Luke Martell: Social Democracy, Global and National Perspectives

Social Democracy

The EU is primarily a set of institutions with liberal economic goals.

The book’s main concern are three themes: the first is concerned with what the changing context has been for social democracy (globalization and a lower level of supranationalism, European integration); second is about social democratic ideology and its response to the influence of neoliberalism, globalization, problems of Keynesianism and the welfare state and the changing social basis of social democracy; the third is about what alternatives are there to modernizing social democracy.

Social Democracy in the Global Revolution: An Historical Perspective (Martin Shaw)

Fullest meaning of globality is more political than economic or technological.

From the state’s point of view, democratic rights were often conceded to the working class in return for military duty, which states increasingly expected all adult males to perform.

Mainstream social democratic leaders infamously bowed to national claims once the First World War broke out in 1914. The social democracy had become deeply entrenched in discrete national-imperial centres of state power.

After the war new conditions for international cooperation in Western Europe enabled Continental social democrats to play key parts in developing the European Economic Community.

The end of the Cold War transformed the context of European social democracy.

The global revolution has two principal dimensions, centred on transformation in the relations of state and society. On the one hand, there is a fundamental change in the state system, on the other, a worldwide political upheaval (centred on democracy and human rights) that is bringing about a crisis in power relations.

Despite the Communist ideology of international cooperation, the Soviet bloc never succeeded in developing cohesive integration.

Now the biggest barriers to world market flows were removed, western capital became dominant on a fully world scale.

Three complementary features of the transition from Western to global state have accentuated the role of Western Europe. The problem of European order was central to the Cold War. Maturating Western unity and its extended global reach have been accompanied by extensive international institutionalization. In contrast to the US where even levels of electoral participation are exceptionally low, in Europe democratization has been an ongoing process.

The old idea that democracy is a question of the political relations within states and world order one of the relations between states is outmoded. The demand for democracy within national borders is interlinked with the demand for global standards and institutions.

The democratic revolution today is global-democratic.

Two of the characteristics of Third Way social democracy – that takes globalization seriously and its emphasis on individual as well as collective development – fit well with the enhanced global politics of human rights.

In line with David Held’s programme for cosmopolitan democracy, Giddens would create global bodies on the lines of the EU.

Social democracy is still largely a political doctrine within national parameters; it has been internationalized on a European level, but it has hardly yet made the leap to serious global politics.

Social Democracy and Global Governance – Neil Stammers

Entering a period of fundamental social transformation none of our existing forms of social organization nor any of out intellectual and political categories can be taken for granted.

Governance is a wider and looser term for the variety of possible ways in which humans might administer and manage their affairs.

Social democracy has always attempted to be strategically pragmatic.

Authors framework include the social or developmental strand of liberalism associated with the work of John Stuart Mill in the nineteenth century and of L.T. Houbhouse, J.M. Keynes and William Beveridge in the twentieth.

Six points defining the social democratic tradition:

Social democracy assumes that liberal democracy works.
Social democracy perceives capitalism as both inevitable and also inherently dynamic.
Social democracy recognizes that inequalities and deprivation are generated by a capitalist market economy but believes these can be effectively mitigated by some form of economic and/or social intervention and regulation.

These points should be relatively uncontentious. When thinking about global governance, we need to grasp three further characteristics of social democracy.

Social is largely weeded to an elitist understanding of the potential relationship between people and political leadership and tends to assume a top-down, hierarchical model of governance.
The social democratic tradition has been almost entirely statist.
Social democracy has been both united and split by a commitment to methodological nationalism.

Although the social democracy has largely abandoned class analysis in recent decades the aim of using state power to aid the least well-off remain broadly similar.

David Miliband: “While the power of social democracy as a national project is compromised by economic interdependence, international political institutions are too weak for an effective supranational strategy.”[1]

The biggest difference between traditional and modernizing social democracy are that the first still keeps the emphasis on Keynesian demand management and a universal welfare state. The modernizing one accepts capitalism in full and does not believe in the power of national economy to fight in the global economy with interventions. Training and education sees as the best approaches.

The Commission on Global Governance strongly emphasizes the potential role of global civil society organizations in offering a non-bureaucratic approach to global governance seeing them as having the capacity to broaden effective representation in an emerging global society.

Strategic pragmatism today entails recognizing and discarding unquestioned assumptions and unnecessary baggage from the past.

