Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Reversing The Globalisation Backlash

Colin Crouch 23rd October 2018

Colin Crouch

Reversing the backlash against globalization requires active politics in two opposite directions: the strengthening of democracy beyond the level of the nation state; and strenuous efforts at local economic development.

In The Globalization Paradox Dani Rodrik argued that we have a choice among democracy, national sovereignty and hyper-globalization, a trilemma, and that we could have any two of these but not all three. ‘Hyper-globalization’ clearly implies the neoliberal ideal of a totally unregulated world economy. Democracy separated from the nation state – the only form of democracy ‘capable’ of dealing with the global economy – implies global democracy, which is impossible to achieve. A non-democratic nation state is compatible with hyper-globalization, because it implies a national ‘sovereignty’ willing to accept governance by the market and corporate power alone. This seems to lead to the conclusion that we can preserve democracy only by limiting political ambitions to the nation state and seeking to use it somehow to evade globalization.

But there is an alternative. Globalization does not have to be ‘hyper’. It can be moderated through regulation by international agencies, which, although they cannot be fully democratic, can be subjected to far more democratic pressure than is common today. It is not feasible for global bodies like the World Trade Organization or the International Monetary Fund to have directly elected parliaments, as has been possible in the European Union, but there can be public debate over the policies that national governments will pursue within these organizations.

National politicians need freely to admit that there are problems that are beyond their reach, that they need to cooperate with others within international agencies. Governments’ policies within those agencies must then become fiercely debated within national politics. Is it unrealistic to imagine a general election in which an opposition made a major issue out of a government’s failure to work with other countries within the WTO to suppress slavery, child labour and inhuman working hours? If Donald Trump had demanded the incorporation of International Labour Organization standards within the rules of the WTO instead of retreating into protectionism, he would have made a major contribution to good global economic governance.

The world needs political will across a number of countries based on recognition that: the high tide of neoliberal deregulation has been damaging; and that national communities can only reassert regulation of that process by pooling their sovereignty and trying to introduce as much democracy as is practicable into that process. The gap between the three points of the Rodrik triangle is reduced when it is accepted that globalization requires some regulation, that the international agencies necessary to such regulation need elements of democracy, and that the democracy of the nation state best expresses itself as pooled sovereignty within that framework.

Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content.


We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Thank you!

Please check your inbox and click on the link in the confirmation email to complete your newsletter subscription.

.

The local in the global

This approach then has to be combined with attention to local economic development and subsidiarity. Across the democratic world there has been a notable geography to the appeal of xenophobic forces. Cities whose residents can feel they are part of a flourishing future have resisted that appeal – from Budapest and Vienna to Liverpool or San Francisco.

Market forces in the post-industrial economy favour a small number of large cities, with very little trickle down from them. Whole regions and many smaller cities have been left without any dynamic activities that can retain the young and give people a sense of pride in their local Heimat. It is not enough to provide generous social support for people who are unemployed or left in low-income occupations as a result of these processes, or to encourage firms and government organizations to locate back-office and warehouse activities in such places. We need collaboration among EU, national and local authorities to identify new activities that can thrive outside existing successful centres and provide the infrastructure that will facilitate them.

Quite apart from economic development in itself, people also need high quality local environments of which they can be proud. This requires considerable public spending – a strategy that belongs to the left, not the populist right that claims to be the main defender of Heimat. Success in this task will not be achieved everywhere; there will always be sad areas that fail to find a place in a changing world. But combinations of imaginative national and local planning with entrepreneurship, and determined attention to the geography of dynamism, can reduce their number and therefore the numbers of those who feel left behind.

These strategies address the discontent of those who feel neglected, particularly working-class men of the dominant ethnicity who believe that politicians, especially of the left, have shifted their attention to the inequalities endured by women and ethnic minorities in post-industrial sectors. Their complaint is justified: widespread acceptance of neoliberal ideas made purely economic inequalities an unmentionable. But it cannot be addressed by an attempted return to an industrialism that is lost, less still through misogyny and xenophobia.

