This paper is a survey of some of the recent
literature on social democratic responses to globalisation together with
comments on that literature and some thoughts about future directions for social
democracy. It sets this against the background of the crisis of traditional
social democracy and the transition to modernised forms; it discusses a third
form, globalist social democracy. It defines globalisation and some of the
issues it raises for social democracy.
It is argued that there are three main social
democratic responses to globalisation – neo-liberal acquiescence, active
national interventionism or global politics. No actual social democratic
responses fit neatly into either of these categories but most have biases in one
or another of these directions. New Labour is primarily a neo-liberal
acquiescent party but still pursues active nation-state interventions in the
form of supply-side economics and social policies and is active globally in some
areas, eg in military alliances and on debt relief, for example, however weak or
inadequate or otherwise you may feel them to be on such issues.
My argument is that there is a lot that national
governments can still do as active participants, both at national and global
levels. But they need to make sure they pursue a strong focus on global
democracy. This is not because the power of the nation-state has disappeared, a
common focus for those who emphasise the role of globalisation. But it is: 1)
because of what they can do as national governments, which is still quite
a bit, and which can be especially effective if pursued through global
politics; and 2) because government interventionism in the national sphere alone
in response to globalisation is too nationally self-interested and competitive
against other nations and at their expense and puts too little emphasis on
common human needs and collective transnational interests.
Hence much of my focus is on globalist social
democracy – what it is, what problems it faces and whether and in what form it
offers opportunities for change in a social democratic or socialist direction.
My conclusions are for a more globalist slant to social democracy. This means
trying to overcome national differences and competition as much as possible and
ensuring that transnational forums have a more social democratic and less
neo-liberal slant. It requires participation within capitalism and the state,
not rejection of them, yet still implies an important role for traditional
social democracy and ideas critical of capitalism, for democratisation and for
social movements operating within civil society.
Social democracy accepts, rightly or wrongly, that,
for all its faults, liberal democracy works: it is the fundamental basis for
democracy, even if it can be improved and reformed for the better. Capitalism is
accepted – it can deliver growth and wealth. However capitalism is not all
good, it can lead to inequalities and deprivation which need to be mitigated
through government intervention, a characteristic on which social democracy
begins to differ, in emphasis at least, from many liberals and conservatives.
Amongst social democrats there may be differences of emphasis, between those who
envisage compensatory policies, which attempt to mitigate or sweep up the social
costs of liberal capitalism, and countervailing social democracy, which tries to
establish principles which go in a different direction to liberal capitalism.
Mitigative policies or reform are initiated and implemented by government from
above which is focused on the national arena, on action via the nation-state.
It is worth making an important distinction here,
along the continuum that links social democracy and democratic
socialism. While democratic socialism may share many characteristics with
social democracy – the commitment to pursuing change through existing and
extended institutions of democracy, for example – it is concerned with the
reform or transformation of capitalism, rather than just mitigation of its worst
effects. It aims at change to a society which in the long run may not be so
easily or purely identifiable as capitalism but more based on collective control
and equality than the dominance of private capital and a social structure
determined by market forces.
Democratic socialism amounts to a radical version of countervailing
social democracy. Compensatory social democracy tries to ameliorate the effects
of open markets. Countervailing social democracy, however, tries to put forward
an alternative model of development altogether, changing the system rather than
living with it and mitigating its worst effects. But really trying to provide
countervailing rather than just compensatory forces to liberal economics and
unregulated capitalism, eventually goes to the leftwards edge of social
democracy to some form of socialism.
Social democrats like the French Prime Minister,
Lionel Jospin, feel more comfortable speaking the language of socialism than
social democracy, albeit, in Jospin’s case, for reasons of national tradition
as much as ideology. This is not to say that all democratic socialists are
committed to the abolition of every last relic of capitalism, nor that they want
overnight revolution. Democratic socialists tend to be committed to democracy
and gradualism and do not have an antipathy to all that is private or marketised.
But on balance they hope in the end to see a society which is more or as much
socialist as capitalist. They are committed to the reform of capitalism rather
than merely the mitigation of its worst effects.
From 1945 onwards in many countries social democracy
was organised around various ideological and policy features: Keynesian
economics, a universal welfare state, working class solidarity, the trade unions
and corporatist arrangements. Of course, such features varied from place to
place. In some countries corporatism took off and became embedded more than in
others. The form the welfare state has taken has varied, to take another
example. And whether such mainstays of social democracy actually always made
their way into concrete practice, or were held to in all factions of social
democratic parties can be questioned. The main point here is that in the
dominant leaderships of many social democratic parties, these were important
ideological commitments. They were also part of a broader ideological consensus
accepted by other parties, albeit one in which there were differences between
parties on matters of policy.
From the 1970s onwards these ideological and policy
features have taken a battering. The size and political loyalty of the
traditional manufacturing working class has declined. This does not mean that
class as an economic and social division has declined in importance, even if it
may have become redefined and restructured. Inequality is still a very important
issue. And there have long been significant sections of the middle class who
have supported social democracy as well as working class supporters of the
right. But it does mean that electorally the core support for social democracy
has shrunk with the shift from manufacturing to services and is no longer so
loyally social democratic as it used to be. It is more inclined to be
instrumental and pragmatic in its choice of voting intention than as partisan
and loyal as it was in the past.
For some social democratic parties, such as the
British Labour Party, admitting its cross-class basis and responding to it took
many years of bitter dispute and rethinking. For others, such as the Swedes and
Dutch, recognising that they were as much a middle as a working class party has
for much longer been quite normal. Either way, to build broader class support
has led social democratic parties to rethink their message to suit their
electoral constituency.
There have also been policy crises – linked to the
issue of changing social base but with other dynamics also involved. In many
places it is perceived that state welfare has produced dependency rather than
initiative on the part of citizens and the type of government support which
would underpin greater opportunities for them. In addition, it is perceived by
some social democrats that the willingness of people to financially support such
systems through income tax has reached its limits. Furthermore, with growing
affluence, welfare, or state systems of health, pensions and such like, no
longer need to be so universal. Many can afford to pay for some of these
services ourselves. And such systems have become inefficient, geared to producer
rather than consumer interests, undemocratic and unwieldy.