Globalization and the Renewal of Social Democracy: A Critical Reconsideration – Matthew Browne and Yusuf Akbar

Since April 1999, when the conference Progressive Governance for the 21^st Century was hosted in Washington DC, the Third Way movement has gained increasingly notoriety and importance in both the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental European political movement.

There are those who have the full belief in globalization and those who are skeptical. Both these understanding of the relationship between globalization and the renewal of social democracy are inadequate.

The state ability to push the cost of work to the market and to tax the capital are limited in the world of global purchase and money mobility.

The role of the state itself transformed. Full employment and redistributive transfers are rejected as guiding principles in favor of the provision of an environment conductive to private investment, particularly foreign direct investment, and the entrepreneur. There has been a movement away from a protecting role for the state towards an enabling one. Protection from cradle to grave is not the main role of the state anymore. As Blair put it, market mechanisms are critical to meeting the social objectives, entrepreneurial zeal can promote social justice.

Norman Fairclough is questioning this discourse of globalization. He is claiming that globalization narrative is more an ideology rather than a truth regime. He is questioning the premises that economy is an entity in and of itself. He claims it is a set of social relations and processes.

Asserting that under capitalism there was essentially a trade-off democracy (or democratic input in the political process) and efficiency. The neoliberal challenge and response to the crisis of the welfare state effectively reinstated the liberal dualism of the separation of politics and economics.

While the Third Way seeks to unite competition and social justice, it simultaneously presents itself as technically superior method of managing national economics affairs.

Why has there been no social democratization of globalization? Stammers, citing Miliband, while the power of social democracy as a national project is compromised by economic interdependence, international political institutions are too weak for an effective supranational strategy.

While Third Way social democracy may collapse into neoliberalism, as traditional social democracy collapsed into liberalism, both offer adaptations which differ in important respects to liberalism or neoliberalism per se. Social democracy has been, and is likely to remain, a reactionary political project.

Social Democracy and the European Union: Who’s Changing Whom? – Francis McGowan

When Blair, Jospin and Schroder were elected to run the EU biggest countries there was a speculation that EU will turn to the left.

The process of EU integration has been conceived and developed on the basis of economic principles which can be described as liberal. The underlying liberal bias has increasingly constrained national policies.

The market integration that was at the core of the 1951 Paris Treaty and the 1957 Rome Treaties, was basically liberal.

If the 1970s saw the tension between social democracy and European integration resolved – at least temporarily – in favor of the former, by the middle of the 1980s the tables were beginning to be turned.

The acceptance of market liberalization for other economic activities beyond trade in manufactures and the use of competition policy as a lever to reform old industrial structures were the instruments of a reinvigorated EU. They were built on the original blueprint for integration.

There is a long tradition of international solidarity on the Left which should have rendered socialist in Europe well disposed towards integration. Yet historically social democratic attitudes to the EU have been ambivalent and divergent.

The apparent gap between traditional social democratic parties that were against economic liberalism and modernizing social democratic parties that embraced economic liberalism widened at the end of the century. Two premises on which the two options are measured are state-market premise and growth and equity premise.

In German SPD this tension could be seen inside the party, with one line being represented by Chancellor Gerhard Scroder and the second line being represented by Minister of Finance Oskar Lafontaine.

EU policies constraining national social democratic options more than vice versa.

Negative integration – removing barriers – constrains national social democracies in three areas of policy: competition policy, the Single Market and Economic and Monetary Union.

In examining the scope for remaking the EU as a social democracy project we can distinguish between two types of policy – compensatory and countervailing. Compensatory policies are those which ameliorate the effects of an open market. Countervailing policies are those which assert (or defend) a different model of development.

The EU budget is at the core of the most compensatory policies.

Regulation is administratively attractive because it shifts the burden of compliance from government to firms.

The outcomes of EU social policy have been modest, not least because some member states have been vary of expenses.

It appears that social democracy as a whole (and not just the modernizers) have accepted the efficacy of free trade.

European social democracy has never been very true to its internationalist ideals and this may be reflected in the lack of effective mobilization on a European scale.

Social Democracy in Britain? New Labour and the Third Way – Nick Cowell and Phil Larkin

The Third Way has defined itself largely in the negative sense of what it is not.

