The Deep Challenge Of Global Social Democracy

Leading international relations theorist Professor Martin Shaw explores how we can develop a truly global vision of social democracy.

Global politics starts from the basis that the world is becoming one society, in which people can recognise their increasingly common interests and shared values. Global politics must also start, however, by acknowledging the huge differences of life and wealth, as well as of culture and politics, which divide the world.

Social democracy began as, and largely remains, a European movement. Its classic contribution added social and economic rights to the common agenda of democratic movements in nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe. In the late twentieth century its distinctive role has been to show how social and economic welfare could be internationalised as part of the process of European integration.

Social democracy is hardly global in its support. Not only have social democratic politics gained no permanent base in North America; but in the non-Western world, the politics of social democracy are not strong. If social democracy is ever to be truly a global politics, it must not only find ways of addressing the interests of the majority in the non-Western world, but of mobilising their support. Are there any real prospects that either of these things can happen?

Opportunities and dangers

In broad historical terms, there are unprecedented opportunities. Social democracy is free of the strategic straightjacket that bound it during the Cold War; it is no longer divided between Atlanticist, neutralist and tacitly pro-Communist wings. The end of Stalinist regimes in Europe – and prospectively in China and elsewhere – combined with the removal of many anti-Communist military dictatorships has opened up an unprecedented space for democratic politics in many middle-income and poor countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa. At the same time the end of the Cold War division has made cooperative world politics a much more real prospect. It has given more genuine meaning to common global institutions.

However the times we live in are full of dangers. Democratic change in the non-Western world has been accompanied more by nationalist than by social-democratic politics. Nationalism has often taken ethnic-exclusive forms. Violence has been extensive and, since September 11, has come to threaten the advanced West itself. Trends in Western politics, too, have not long remained benign. The centre-left hegemony of the late 1990s has already begun to fade, as aggressive right-wing politics triumphs in one Western country after another. The victories of George W. Bush and Silvio Berlusconi (with his deeply unsavoury coalition) had already sounded a strong warning, before Jean-Marie Le Pen's recent if more ephemeral triumph.

The impact of September 11, the 'war on terrorism' and Ariel Sharon's offensive appear, in the short term at least, very destructive of social democratic prospects. Not only have they boosted Islamist politics in the Middle East as well as in Muslim communities in Europe, they have fostered the sense of insecurity in Western societies, which has made electorates easy prey to the right and even the racist extreme right. Social democratic parties that have lost much of their base in poor working-class communities will find it difficult, as France has shown, to counter this drift. The temptation to compete in being tough on outsiders, as in David Blunkett's disastrous reference to 'swamping' will do social democrats no good: this terminology enabled Margaret Thatcher to hijack National Front support in 1979, but it will not work for the left.

Globalism is not only, therefore, a challenge to social democracy to devise a world strategy, but a real issue in its domestic and European context. 'Think globally, act locally', says the green slogan: an expression of weakness when acting globally is too difficult, but a lesson that social democracy also needs to take to heart. The haemorrhaging of Socialist support in France, to further-left and green candidates, should be a lesson that social democrats need to appeal to the excluded and the constituencies that will defend them, rather than pandering to the pro-exclusion vote. Globalism begins at home and it can be a crucial element in maintaining the distinctiveness of social democratic politics.

Social democrats in world politics

Faced with a right-wing American administration that sees things in overwhelmingly nationalist terms, European social democracy – both in power and out of it – has a special responsibility to advance a different world agenda. Social democracy's role is a double one, which echoes its historic roots:

1. Social democracy must become the most consistent advocate of the 'democratic' agenda. This in turn has three main features:
a. supporting the deepening and broadening of democratic institutions and human rights, in all the regions of the world;
b. radical and ambitious measures to reduce and manage armed conflict, which is the main threat to democracy worldwide;
c. developing legitimate global institutions (political, legal and military), enhancing their representation of world society and their capability to protect victims of aggression and violence.

2. Social democracy must advocate a distinctive 'social' agenda for a global democracy. This must involve developing a framework of world economic, social and environmental policies that tackle the deep structural divisions of existing world society. This will involve radical rethinking of things like
a. eliminating the most basic elements of poverty within a serious timeframe; b. institutionalising a global framework of social welfare (more than just 'aid') and to find the resources for this;
c. institutionalise a global framework of labour mobility, embedding and supporting rights of migration;
d. developing global environmental regimes, especially adding concrete measures to protect the most vulnerable people from catastrophic effects of climate change like flooding and drought.

This kind of globalist social-democratic vision would place social democracy more clearly in radical opposition to the narrow, nationalist conservatism of the political right. It would enable social democracy to appeal to the young people in Western societies at present more attracted to the romantic dead-end of 'anti-globalisation' protest.

However it is difficult to see how social democracy can move from where it is now to this kind of position. Social-democratic parties in power have often become confined to administering a minimal, consensual agenda, often perceived as 'boring' (as Lionel Jospin found to his cost). Aware above all of the exigencies of short-term electoral politics, politicians are rarely minded to take on a large and radical agenda.

Social-democratic politicians sometimes take constructive international steps, as with Gordon Brown's contribution to reducing Third World debt and Clare Short's efforts to promote development. But they rarely promote the kind of political debate that would popularise global politics in the electorate, and enthuse party activists to believe that social democracy can make a global difference. Indeed debate is too often seen as the enemy of discipline and electoral success.

Above all, Western social-democratic parties, embedded in national and European politics, acknowledging the continuing dominance of the United States in Western world policy, seem simply incapable of showing the historical imagination needed to grasp the radical challenges of the world situation. If globalism does indeed mean recognising our common situation, sharing one world, then the gaps between West and non-West, rich and poor, secure and insecure, democratic and democratising, will need a different kind of consciousness.

Social democracy will only become genuinely global if it can see itself as something very different from a safe and fairly comfortable corner of European politics, and can imagine a very different role and a very different world. The global challenge to social democracy is deep and potentially uncomfortable. It remains to be seen if it can be grasped.

Martin Shaw is Professor of International Relations & Politics at the University of Sussex. His personal website is at www.martinshaw.org and he edits www.theglobalsite.ac.uk

Placed on Fabian Global Forum, May 2002.