René Cuperus
The Populist Deficiency of European Social Democracy

Michael Braun
Populism in Power. The Berlusconi Phenomenon

Kenneth B. Moss
Reasserting American Exceptionalism – Confronting the World
The National Security Strategy of the Bush Administration

Christoph Zöpel
Western Values and Historical Experience on the Two Sides of the Atlantic

 

James N. Rosenau

Globalization and Governance:
Bleak Prospects for Sustainability

All over the world the prospects for making economic activity ecologically sustainable are grim. The causes of this are both structural and conceptual. States are increasingly losing the ability to control things in the top-down way that fits their institutional set-up. Regulation takes place via networks whose actors are connected to one another at different levels. These changed conditions are poorly reflected in the current sustainability debate. The structural changes which characterize our epoch are encapsulated in the concept of “fragmegration”, which refers to the simultaneous processes of fragmentation and integration. Almost every increase in globalization sets processes in motion at local level, and vice versa. “Fragmegration” is driven by a series of evolutionary trends, including far-reaching technological innovation, increasing mobility, and improving levels of education. These trends affect the attitudes and behavior of actors at the level of the individual (micro), of collectivities such as states (macro), the interface of micro and macro actors, and the level at which collective actors interact (macro–macro). We are conceptually no longer able to deal with the complexity of this situation. That makes it very difficult to analyze the situation and to work out successful strategies. There are three main problems here. First, the concept of sustainability can be interpreted in a number of ways: are we talking about ecological or economic sustainability? Second, the advanced decentralization of regulatory powers is widely disregarded; as a result, attempts at solutions continue to be confined to the inter-state (macro–macro) level. Third, local events are barely taken into consideration. The tensions in “fragmegration” processes are underrated and the generalizability of scientific knowledge overrated. All in all, we are still clinging to a paradigm which gives pride of place to the authority of the state, and regards the challenge of environmental protection as a problem of international coordination. However, sustainability requires the coordinated participation of a multitude of actors on different levels. It is unlikely that this will be achieved.

Bob Jessop

The Future of the State in an Era of Globalization

The idea that the regulating powers of the nation-state are successively being hollowed out by global market integration does in its simplicity not fit reality. The term globalization refers to various disparate processes with diverse effects on the political organization of human society. Together, these processes result in a spatio-temporal restructuring of contemporary capitalism. They subject the Keynesian national welfare state, which in various forms has been characteristic of the advanced capitalist countries during the 1950s to 1970s, to six broad types of transformation: (1) Statehood is becoming denationalized, with state powers being transferred to international bodies, to sub-national states and to cross-national alliances of various sorts. (2) The boundaries between the state and the non-state sphere are being redrawn, with the state shedding some functions, but assuming others. This involves a shift from direct government to indirect governance as a mode of regulating societal affairs. (3) Non-territorial cross-border forms of governance are replacing to some extent the territory-bound state as regulating agencies. (4) The economic and the political spheres are being articulated in new ways, with the state retreating from some areas of intervention and at the same time assuming new economic responsibilities. (5) State policy-making on all levels is increasingly being co-shaped by external actors, belonging to the international sphere. (6) New political communities are being imagined along ethnic and non-ethnic lines and compete with the established nations as sources of legitimacy of state power and as focuses of loyalty. But the nation-state is not only the object of the forces of globalization, it actively responds to the challenges posed by these changes. Most important perhaps, it takes on “meta-governance” functions, shaping the new structures of power and regulation and steering the non-hierarchical, network-type processes of governance within these structures. A crucial dimension of the changes subsumed under the term “globalization” is the acceleration of demands on state decision-making by deregulated markets. This might obliterate traditional state decision-making procedures. But the state is not defenseless, to some extent it can enforce deceleration. Altogether, the Keynesian national welfare state gives way to a Schumpeterian postnational workfare regime. While important spheres of regulation are transcending the national territory the territorial-based political power that is constitutive of the national state will – albeit in a restructured form – remain central to the management of capitalism.