Keynesian macroeconomic policy is also seen to have
been undermined, in part by globalisation. The capacity of governments to
control the economy within their own borders seems no longer possible (if it
ever really was) because capital can move quickly and easily across national
boundaries. High public spending and reflationary strategies may therefore
frighten off capital, more attracted to low spending and stable macro-economic
government policies. Or the wealth it creates could just be spent by consumers
on overseas rather than domestic products or lead to price and wage inflation.
So social democratic parties nowadays are more concerned with prudence in
spending and with attracting investment. Policies for wealth-creation and growth
are less about spending and government ownership or direction of industries and
more about business-friendliness, maintaining private sector confidence and
offering a workforce and incentives which are attractive to potential investors.
There is a stronger emphasis on supply-side than demand-side economics, although
of course this, like other factors being discussed, varies across nations.
Of course, there have been other factors affecting
such shifts in policies as well as globalisation, the constraints imposed by
European Union developments, the Maastricht criteria for instance being
particularly important, and in Britain and the USA the legacy of Thatcherism and
Reaganism. Or some might say that such policy shifts have not at all been the
result of such constraints. It is more to do with the perception of such
constraints than their reality or to do with ideological choices made by social
democrat leaders rather than external social determinants.
Modernising Social Democracy
Where does this leave social democracy now? There are
two ways of looking at this. First we can examine some general categories for
understanding where social democracy is today. Postwar and current ideas of
social democracy can be categorised in three ways: traditional, modernising and
globalist. Secondly we can examine how social democracy varies across nation
states. These two dimensions intersect and I shall discuss them together. This
is important for my later discussion on responses of social democracy to
globalisation where both traditional/modernising/globalist distinctions and
national differences are very relevant.
Modernising social democracy, which has accommodated
itself to quite some extent to neo-liberal priorities, is the dominant form
amongst these three. Of course, elements of modernising social democracy were
present in factions of traditional social democratic parties and vice-versa
and recent and older social democratic parties were internally diverse.
Rhetorical differences between new and old may have sometimes been greater than
real differences. And the divergence between new and old may be stressed by
modernisers in order to exaggerate their own novelty and avoid what are
percieved to be electorally damaging connections with the past. Nevertheless,
modernising social democracy has many discontinuities with traditional social
democracy and now dominates the stated ideology and policies of social
democratic parties in a way that it did not do so in the past.
To some extent, in some places, social democratic
modernisation far preceded that recently carried out by the British Labour
Party, now seen by most as, for good or ill, presently the furthest down the
road of liberalisation:
In 1959 the German SPD had its Bad Gödesborg
congress, breaking with marxism and accepting the market and a role for
private ownership. The Dutch SDAP’s conversion to the mixed economy and an
electoral strategy which incorporated the middle classes happened as early
as the 1930s.
The Dutch PvDA (founded in the 1940s) shares a
remarkable number of features with New Labour in the UK: the rejection of
traditional welfarism and Keynesianism, and of planning and egalitarianism;
an emphasis on combining economic efficiency with social justice; low
taxation policies; competitiveness based on technological innovation;
government intervention on social exclusion; a focus on labour and work as
the basis for participation; partnership with the private sector;
flexibility in worklife; and the importance of education and training.
Sweden has been noted for its high taxation and
large universal welfare system, and several of these characteristics of
modernisation were also exhibited by Swedish social democracy long before
Blair.
Many of the criticisms of modernising social
democracy in the Netherlands are also comparable to those made of New Labour
in Britain: too much emphasis on work as a solution to social exclusion and
too much on opportunities at the exclusion of equality and redistribution,
for example.
However, it appears now (and maybe the appearance is
deceptive) that the British Labour Party is in the vanguard, if that is right
word, of modernising social democracy. Modernising social democracy, in Britain
at least, is not only about finding new means for old social democratic ends –
new economic and social policies for pursuing equality and community – in a
new globalised context. It has actually redefined old social democratic ends
themselves: new times, new means and new ends or values.
One significant shift is from equality not only to
equal opportunities but to minimum opportunities. Blair does not believe in
egalitarian redistribution, and his policies (such as welfare-to-work and the
tackling of ‘failing’ schools and poor literacy) are not geared to equal
opportunities, but to minimum opportunities for those currently excluded
from them. Of course if the socially excluded are granted minimum opportunities
this puts them on a more equal footing with others. But beyond that equality is
not promoted and the main dynamic is inclusion and minimum opportunities rather
than egalitarian redistribution. After that baseline has been achieved it is not
clear that more equal outcomes or even the equalisation of opportunities is on
the government’s agenda.
As such, the oft-spoken value of community
also refers to a more inclusive community rather than a more equal one. It does
not mean class community or the socio-economic community of old social democracy
which was to be built by measures such as redistribution and common experiences
of universal health care and comprehensive education. It refers to moral
community with the emphasis on the responsibilities of individual citizens to
the state rather than of business to the community, a more old social democratic
conception, even if it was not often pursued right down to the hilt in practice.
None of this is to say, of course, that modernising
social democracy is just Thatcherism in disguise as some critics have claimed.
There are moderately social democratic sentiments in modernising social
democracy – concern for the socially excluded, a role for active government
(if not of a directly interventionist sort associated with traditional social
democracy) and a commitment to public services like health and education. Like
it or not, modernising social democracy can genuinely claim to be going down a
third way, breaking with traditional social democracy, but not quite the same as
the new right.
In other countries, such as Germany, the journey to
modernised social democracy is a more difficult process, the government being
subjected to a number of forces which have allowed Blair-like policies to be
carried out in some areas but greater social democratic traditionalism retained
elsewhere. The need to combine moderate electoral appeal with more radical
appeal to coalition partners, the social market culture, and the devolved nature
of the German political system and institutions are likely to lead to different
outcomes from third way policy agendas there compared to other countries where
institutional and cultural pressures are very different - in Britain a more
centralised state, a political system which gives the modernisers greater
control, and a laissez-faire market culture, for example.
Similarly the Netherlands has embedded in its culture
consensual norms which counteract or balance some of the more economically
liberal developments in social democracy there and elsewhere. And the Dutch PvdA
places more emphasis on individualisation and liberalisation and less on moral
communitarianism than Blair. In France, of course, the rhetoric is quite hostile
to modernising social democracy for reasons of national tradition (French
exceptionalism and the statist and public sector tradition, for instance, which
transcend partisan boundaries) and politics (such as the need to hold together a
coalition of the left), although in policy practice the French socialists have
not in all respects differed radically from modernising social democratic
policies elsewhere.