The Third Way motif is the latest attempt to fulfil this role of ‘big idea’. It follows on from the short-lived flirtations with stakeholding (apparently abandoned due to its association with the more interventionist agenda of Will Hutton) and communitarianism (apparently influenced by the work of Amitai Etzioni).

The paper on the Third Way published jointly under the names of Blair and Schroder stated that: “The aim of social democratic policy is to overcome the apparent contradiction between demand- and supply-side policies in favor of a fruitful combination of micro-economic flexibility and macro-economic stability.

Redistribution and increased spending on health and education services did take place during a time of economic improvement in the government’s budget due to the buoyant economy. If New Labour were faced with a real recession, then it would show just how much emphasis was placed on social justice rather than sound finance.

Labour was always a little different from the mainstream European social democracy. It was never based in Marxist ideology. Labour was essentially founded by the trade union movement and as such it was guided by an untheoretical and rather defensive pragmatism compounded by a romanticized working-class ethos.

One of the major points of divergence between Blarism and Jospinism has been over the role of the market. Jospin always favored political over economic.

The need to attract investment in a global era has pushed parties towards adopting flexible labour market and apparently provides the more unsetting element of the new context. European integration has provided a further constraint on the social democratic room for manoeuvre.

Clearly the Thatcherite period was an important factor in shaping the social democratic response in Britain. Whilst most of the elements of the classical social democratic model were In place in Britain, they were less embedded. New Labour emerged from a mixture of Labour’s own history, a reaction to the Thatcherite experience in Britain, and as a response to the changing world conditions.

Dutch Social Democracy and the Poldermodel – Christien van den Anker

Globalization is often regarded as a constraint on the social policies that are traditionally identified with social democratic governments. Therefore, social democracy needs to rethink and does, its views on the desirable and feasible role of the state, and its economic and social policies in an era of globalization.

There are five context of change have influenced present debate on social democracy and constrain the possibilities for social policies to handle these changes effectively.

Social democratic parties have moved away from their traditional membership of mainly working-class people towards a more middle class membership base.
The end of Cold War necessarily implies a shift to the right for social democracy.
Western liberal societies have been changing in nature since the end of the WWII and especially since the alte 1960s.
Social democratic parties did well in the recent elections and are now (2011) in government in Britain, Frances, Germany, Italy and Sweden. And Netherlands.
Economic growth experienced across Europe creates opportunities for social democracy to realize its objectives to achieve a more just society.

The Dutch social democratic party (SDAP), was one of the first socialist parties in Europe to abandon Marxist revolutionary theory and to advocate a mixed economy.

The formation of the Partij van de Arbeid in 1946 (PvdA) was a step towards breaking through the “pillarization” of society.

The PvdA turn away from its original ideological position of statist social and economic planning as well as from its emphasis on radical income inequality, has been electorally rewarding.

In 1973 PvdA leader was Den Uyl. His government managed to bring the income inequality down to a ratio between the top 20 per cent and bottom 20 per cent to 5:1.

Whereas, the PvdA is not the sole architect of what is commonly referred to in the literature as the Poldermodel, this new type of welfare regime combines some of the insights advocated by the social democrats.

The Poldermodel is a model of economic and social policy mainly focused on wage restraint in return for job creation. The widest definition is a model of cooperation between stakeholders aim for agreement in order to prevent polarization and loss of time by entering into conflict. The two main characteristic are the system of regular cooperation between the three main stakeholders and the consensus of the way forward towards economic growth and reduced unemployment.

The Dutch model of social welfare was compatible with good economic growth and a good international position for Dutch business.

A new element in the social democratic social policy is the emphasis on lower taxes and premiums that help to keep the spending power of working people at a decent level.

One precondition of success of such model is the trust between the actors in the system.

Cooperation, compromise and consensus building can be seen as lasting ingredients in the history of Dutch politics. In some ways this can be seen as a product of the Calvinist attitude to life, holding that one always needs to be prepared for future bad luck.

The Poldermodel is deeply rooted in the new social democratic embrace of the market and a capitalist economy as engines of growth.

Members of the scientific bureau of the PvdA, the Wiardi Beckman Stichting (WBS) propose seven amendments to the Poldermodel:

Rich behind the dykes? More international cooperation.
From macro to micro. Mega investments in infrastructure.
Not for work alone. Labor market policy with better focus and balance.
The environment as criterion.
Beyond economism. More emphasis on cultural and spatial factors.
What to do with growing resources? Part of income and profit should be spend on collective goods.
An agenda for democratic renewal.

