Book Review Europe Entrapped. By Claus Offe ( Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014) Juri Viehoff, Juri ViehoffSearch for more papers by this author Juri Viehoff, Juri ViehoffSearch for more papers by this author First published: 17 June 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12164Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume22, Issue2June 2015Pages 328-331 RelatedInformation

Which Way Out?

In his new book, the German sociologist Claus Offe analyzes the vicious circles of the Eurocrisis with unrivaled precision. Like others, though, his policy prescriptions tend toward unrealistic hopes.

Juncture interview: Claus Offe

European democracy is in a bind: what urgently needs to be done is also extremely unpopular and therefore virtually impossible to bring about democratically. In this exclusive interview, Claus Offe discusses the contradictions at the heart of the European project.

A AÇÃO COLETIVA E SEUS INTÉRPRETES

This article intention is to give the theorical and intellectual map production regarding collective actions. For such, we will analyze the propositions of five thinkers who have work for the better understanding of this question. We will discuss the contributions of the Chicago School, especially psic-sociology, and Herbert Blumer symbolic interactionism; the classical Marxists approaches on collective actions; Claus Offe and the Marxist point of view on the new models of collective actions; Charles Tilly and his social-historic perspective analysis about social movements; and finally Mancur Olson and collective action from a rational perspective. What we intend is to present comparatively the theorical and practical similarities and exclusions of these contemporary authors who contribute with collective actions today.

Democratic inequality in the austerity state

Claus Offe argues that a natural tendency for democracies to exclude the poorest has been exacerbated by austerity policies and a diminished offer from an ‘emaciated state’.