Yet differences between social democratic parties in
Europe, real as they are, can be exaggerated and similarities in policy agendas
are sometimes as equally noticeable, even if the outcomes of those agendas may
vary nationally because of the sort of institutional and cultural differences
mentioned above. Across Europe social democratic parties are discussing or
implementing more flexible labour markets, privatisation, welfare reform, cuts
in business regulations and taxes, low inflation and macro-economic stability
and supply-side policies alongside continuing social democratic concerns for
social inclusion and minimum social standards.
This is not to deny differences – the political
agenda in Britain is more dominated by poverty than in, say, Germany and France
where unemployment is a more high profile issue, reflecting the different
extents of these problems in such countries. The contexts in which such issues
are being addressed also vary and so the outcomes of comparable policy agendas
may differ from nation to nation: dependent on factors such as the degree of
centralised control or devolution in political systems; the extent to which
modernisers monopolise power or have to share it with the left or other parties;
and historical traditions of statism, consensus or economic liberalism, to take
just some examples. So even if different parties are all experimenting with
third ways between neo-liberalism and old-style social democracy, these are
third ways - in the plural - there being different third ways rather than
just one, varying by national background amongst other factors.
Hay makes a similar point. He argues that
distinctions can be made between input convergence (in constraints on government
policy), policy convergence and output convergence (in the effects or
consequences of policy) in different countries. Input convergence need not imply
policy convergence. As I shall reiterate shortly national governments often
pursue different policies in the face of what seem to be common pressures such
as EU convergence criteria or economic globalisation. Similarly policy
convergence need not imply output convergence: as I have just suggested similar
policies pursued in different countries may lead to different outcomes because
of varying national institutions, cultures and political contexts they are
mediated through.
It might also be added to Hay’s analysis that
policy convergence need not imply input convergence: commonalities in policy
could come about in response to varying inputs. A more neo-liberal model may
result from EU convergence in some countries, openness to the global economy in
others, ideological choice or national traditions of laissez-faire in
others. Also outcome convergence need not imply policy convergence: countries
may take different policy paths to similar ends. All of this is very relevant to
the discussion of globalisation because it suggests that a common constraint of
globalisation could lead to different outcomes or that common outcomes do not
necessarily imply a common origin in the pressure of globalisation.
There is a third category of social democracy:
globalist social democracy. However this is not the only possible social
democratic response to globalisation and before discussing it a few more words
are needed on both the meaning of globalisation and on differing social
democratic responses to it. Globalisation as an idea has been applied to many
different contexts: economic, social, political, cultural and military, for
example. Some advocates of globalisation theses argue that factors such as the
growth of information technology and telecommunications as well as of the global
economy have eroded national cultural and communicative boundaries, such that
there is easier, faster and increased contact across national boundaries and
across cultural groups. For some this may be leading to greater cultural
homogeneity; for others to the opposite - increasing appeals to the security of
local or national identities; or maybe a bit of both. Militarily, some
commentators argue that wars between nations have declined. Many wars are now
between ethnic or cultural groups within or across nations, with the
participation of military forces often based on intra-national ethnicities or
national or religious groups or transnational political alliances, for example.
However my key concerns here are with economic and
political globalisation. Economically increases in global trade are said
to have made national economies more vulnerable to international economic
fluctuations, so making it difficult to control the national economy.
Furthermore, with greater openness to global markets competition is increased
for companies so that they become even more resistant than they already were to
social democratic impositions such as corporate taxes and social regulations
which may hinder their competitiveness.
For many social democrats the key issue in
globalisation theses that underpins modernisation is the increasing mobility of
capital. National governments, it is argued, can no longer control their own
economies or regulate capital because they are obstructed from doing anything
that will lead to capital leaving the country. Government policy – e.g. on
public spending, taxation and regulation of business - has to be tailored to the
need to attract and retain investment. All this is particularly problematic for
social democrats because it is said to force them to accommodate to business
interests and neo-liberal policies. I will return shortly to the issue of
acquiescence to neo-liberal policies.
Along with this comes a concern with the growth of
transnational political organisations, such as the UN and EU, not to
mention global financial regimes such as the IMF, G7, World Bank and the World
Trade Organisation, to take just a few examples, or international law, to extend
even further. Because of such institutions many decisions which affect
nation-states are said now to be taken above the level at which those states
mainly operate. Many of these may be on matters previously the preserve of
nation-states, e.g. legal prescriptions on human rights, or social or
environmental policy. Many may have arisen because of the growing consciousness
of problems which transcend national boundaries and so require international
collaboration to be resolved, e.g. ecological problems or crime.
For advocates of globalisation theses the growth of
economic and political globalisation poses a challenge to social democrats to
rethink, to some extent at least, the way they have traditionally done things at
a national level. They have to engage with processes and institutions which
extend beyond the borders of the nation-state and confound the abilities of
nation-states alone to deal with them. Yet so far social democracy has been weak
at conceptualising itself beyond the nation-state and is, as such, poorly
equipped to respond to fundamentally transformatory processes of globalisation.
Of course, there are sceptics. There are those who
see globalisation as a tool used by politicians to justify electorally or
ideologically driven preferences, rather than as a real constraint. Or social
democracy is seen as constrained by the perception or discourse of globalisation
rather than its reality. The extent of globalisation also varies according to
the level at which you deal with it. Because, for example, there may be global
capital mobility does not mean that companies do not have national allegiances
or that production and trade are as globalised as capital is. Insofar as global
capital mobility is possible it is not always as easy as it may be portrayed: it
can require relocation of businesses, offices and workshops, re-organisation,
re-employment of new workers and adaptation to new cultural and political
institutions – a lot more than just a click on a mouse as it is sometimes
presented by globalisation theorists.
Nor if there is economic globalisation does it
necessarily follow that there is cultural globalisation. Alternatively
globalisation may be more a feature of developments in media or consumption than
of developments in other spheres. Others argue that the extent to which
nation-states are vulnerable to globalisation may vary from nation to nation
dependent on balances of global power. Vandenbroucke, for example, suggests that
the idea of globalisation explains better what has happened in culture, media
and responses to ecological problems than in the economy, and insofar as it does
describe the latter it does so more for the US experience (in which,
furthermore, the US is a more powerful and so autonomous actor than other
states) than for Europe which he says has seen regionalisation rather than than
globalisation.
And for some commentators while there may be
instances of globalisation this may be nothing new: analyses of a new global era
may exaggerate the power of nation-states in the past and play down the extent
to which globalisation has long been around. Furthermore there are questions
raised over the extent to which nation-states remain autonomous actors. On one
level they actually play a key part in global structures themselves,
constituting and influencing them in the pursuit of national interest as much as
being constituted and constrained by them. On another they still retain
significant powers within their own boundaries, for instance over education,
welfare and defence, not to mention the fact that there is still a lot they can
do attract keep a hold on capital even in an open global economy.
This claim has been supported by much evidence of
policy variations across national boundaries, often diverging from the
neo-liberalism that economic globalisation is seen to require. This evidence may
dispel false images of globalisation, or at least that if there is globalisation
it acts with the effect of a structurally determining force. Globalisation may
be mediated nationally and leave open to nation-states considerable choice. This
claim underpins one of the social democratic responses to globalisation that I
shall discuss below and I will discuss some of these points further shortly.
I wish to outline three main possible social
democratic responses to globalisation: neo-liberal acquiescence which
accepts the case that economic globalisation severely restricts the power of
national governments and has to be accommodated to; continued nation-state
interventionism which may accept that we live in some sort of globalised economy
but argues for less passivity, that there is still space for national
governments to pursue social democratic ends within it; and political globalism
which accepts the case for economic globalisation -- but not passively nor just
at the level of the nation-state -- and says that social democrats can achieve
their ends if they participate in and develop global democratic forms to take
some control over the global economy. Of course these are analytic categories.
No social democracy fits neatly or completely into any one of them. But real
political tendencies may have biases towards some of these responses more than
others.
Neo-liberal acquiescence is, to some extent,
the road that modernising social democracy is going down, as in the case of New
Labour. In this approach macro-economic policy is designed to reduce any
obstacles to the competitiveness of domestic capital, such as taxation or costs
imposed by social regulations. It aims to attract investment and deter capital
from leaving the country. In such a context laissez-faire Anglo-American
capitalism seems to have an advantage over other forms of capitalism which have
higher taxes, regulation and corporatist constraints. Policy is based on
national-competitiveness and relative acquiescence to the desires of private
capital and to neo-liberal business priorities. They may include low business
taxes, labour market flexibility, macro-economic stability, an emphasis on
fiscal prudency and restrictions on public spending and business regulations. Of
course, this leads to policy convergence between social democratic parties and
parties of the right. The social democratic consensus of the post-war period
appears to be replaced by a neo-liberal consensus from the 1990s onwards.
This is not to say necessarily that such policies are
forced on social democrats externally, as some of them may claim; they may well
be a chosen response to globalisation. And they could be based on the perception
as much as reality of globalisation. Furthermore they need not involve
completely giving in to neo-liberalism. As I have discussed above, modernising
social democracy in practice includes policies on social inclusion and minimum
opportunities, and a commitment to spending on education and health,
demonstrating that national governments can continue with moderately social
democratic policies within the context of perceived economic globalisation.
Furthermore while New Labour, for example, may, to some extent, take
globalisation passively in one sphere they are determined to be more active in
another. While relatively passive in the face of economic globalisation they
have been at the forefront of attempts to create cross-national military
alliances which can intervene in instances of perceived significant humanitarian
crises.
This leads us to the second form of social democrat
response to economic globalisation: continued nation-state interventionism,
using autonomy and choice at the national level despite globalisation. A number
of possible policy spaces for national social democracy have been highlighted by
authors such as Garrett, Vandenbroucke, Wickham-Jones and Hay. From this
perspective globalisation may exist but does not determine national government
policy. The acquiescent approach gives too much determining and constraining
power to globalisation and underplays the extent to which restraints on social
democracy have been as much domestic and internal as external and it ignores
possibilities for political choice.
Hay argues that globalisation has been less of a
constraint on the pursuit of social democratic policies in the UK than
political will or the internalisation of the idea of globalisation.
He argues that the British Labour Party could choose to follow a different
path – one which was less neo-liberal and instead attempted to foster an
indigenous investment ethic through a more dirigiste, developmental
supply-side approach, more favourable to industrial than financial capital.
For Vandenbroucke it is internal domestic
constraints which have affected possibilities for social democratic policies
more than external constraints. He is dubious of the claims of those such as
Giddens that Keynesianism is dead. For example, he claims that countries
such as the Netherlands which are very exposed to the global economy have
managed to maintain redistributive policies. More neo-liberal paths taken
elsewhere have suffered from internal constraints not shared by the
Netherlands - such as the lack of a culture of consensus or of strong unions
integrated into politics. Welfare states have remained larger in small
countries most open to the global economy. This shows that in actual fact
governments have not converged and there remain significant differences
between national economies and welfare states.
Garrett argues that economic globalisation
positively favours social democracy because it leads to feelings of
insecurity and vulnerability amongst voters who may then become sympathetic
to interventionism and redistribution. Businesses, meanwhile, can be
persuaded that social democratic economic policy could actually be in their
interests.
A number of possibilities are put forward by authors
such as these, for ways in which governments can pursue social democratic ends
whilst not leading to exit by capital. Firstly, national governments have a
great deal of national autonomy outside the realm of the economy narrowly
defined. Whatever the fact of economic globalisation they can pursue reforms to
welfare, education, health, defence, and law and order, to take just some
examples, which may be different to right-wing preferences without necessarily
frightening off capital.
Secondly, Garrett, Vandenbroucke and Wickham-Jones
argue that a social democratic government in a country where trade unions cover
a range of the workforce, are united, strong and can command the obedience of
their memberships, can make deals with capital, promising moderation in wage
demands in return for agreement to redistributive, Keynesian or other social
democratic ends. Countries such as the Netherlands may be in a better position
to succeed with this approach than others like the UK where broad union
membership and centralised conformity in the union movement does not exist and
conflict or the exclusion of unions is historically more characteristic of
industrial relations than consensus.
Wickham-Jones is more optimistic than Garrett about
the prospects for transplanting such structures into places like the UK. He
favours a shift back in the British Labour Party to its approach of the 1980s
when attempts were made to align more with mainstream European social democracy.
However, if more corporatist structures cannot be developed, there is a third
active national possibility identified by Wickham-Jones which is that social
democratic governments can promise moderate wage demands on the basis of
maintaining a weak role for trade unions and a tough public sector pay policy,
again in exchange for agreement to social democratic ends. This is not very
social democratic on the trade union side of things but still perhaps capable of
delivering social democratic ends in exchange for the maintenance of such a
balance of power.
Fourthly, there may be other more moderate things
that social democratic governments can offer capital which would make it
worthwhile employers sticking around and agreeing to concessions to social
democracy: collective goods in the form of, say, supply-side interventions in
infrastructure, research and development or training and education - things the
market alone will not supply adequately - or policies which deliver economic,
political and social stability. Clearly some social democratic governments have
tried a moderate form of this supply-side and stability incentives approach and
have managed to pursue modest social goals, although it is not clear whether
this was the result of any active exchange with capital.
It is also unclear whether such strategies
themselves, which put a heavy emphasis on human capital, can alone provide the
sort of economic prosperity and stability employers require for them to tolerate
social democratic advances in other areas. Economic success is based on wider
factors than these – some of which may well be out of the hands of national
governments. Furthermore it may be that supply-side strategies are insufficient
in themselves to deliver social democratic goals. For that more directly
redistributional and Keynesian approaches are needed.
There are similar problems with all of these
proposals for active national government within the context of economic
globalisation. The viability of each in different national contexts could be
debated. Some seem appropriate for some countries but less relevant for others.
There is also the question of the extent to which deals with employers are
being, or can actually be, pursued. For some what is offered by the social
democratic governments may seem unlikely to deliver the desired economic goals,
or may be too modest in its demands to secure any really significant social
democratic goals in return.
However another perspective is that, without
denigrating what national governments can do within their own boundaries, the
approach just outlined stays too much at a national level. Whether national
concessions can be won for social democracy or not, such an approach by itself
leaves out the necessity for engagement with international organisations and the
possibilities that could be pursued at a supra-national level by social
democratic governments. In addition it pitches one national social democratic
government against another, each pursuing their own national interest and
competitiveness rather than common cross-national social interests.
This is my key objection to active government
interventionism which focuses on the level of the nation-state in response to
globalisation. Wanting to move outwards from this focus is not based on an
argument that there is little national governments can do nowadays – there
clearly still is a lot of space for national governments to make a difference.
The real problem is that focusing on active government possibilities at the
national level is 1) too nationally self-interested and 2) avoids too much what
governments can potentially achieve for social democracy through participation
at more transnational levels.
This leads to the third category of social democratic
response to globalization – globalist social democracy. This is an idea
of social democracy as a movement organising politically at global levels in
response to the globalisation of the economy, politics, and the military. It is
globalisation of a proactive sort, with social democrats trying to carve some
sort of human-chosen root for world order, rather than one determined by market
forces or the priorities of global capital or merely national interests. Social
democracy needs to take globalisation not just as an economic given to be
accommodated to, but also as a political possibility, where global regimes can
regulate globalised capitalism, explore new modes of redistribution and protect
those excluded from the labour market internationally.
Social democracy across Europe has been marked by a
shift to modernised forms and liberal economic priorities. This is partly to do
with liberal constraints imposed via the EU in forms such as the Maastricht
criteria and the single market rules. In part it is because of the economic
liberal inheritance of places such as the UK. It is also to do with the desire
of governments to attract capital and so adapt themselves to business
priorities. However this desire results from their fear of losing investment to
other nation-states in a globalised marketplace. If, on the other hand, nations
which together have a monopoly on the workforces and consumer markets that
capital needs can collaborate to enforce common standards and regulations on
businesses and common social and redistributive programmes then capital will be
left with nowhere to go and will need to reconcile itself to such norms. To put
it another way, a proactive, combined, political globalisation allows for a more
social and egalitarian agenda of a traditional social democratic sort which the
passive focus of modernising social democracy on economic globalisation does
not.
David Held is a prominent advocate of globalist
democracy and his proposals have an implicitly social democratic slant. His
arguments are both empirical and normative, referring to real developing
processes of political globalisation and arguing for their extension. Held does
not argue that the nation-state has lost its role and his prescriptions are
compatible with the active nation-state social democracy outlined above. In fact
he argues that states have initiated many of the global changes, are active
participants in them and may even be more powerful today than their
predecessors. But he does argue that politics has been globalised and that
nation-state powers are being reconfigured.
The development of human rights regimes undermines
state sovereignty; security and defence are international industries sometimes
organised into international military alliances; environmental problems are
global and increasingly require international collaboration to solve them; and
the deregulation of capital markets has increased the power of capital in
relation to states and labour. Nation-states have to share power with a myriad
of other agencies at all levels and nations cannot, therefore, be said to be
self-determining collectivities. The fate of nations is determined partly by
forces beyond the national level, both political and otherwise, and so
nation-states have to extend to wider levels to build political forms
appropriate to democratic accountability to relevant communities and to control
over their fates. Communities’ fates are increasingly bound together so that
if they want to make decisions concerning themselves and be accountable to those
affected they have to extend democracy and representation to broader
transnational levels.
Held argues that new global forms of democracy,
therefore, require citizens to be ‘cosmopolitan’, to mediate between
different national traditions, communities and cultures. Institutions developing
in such a global cosmopolitan direction already exist: they include the UN which
delivers important international public goods (in air traffic control,
telecommunications, disease control, refugee aid, peacekeeping and environmental
protection, for instance) and the EU which pools national sovereignty in some
areas of common concern (including social rights and the regulation of markets).
Furthermore, international law - on war crimes, environmental issues and human
rights – limits the power of nation-states.
Writers like Held argue that this globalisation of
democracy can be deepened by some immediate steps such as increasing common
international regulation of markets (on child labour, union and workers’
rights and participation, health and safety and social rights), new forms of
economic co-ordination to overcome the fragmentation between bodies such as the
IMF, World Bank, OECD and G7, stave off financial emergencies, and steer
international capital markets and investment and spending priorities. Measures
to regulate the volatility of capital markets and speculation can be introduced
– via taxes on turnover in foreign exchange markets and currency speculation,
capital controls and regulations to ensure the transparency of bank accounting.
Held proposes a new ‘Bretton Woods’ introducing
greater accountability and regulation into institutions for the co-ordination of
investment, production and trade, and greater responsiveness to less developed
countries needs. All this requires the reform and extension of transnational
forms of democracy, such as found in the EU, the UN, international financial
organisations and human rights regimes. And already there are social democratic
forces pushing in such directions – for example, within the EU to greater
integration, inclusion and democratisation; and amongst some national
governments, New Labour in Britain for example, more globally for the
transparency and democratisation of international institutions and their
strengthening and extension.
Martin Shaw also argues that political globalisation
of the sort envisaged in globalist social democracy already exists to some
extent, in the form of an integrated and interdependent (albeit internally
complex and differentiated) military-political ‘western state’. The western
state emerged as an American-led consensus during the Cold War and was
victorious and dominant at its outcome. It is based in democracy established in
North America, Western Europe, Japan and the British Commonwealth, with its
social democratic elements strongest in Western Europe and Australasia.
Militarily it is committed to western-defined universal human rights to which
common adherence beyond the West is expected, and on which force is seen as a
legitimate means for enforcement, the intervention in Kosovo being an example.
Economically and politically it is based on free markets and liberal democracy.
Shaw argues that the Western state needs to be
focused on the non-Western world because it is here that the need for
democratisation and protection against infringements of human rights (whether
political or economic, caused by dictators or poverty) are greatest. Globally
inclusive democratisation, for Shaw, is the precondition for the pursuit of
economic and social rights world-wide and requires international institutions
governed by western state norms as much as internal democratisation within
poorer nation-states.
Social democrats within the western state, after much
struggle and division on the issue have become integrationist within the EU
(although the liberal market element of integration has come out stronger than
its moderate and less numerous social democratic aspects). For Shaw, political
globalisation is already a fact, and social democratic involvement in a US-led
western state and in the integrationist EU is part of that story. Social
democracy within that state has evolved, less divided on a fundamental level
than in the past over European integration and alliance with the US, relieved of
the fraught question of relations with communism, and with European peace
movements having shown social democrats the possibilities for forging
pan-European co-ordination. In many places it is more open to relations with
liberal, left and green movements and parties beyond social democracy.
Democratisation is vital for pursuing traditionally
social democratic norms. As I have just suggested, casting democratisation on to
a global scale can force social democrats to a more global consciousness of
economic and social welfare, less domestically or regionally focused and more
responsive to acute inequalities and needs outside the first world. Yet, while
democratisation brings to the fore social democratic concerns, its global
dimension will require inputs from outside the historically domestic focus of
social democracy. This may well come from international institutions, green
politics and peace and feminist movements which have a greater consciousness of
globalism and of global organisation around what are often quite typical social
democratic concerns.
Such movements are important to the reconstitution of
what are essentially domestically interested social democratic parties. Even
those social democrats who are most integrationist in the EU are primarily
seeking national or regional self-interest rather than a genuinely open
globalism. Shaw argues that social democracy needs to be just one amongst many
social movements, its own distinctive contribution being not to input social
democratic concerns into politics so much, as these can be found in other
movements, but to play a key role in using its political leverage to develop the
international institutions through which those concerns can be enacted.
How does the western state compare to other models so
far outlined in this paper? In Shaw’s model there is some leaning towards
modernising social democracy. Free markets are part of the western state, in
fact less through acquiescence to economic liberalism than their positive
promotion. On the other hand democratisation and greater global equality imply
more traditional social democratic restrictions on free markets. There is not
that much of a place for active nation-state democracy. There could be space
within globalist social democracy to pursue what is possible within nation-state
forums. The danger is that this could drive national governments to a
preoccupation with domestic structures and competitive national interests to the
extent that globalist consciousness and structures would be undermined.
I wish to look at five main areas of possible
criticism of globalist social democracy: 1) the uninspiring experience of social
democratic participation in the EU; 2) radical communitarian criticisms that it
engages too far with capitalism and the state; 3) that there is no sociological
basis for world politics; 4) that global democracy is just a recipe for conflict
and disagreement; and 5) that it merely involves the imposition of western
values on other parts of the world.
Global social democracy is a long way off if the
difficulties of establishing regional social democracy are any guide. Where
supra-national proactive social democratic organisation is possible – via the
EU – the liberal orientation of this institution and national differences
between parties, make any EU-wide reconfiguration of traditional social
democracy unlikely for the time being. This is the case even in the most
propitious of scenarios for social democrats, where most of the members of the
EU are governed by social democratic governments and where social democrats are
well-organised in the European parliament. Despite this, the EU has become a
liberal project, with social democratic inputs more of a minor part, few and far
between and with a moderate impact.
The EU is more concerned with negative integration,
about removing barriers to free trade, than with positive integration, agreeing
common policies to co-ordinate government and business behaviour and pursue
mitigation of the effects of the market or even redistribution. EMU convergence
criteria have gone against the achievement of social democratic ends through
macro-economic measures such as borrowing and running deficits. And while the EU
may currently offer more immediately realistic possibilities for co-ordination
than what are as yet relatively less developed global regimes, it is also
regionally focused, concerned with the interests of Europe in rivalry with other
regional blocs in the world, rather than concerned with global solidarity and
overcoming inequality on a more universal human scale.
For supra-national co-ordination to develop various
traditions of European social democracy which are pulling in different
directions would have to combine and co-ordinate more. Differences that divide
social democratic parties include: traditions of consensus and collaboration and
corporatism versus more Anglo-American individualism; Euro-reluctance as against
enthusiasm for European integration; countries where the state and public sector
involvement are more valued as against those where privatisation and
deregulation have so far been embraced more enthusiastically; those who have
been through a neo-liberal experiment and those that have not; those with
centralised systems with one party government as opposed to those with complex
decentralised systems and coalition governments, often of very many parties; to
take just a few examples.
These lead to different national rhetorics and
different receptions and fortunes for what may often be quite comparable third
way agendas. Sometimes left and right parties within the same nation may appear
to share more in common with each other than with their sister parties abroad.