The success of the Poldermodel has partly undermined itself. With present levels of economic growth, the unions are less willing to make sacrifices in terms of income.

The PvdA shifted away from its traditional view on welfare politics earlier than the UK for example.

The interpretation of equality as equality of opportunity runs the risk of blaming the victim: if people do not have the skills needed for inclusion in the global economy they deserve to be poor since everyone had equal chances.

Social Democracy and Structures of Governance in Britain and Germany: How Institutions and Norms Shape Political Innovation – Charles Lees

Despite the common rhetoric of the Third Way and New Centre the scope and scale of modernization within the Labour Party and the SPD remains grounded in the national ‘traditions’ of Britain and German Social Democracy.

In July 1999 the much trumpeted British-German joint policy document on the Third Way or New Centre by Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroder was published.

On the basis of the document, the Third Way appeared to many to amount to little more than Thatcherism with a human face. In Germany the Blair Papier, as it became known was regarded as an attack on the Rhineland model of social market capitalism.

When looking at the differences of two countries and social democracy in them, we should check two dimensions:

Party systems (political competition and election outcomes).
State structures (administrative structures and bureaucratic norms).

In Britain tendency toward one party majority government helps The Third Way agenda, it is also important for the Labour Party to gain some differentiation in the very crowded space around the centre. SPD has a different position, since the German two-and-a half party system with liberal FDP acting as kingmaker between CDU/CSU and SPD.

The Third Way/New Centre agenda, given that the dissemination of such ideas between Britain and Germany , has been primarily an elite-driven process involving top party and government officials, as well as high-profile academics such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck. By contrast, the Red-Green model has been fine-tuned within the relatively low-risk environment of state government. The Germany’s federal structure is replicated within the SPD. The SPD has more internal power centres than the Labour Party.

A highly centralized and autocratic party machine is at the heart of the Blair paradox the title of Marquand’s article. The SPD operates within a structure of governance which is much more consensual and decentralized.

The idea of Social Democracy being underpinned by a methodological nationalism that is no longer appropriate to the conditions of the early twenty-first century. This is particularly relevant to European Social Democracy, given the increasing impact of Europeanization on national policy-making.

The Media and Social Democracy in the United States and Great Britain – Stephanie Hoopes

In addition to the differences in media usage patterns, the US is more advanced in terms of Internet, cable and satellite availability than Britain.

The media’s impact on three variations of social democracy: traditional, modern and global social democracy.

Traditional social democracy believes in democracy and relies capitalism to generate wealth. The state compensate for the by-products of capitalism through universalist welfare. Civil society is small and plays a minimal role in society.
Modern social democracy also accepts liberal democracy. There is a shift from the equality of opportunity for the poor to minimum opportunities for those who are currently excluded. State is still dominant. Role of civil society is little increased.
Global social democracy transcend the state. Still embrace the market.

Before the advent of real-time reporting the government usually had an information advantage. New media techniques have facilitated interest group communication across border as well as international business. As issues and problems become global, actors have become so too, including governments.

Traditional social democrats favoured big government and big national companies that could be easily identified, held responsible and taxed.

Advocates of global social democracy see the role of media as a powerful driving force to the next stage of social democracy.

In some ways changes in the media and the new technologies may improve opportunities for equality and justice, but the full effect has yet to be realized. The rapid improvements in technology have also contributed to the gap between the rich and the poor. The digital divide.

The shift to non-governmental welfare is greater in the US, with companies providing some welfare services.

Capitalism, Globalization and Democracy: Does Social Democracy Have a Role? – Luke Martell

Debate on the changing role of social democracy reveal a range of factors which explain where we find social democracy today.

Social democracy accepts liberal democracy and capitalism.

The size and political loyalty of the traditional manufacturing working class has declined.

Globalization is also a big factor. It undermines the Keynesian macroeconomic policy. A big question is whether globalization is real or just discourse to be used.

Stephanie Hoyes distinguished between traditional, modernizing and globalist social democracy.

Across Europe social democratic parties are discussing or implementing more flexible labour markets, privatization, welfare reform, cuts in business regulations and taxes, low inflation and macroeconomic stability and supply-side policies alongside continuing social democratic concerns for social inclusion and minimum social standards.

Three main social democratic responses to globalization: