Social cohesion through market democratization

Extending this analysis, it is argued that co-operatives can contribute to the notion of a healthy public sphere and alleviate the “legitimation deficits.” The concept of legitimation crisis is used to analyse social cohesion from a systems-theory perspective and explain the decline of social cohesion as a result of the “colonization of the lifeworld,” or the dominance of instrumentalism over mode [...] On the other hand, the growing market-oriented structure of the economy, the feeling that national governments were powerless in the face of market forces, the emphasis on freer trade as a necessity to pre- vent financial calamity, and the mantras of competitiveness and efficiency have left popula- tions feeling increasingly disempowered. [...] The state has always acted as a bulwark against the forces that threaten society — it’s been the de- fender of the social fabric, the embodiment of the body politic — since the nation-state took form in the seventeenth century. [...] Simultaneously, however, the more homogenized the world becomes, the greater the demand placed on the state to become the defender of the national or regional culture. [...] The emergence of the public sphere in the eighteenth century provided the neces- sary condition for the legitimation of state and action in society.