Frank Decker

The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy

The recent right-wing populist successes in Europe could be characterized as an opportunity for the revitalization of democratic politics since they force the established parties to get to grips with neglected but important themes. The success of the right-wing populists is, however, an indication of a more far-reaching and harmful tendency towards the plebiscitary transformation of Western democracies. The latter constitute a synthesis of two normative principles: the sovereignty of the people and the constitutional state. The emphasis gradually shifted over time in favor of the second principle, increasingly in the direction of a constitutional–representative conception of democracy. This is attributable above all to the growing complexity of government. Populism constitutes a reaction to this development. With its radical simplifications it transmits a feeling of accessibility and transparency which has obviously been lost in democratic reality. The counter-movement is by no means limited to the right-wing populist challengers. Supported by the transformation of the media, it is increasingly impacting on the entire spectrum of electoral politics, and the logic of presentation is thus becoming more and more distant from real decision-making processes. Symptomatic of this is the transformation of party competition. In the past its democratic functionality was ensured by the combination of social segmentation and ideological polarization. Since this precondition is increasingly disappearing the big parties must pursue virtually the same goals and offer the same solutions in order to become electable. To distinguish themselves from the competition only two strategies are available to them. On the one hand, they could concentrate on differences of detail in their solutions to current problems, with the risk that they will go over the voters’ heads or simply bore them. On the other hand, they can deliberately depoliticize the electorate, switching to a strategy of symbolic action and personalization and so attempt to win over a broad public (in contrast to particular “constituencies”). The more plebiscitary tendencies become established, the more important it becomes to have provisions to protect the liberties of the constitutional state. The experiences of Austria and above all Italy show that right-wing populist parties in government do not confine themselves to articulating dissent but actively pursue the plebiscitary transformation of the constitutional state.

Mark Blyth

Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice
Social Democracy and the Rise of Political Cartelization

Many believe that the traditional social democratic agenda has become a victim of globalization which poses unsurmountable economic constraints, melting the tax base of social democratic redistribution and public policy and leaving workers unprotected vis-à-vis the vagaries of the untamed global markets. But a closer look casts doubt on the validity of this interpretation. Deficit-spending, supposedly central to social democratic policy and now no longer feasible was hardly practiced during the heydays of welfare capitalism. The alarm about cost competitiveness does not square with the high-wage countries’ persistently overwhelming share in world trade. The united Europe as a whole resembles very much a closed economy and is in fact de-globalizing its trade. International capital movements have proven to be rather unresponsive to politics in Western countries. There is an alternative explanation for the fact that many social democratic parties have abandoned their erstwhile programs and switched to a make-the-markets-work rhetoric. This explanation starts with the observation that competition for votes has changed. For all major parties, electoral success has come to hinge on catch-all politics, i.e. on convincing a broad public, not just a specific clientele, that it will benefit from the party’s policy program. But the provision of public goods as the most obvious way to benefit many people soon ran against fiscal limits. At the same time the technology of elections moved away from mass participation to media marketing, requiring costs that party members alone were less and less willing to bear. A faithful mass membership base became ever less instrumental for winning elections. Social democrats were at a special competitive disadvantage as their catch-all policies faced diminishing returns and their typical organizational form became dysfunctional. As their classical message no longer won elections, social democratic parties turned to a “middle-of-the-road” agenda, that resembled the one of their competitors. In order to sell it to the electorate they had to down-size their voters’ expectations. For this purpose they adopted the rhetoric of (a) globalization leaving no choice and (b) market reforms paying off in terms of increased efficiency and enhanced dynamics. De facto they entered cartels with their mainstream competitor parties, abstaining from competition over substantial policy and instead aiming at a steady market share in terms of votes. To signal their resolve to stick to the tacitly agreed terms of the cartel political parties externalized policy commitments, i.e. they adopted regulations that placed important policy-shaping instruments (e.g. control over the central bank) beyond government reach. But cartels are vulnerable to outsider competition and to defection by insiders. The latter has been the case in Sweden. The former is exemplified by the rise of right-wing populism throughout Europe. The danger is that some populists will not let themselves be co-opted into the cartel, gain power and try to enact the substantial changes from which the cartel parties have been shying away.

René Cuperus

The Populist Deficiency of European Social Democracy

The Fortuyn revolt illustrates the difficult relationship between social democracy and populism. The key cause of the rise of populism in the Netherlands was the disappearance of ideological and programmatic differences between the leading parties, while at the same time Dutch society became more heterogeneous. While the “purple coalitions” of liberals and social democrats were busy adjusting the “Polder model” of the welfare state to the increasingly competitive environment of the 1990s, the “losers” in urban working-class neighborhoods felt left out. Instead, they were attracted by the Fortuyn message concerning the so-called decay of the public sector and critical of the (again, so-called) “Islamization” of Dutch culture. The painful lesson to be learnt by European social democrats is that, if social democracy wishes to reduce resentment in society – socio-economic, democratic, cultural and multicultural discontent – and thus remove the breeding conditions for socio-economic marginalization or the polarization of communities along ethnic lines, then its program, style and communications must make concessions to its educationally underprivileged constituency.