ABSTRACT
The critical view of the 'manic logic of global capitalism' is determined by the fear that the global expansion of the market economy will dissolve, or at least considerably weaken, the legal, political and cultural ties of the economic systems. The policy decisions of nation states are increasingly dependent on global economic development lines over which they have increasingly diminishing influence. Accordingly, the importance of the self-creation of a network of 'civil norms and trust' for extending the citizen's horizon is accentuated: through the systems' permeability to reciprocal influences it creates democratic social capital, which enables decisions to be viable in the longer term. The institutional forms of globalization, whether organized on a public- or private-law basis, similarly arouse mistrust in the public debate: the WTO rules and procedures are perceived to have a strong free-trade orientation and to be too closed to considerations of conflicting goods and interests.
