Jürgen Habermas died today at 96.

Few political theorists shaped how we think about democratic legitimacy in modern societies as profoundly. His lifelong question was straightforward but demanding:

How can political authority be justified under conditions of pluralism?
🧵 Habermas’s early breakthrough was The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962).

Here, he reconstructs the emergence of the public sphere: spaces where private citizens debate matters of common concern and subject political authority to rational-critical scrutiny.

Just as AstraZeneca reduces vaccine delivery to the EU by 73% a private company offers the city of Prague a purchase of 400k AstraZeneca vaccines at EUR 12.89/dose. Prague to contact @AstraZeneca , CZ government & fellow regional governments.

seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/lekarni… Update, per AstraZeneca CZ: the company is not an authorized re-seller. AZ only makes business with states (for now) and at fixed rates (no profit margins for now). It is not clear if the company ever had the vaccine. Possible fraud. Unrelated attempt detected in Veneto (IT).

A very telling interview with Czech PM Andrej Babis textbook illustration for (technocratic) populism.
hir.harvard.edu/shock-to-the-h…

A shorts thread on technocratic populism using AB quotes to illustrate some relevant aspects of TP. 1/12 Three elements are crucial on TP:
1) combines populist and technocratic appeal;
2) transcends LR politics (but not centrist);
3) strategically combines populist and technocratic discourse (communication) and substance (policies) 2/12.