Phillips assesses prospects for post-national social coherence transcending the traditional nation-state, with a focus on events in Germany. European institutional integration has been seen as a stabilizing alternative to the nation-state system, a system that resulted in two devastating world wars. However, economic interests appear to have been more effective instruments of transnational integration in Europe. Further, until 1989, part of this alternative vision was a divided Germany.

He explicitly links a focus upon the Federal Republic, central to post-Cold War Europe's...

With a focus on united Germany and the post-1989 German unification process, Phillips outlines the necessity and feasibility of a concept of post-national patriotism. Specifying the example of racist violence, Dr. Phillips argues that a substantial measure of Germany's social consensus can only be extended to heterogeneous Europe if there is a greater recognition of heterogeneous Germany, not only by Germans, but by non-Germans as well. He shows that the consensual structures of German-based transnational business may play a leading role in the development of a sense of post-national...