Multi-layered citizens

The globalization backlash has a cultural as well as an economic dimension, and so must the fight against it. A globalised world needs citizens who are at ease with a variety of layered identities, happy in our skins with loyalties and identities of varying strengths to our local community, our town or city, our region, our country, Europe, and with goodwill to our common humanity. These loyalties must be able to feed on and reinforce each other, not be set in zero-sum conflict. Many people have shown a capacity to do this, but to continue like it they need to feel confident and secure.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

The task of future politics is to create environments in which these values can flourish, not snuff them out under an insistence on the monopoly claims of national or ethnic identity. And neoliberals must learn that unless they are willing to accept the public policies and taxation levels that sustain such environments they will lose the globalization project that is so dear to them.

You can read more of Colin’s analysis in his latest book

Colin Crouch

Colin Crouch is a professor emeritus of the University of Warwick and external scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies at Cologne. He has published within the fields of comparative European sociology and industrial relations, economic sociology and contemporary issues in British and European politics.

Home ・ Politics ・ Reversing The Globalisation Backlash

Most Popular Posts

schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
world order,Russia,China,Europe,United States,US The coming world orderMarc Saxer
south working,remote work ‘South working’: the future of remote workAntonio Aloisi and Luisa Corazza
Russia,Putin,assets,oligarchs Seizing the assets of Russian oligarchsBranko Milanovic
Russians,support,war,Ukraine Why do Russians support the war against Ukraine?Svetlana Erpyleva

Most Recent Posts

Gazprom,Putin,Nordstream,Putin,Schröder How the public loses out when politicians cash inKatharina Pistor
defence,europe,spending Ukraine and Europe’s defence spendingValerio Alfonso Bruno and Adriano Cozzolino
North Atlantic Treaty Organization,NATO,Ukraine The Ukraine war and NATO’s renewed credibilityPaul Rogers
transnational list,European constituency,European elections,European public sphere A European constituency for a European public sphereDomènec Ruiz Devesa
hydrogen,gas,LNG,REPowerEU EU hydrogen targets—a neo-colonial resource grabPascoe Sabido and Chloé Mikolajczak

Other Social Europe Publications

The transatlantic relationship
Women and the coronavirus crisis
RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?
US election 2020
Corporate taxation in a globalised era

ETUI advertisement

Bilan social / Social policy in the EU: state of play 2021 and perspectives

The new edition of the Bilan social 2021, co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), reveals that while EU social policy-making took a blow in 2020, 2021 was guided by the re-emerging social aspirations of the European Commission and the launch of several important initiatives. Against the background of Covid-19, climate change and the debate on the future of Europe, the French presidency of the Council of the EU and the von der Leyen commission must now be closely scrutinised by EU citizens and social stakeholders.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Living and working in Europe 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic continued to be a defining force in 2021, and Eurofound continued its work of examining and recording the many and diverse impacts across the EU. Living and working in Europe 2021 provides a snapshot of the changes to employment, work and living conditions in Europe. It also summarises the agency’s findings on issues such as gender equality in employment, wealth inequality and labour shortages. These will have a significant bearing on recovery from the pandemic, resilience in the face of the war in Ukraine and a successful transition to a green and digital future.


AVAILABLE HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

EU Care Atlas: a new interactive data map showing how care deficits affect the gender earnings gap in the EU

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap.

While attention is often focused on the gender pay gap (13%), the EU Care Atlas brings to light the more worrisome and complex picture of women’s economic inequalities. The pay gap is just one of three main elements that explain the overall earnings gap, which is estimated at 36.7%. The EU Care Atlas illustrates the urgent need to look beyond the pay gap and understand the interplay between the overall earnings gap and care imbalances.


BROWSE THROUGH THE MAP

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

The past year has seen a much higher political profile for the issue of minimum wages, not only in Germany, which has seen fresh initiatives to tackle low pay, but also in those many other countries in Europe that have embarked on substantial and sustained increases in statutory minimum wages. One key benchmark in determining what should count as an adequate minimum wage is the threshold of 60 per cent of the median wage, a ratio that has also played a role in the European Commission's proposals for an EU-level policy on minimum wages. This year's WSI Minimum Wage Report highlights the feasibility of achieving minimum wages that meet this criterion, given the political will. And with an increase to 12 euro per hour planned for autumn 2022, Germany might now find itself promoted from laggard to minimum-wage trailblazer.


FREE DOWNLOAD

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us on social media

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube