international community cannot beexplained in terms of the traditional concepts of politics and thestate, which remain trapped in the straightjacket of methodologicalnationalism. Thus, if we are to understand cosmopolitan Europe, wemust radically rethink the conventional categories of social andpolitical analysis. Just as the Peace of Westphalia brought the religious civil wars ofthe seventeenth century to an end through the separation of churchand state, so too the separation of state and nation represents theappropriate response to the horrors of the twentieth century. Andjust as the secular state makes the exercise of different religionspossible, so too cosmopolitan Europe must guarantee the coexistenceof different ethnic, religious and political forms of life acrossnational borders based on the principle of cosmopolitantolerance. The task the authors have set themselves in this book is nothingless than to rethink Europe as an idea and a reality. It representsan attempt to understand the process of Europeanization in light ofthe theory of reflexive modernization and thereby to redefine it atboth the theoretical and the political level. This book completes Ulrich Beck's trilogy on 'cosmopolitanrealism', the volumes of which complement each other and can beread independently. It is essential reading for anyone interestedin the key social and political developments of our time.

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