These are the sorts of obstacles to supra-national co-ordination that social
democracy has to counter. Many of the problems of using the EU in a positive
social democratic way lie not just with the liberalism of the EU and such
national differences, but with national social democratic parties themselves who
have chosen to shift away from their more traditional agendas and constituencies
to more economically liberal approaches and middle class bases. They have never
really been all that internationalist in reality anyway and that their attitude
to the EU is often constrained by the need to tailor it to domestic political
consumption. How negative or positive they can be about the EU is often
constrained by what they feel they need to say to domestic audiences – the
electorate, business interests and coalition partners, for example.
Other criticisms of globalist social democracy come
from the point of view of radical communitarianism. These reject social
democracy’s accommodation to capitalism and the state and see global political
organisation as potentially authoritarian. Democracy organised within capitalism
is undermined by the power of private capital and fails to tackle global
inequalities. It is undemocratic and exclusive, retaining top-down elitist
government, statism and the privileging of national levels and fails to allow
for inclusive and direct participation of grassroots movements. Social
democratic ideas of participation in global forums continue to be based on
nation-states, making forums inter-national rather than truly transcendent of
nations and global. In place of globalist social democracy radical
communitarians would rather see global governance without global government or
nation-states, democracy through movements and civil society forums other than
states, that works outside the politics of the state and transcends rather than
compromises with capitalism.
Certainly democracy is incomplete within these
limits, at a purely liberal democratic, national and elite/statist level and
undermined by private ownership and the inequalities of capitalism. But the
radical communitarian call for transcending or remaining outside such
institutions undermines opportunities for political leverage. Social democratic
parties are democratically legitimated and recognised institutions in national
societies, with financial resources and potential power once in government. They
are involved in regional, supra-national and international forums and are
participants in processes of global political and economic change. To disengage
from social democratic politics leaves aside opportunities for the reform of
politics and capitalism.
Global economic democratisation through global social
democratic initiatives is one way of regulating and constraining capital and
subjecting it to more democratic control. Bypassing such channels neglects
openings for intervening to democratise globally. Forces for mitigating
capitalism offer possibilities which an anti-capitalist rejection of such forces
do not, and are a basis through which stronger reforms of capitalism can be
pursued both now and in the long term.
States offer legitimate and accepted means of
representation of one sort, amongst others, and are blocks on which democratic
representation can be built globally, in the short and long terms, to offer
powers countervailing to those of global capital. Democratic forums have to be
made out of recognised and legitimate identities and political forms such as
nation-state governments, associations, and social movements. Governance which
is composed of a lot more than government is necessary but governance without
government is an impossibility in anything like the current world system.
Furthermore global institutions being composed of
national states is one way of keeping them accountable to a constituent
membership and so restricts the possibility of the global authoritarianism
radical critics fear. A really global institution which transcends a composition
of nation-states would be more detached and open to abuses of power. State power
at national and international levels is potentially authoritarian - any
formation of power is. But the best response to this is to build in liberal,
democratic and popular constraints: global government in combination with
liberal democracy, state and civil society politics, not replacing state forms.
Capitalism also has certain benefits in its economic
incentive and allocative systems. This is not to say that non-capitalist forms
of incentives or allocation are not also important; nor that those benefits don’t
also produce social bads – exploitation, inequalities and losers; nor that
because of those benefits the bads of capitalism should not be curbed; or that
there aren’t dimensions which can be restructured and reformed in a
non-capitalist direction without losing these benefits. But it does mean that
the advantages of capitalism need to be retained within the context of a
regulated and constrained market, rather than ultimately abolishing capitalism
along with its advantages, unrealistic as that is anyway for the foreseeable
future.
Of course, these are not the only criticisms that
might be levelled at globalist social democracy. There are other strong points
that globalist social democrats have to respond to. One is that it tries to
establish democracy at levels for which there is no established political
community. In other words, it lacks a social or cultural basis to give it
legitimacy and support. The social bases for global democracy are ones of
conflicting and diverging identities and interests who do not share any common
global identity or sense of political citizenship. For communitarian critics,
politics should be aligned with political forms where there are real cultural
and political identities, maybe nation-states or other more devolved forms of
territorial or functional representation.
Secondly, and relatedly, it is assumed in globalist
democracy that the meeting of conflicting interests will bring about harmony and
consensus when in fact it may actually exacerbate conflict and disagreement.
Politics cannot solve disharmony which rests at more economic and cultural
levels. This has been demonstrated by the record of global forums in failing to
reconcile conflicting interests or solve common global problems, such as war,
ecology or development.
A third criticism is that global democracy is merely
an ethnocentric attempt to impose western norms and ideas on the rest of the
world. Shaw’s outline of the ‘western state’ makes this clear. Global
democracy’s proponents may think twice about their proposals were global
democracy likely to lead to a different set of values achieving hegemony through
global institutions. And what if such values were to be anti-democratic or
illiberal? Does the possibility of global politics being dominated by such
values suddenly make it seem less desirable? And if western values were not to
retain hegemony or to be shifted in a leftwards direction what realistic
possibility is there that global democracy would be accepted by powerful western
interests such as the ‘western state’ or multi-national corporations?
These are complex problems and some of the responses
global social democrats can make can only be touched on here. Global social
democracy is an empirical as much as normative project. This is clear from many
of its advocacies which analyse as much what is going on in the global
transformation of politics and other spheres – for example the growth of
supra-national political forums, social movements and human rights legislation -
as what it is thought ideally should be going on. Furthermore many
problems are widely seen as requiring the extension of existing international
institutions and agreements – environmental problems, crime, peace and
security, development and debt, for example. And global democracy is also
envisaged as transformatory, building on existing changes in the economic,
political and cultural world but also advancing or reconstituting them.
So, from this point of view it may seem slightly less
utopian than at first sight for political forums at a global level to find
common bases and problems upon which productive democratic negotiations can take
place. Transformatory possibilities are grounded in real institutions and
dynamics which already exist. Furthermore, if you look at the historical
shifting foci of political institutions over time you find that the social basis
of citizenship is a complex and dynamic process and that both historically and
now legitimate political institutions often have a social basis which is as
diverse and complex as it is united. Many nation-states, for example, could
barely be said to be based on anything much less complex than diverse ethnic,
national and cultural mixes yet still remain legitimate and accepted.
As far as western dominance goes, three points can be
made. Firstly, global social democrats have to plead guilty in part to signing
up to the promotion of western values. Global democrats argue, with
qualifications, for western values – such as liberalism and democracy – and
that these are becoming generalised across the world and should be further
extended. Social democrats are also reconciled to capitalism and may even see
its virtues, albeit in a regulated and reformed form. Secondly, however, for
global social democracy there are problems with western liberalism and democracy
which include the need to extend them further (to a wider range of spheres and a
broader range of actors – the economy and the empowerment of poorer countries,
for instance) to realise their own logic more adequately.
The problem is the failure of the west to apply their
values consistently and the need for them to be further enforced, recognised,
institutionalised and extended into deeper more post-liberal forms of democracy
- rather than the undesirability of them as the basis for global political
forums. The alternative is a failure to establish such norms at global levels so
allowing democratic accountability to remain limited, and giving illiberal and
undemocratic practices and beliefs within and beyond the West one less obstacle
in their way. Similarly social democracy may be reconciled to capitalism, but
not to imposing it on unwilling recipients or to a laissez-faire version.
For global social democracy the capitalist road has to be chosen democratically
and so voluntarily and ideally in a reformed and regulated version.
Thirdly, global democrats advocate forms which
institutionally qualify as much as advance the promotion of western power. Power
relations at present are based on factors, economic and military for example,
other than political enfranchisement. Any move to entrench power relations more
in political equality – including economic democracy and the democratisation
of international military alliances – would, done in the true spirit of global
democracy, actually reduce western dominance. So the extension of liberal
democracy itself – a western value - limits the ability of the west to impose
western values through global democracy although not to pursue them
democratically.
So what sort of model of social democracy does this
leave us with and how does it compare with the other models discussed in this
paper? I have four points to make concerning: 1) the role of social movements
and civil society politics in social democracy; 2) the necessity for a globalist
form of social democracy; 3) the importance of democratisation for social
democracy; and 4) the role of traditional social democratic values.
The sort of social democracy which is left by the
comments I have made is one that is in alliance with social movements and forces
in civil society, rather than either ignoring them or leaving aside its own
position in politics to civil society activism alone. These offer ideological
inputs and participatory channels in addition to social democracy’s and can
increase pluralism, inclusion and popular accountability. In this way it departs
from both traditional social democracy and anti-politics approaches. It draws on
radical communitarianism, even if it is not reducible to it. In reaching out to
movements in civil society it also brings to the fore socio-cultural issues–
the loss of legitimacy of politics and democracy in European and other
societies, especially the lack of participation or representation of working
class and disenfranchised people, and the growth of cultures and ideas around
individualisation, identity, democracy, personal lifestyle and family form,
post-material and environmental issues and multiculturalism. Such issues have
often been initially established on the political agenda as much by civil
society initiatives and social movements as by social democratic or other
parties.
What I have outlined also puts at the centre the need
to integrate with social democratic and other left actors at supra-national
levels, whether regional or global, in pursuit of social, regulative and
democratic goals. In this sense it goes beyond the neo-liberal acquiescence
response to globalisation. So it is a globalist social democracy,
although in saying that I do not preclude the enduring importance of state
action within national boundaries or in international co-operation.
There is a place for the active nation-state social
democracy that has been discussed, even if globalist social democracy goes well
beyond this. Nation-states are still very important and, as I have argued, it is
impossible to conceive of global politics outside inter-national co-operation.
National governments are the building blocks of international politics: they
cannot be left out in favour of either purely supra-national or anti-politics
approaches. However this social democracy differs from traditional social
democracy, not only because of its appeal to social movements but also because
of the aim to integrate and combine at supra-national levels.
Some might argue that social democracy and socialism
are by tradition internationalist movements. But this has often been overridden
in practice by a focus on national politics and national solutions. Traditional
social democrats have in fact often been averse to involvement in supra-national
institutions certainly of an integrationist or global sort because of their
identification of this with the furthering of capitalism, or with the
undermining of national government powers. Yet social democracy today needs to
engage with supra-national political forums in order to reconfigure them in
social democratic directions, and to participate in capitalism in order to
regulate and democratise it in pursuit of more social and less liberal-economic
goals.
The globalist social democracy outlined is also about
the widening and deepening of democracy. Social democracy needs to establish
social democratic norms by reconstituting itself as a supra-national force for
democratisation. A global regulative social democracy is about democratisation,
by which I mean the attempt to counter the unaccountability of private capital
which can be mobile globally, avoiding attempts by states to regulate it within
national boundaries. A global social democracy is in part an attempt to
democratise the world order which is currently dominated by global capital,
with, at present, democratic actors having little in the way of public or
political powers to provide a counterweight or corrective through their own
global organisation (or lack of it). Furthermore political democratisation of
the world order is one mode for correcting inequalities within the system of
states between richer and poorer nations in the world and for integrating the
concerns of the poorer within the democratic system more fully.
This globalist social democracy also involves a shift
away from modernising social democracy, even if modernising social democracy is
making some efforts to grasp the nettle of global democracy – in some cases
via EU integration or others through reform of international financial
institutions. This is because it returns to the ends if not means of traditional
social democracy. It goes back from the social liberal concerns of modernisers -
with equal worth, minimum opportunities and community obligations on the citizen
- to stronger social restrictions on liberal capitalism, egalitarian
redistribution (not to flat equal outcomes, but to more equal and just
distributions more responsive to need) and the obligations to the community of
business. While different from anti-capitalism and anti-statism and from the
national focus of traditional social democracy and its unresponsiveness to
social movements it also departs from modernising social democracy’s liberal
accommodations.
Globalist social democracy is a broad church. It
could, at a push, include the British Chancellor Brown’s plans to reform the
IMF and ally globally to counter world debt or Blair’s and others’ belief in
humanitarian military intervention on a transnational scale. However the values
of the globalist social democracy discussed here, while not antipathetic to
this, are traditional enough in the social democratic sense to be calling for
more regulations of capitalism and common transnational social programmes than
Blair and Brown aspire to. And it is more inclusive of NGOs, social movements
and civil society politics than global politicians such as Blair would imagine.
At the same time, as far as it is global and open to civil society, it is also
not a globalism or alliance with social movements which goes beyond the role for
nations, states and for the inter-national because these are all recognised
building blocks and components for any global order. This is where social
democracy is currently located and this is where movements for global
democratisation have to start.
References for this article can be found in the version in L. Martell et al eds Social Democracy: global and national perspectives, Palgrave, 2001.