Is Europe's left ready to govern?

If a new social democratic era is to be ushered in, the left must find new answers and strategies – or this chance will be wasted

Olaf Cramme and Patrick Diamond, guardian.co.uk, 04/07/12

These days, the eyes of left-leaning people across the world are fixed on François Hollande, who has a good chance of defeating France's unpopular president Nicolas Sarkozy. Hollande's campaign commands so much attention because should he claim victory, it would be a major coup for social democracy, providing desperately needed momentum across Europe after a staggering 19 European elections lost to Conservative and centre-right opponents since the outbreak of the global crisis. The political message would be this: tough-minded opposition to austerity works; financial capitalism is the new enemy; a sharpened leftwing profile is popular again. It would promise the end of an era where left and right politics were apparently indistinguishable.

But are we really on the brink of a new era? European social democracy has yet to undergo the serious and profound rethinking necessary to make a success of governing. It has yet to find a convincing answer to why the demise of 1980s neoliberalism has led to a public debate about the size and efficiency of the state, rather than the inherent instability of markets. The danger is that leftwing parties will be elected by default but will have little idea of what to do with power in the aftermath of victory. Lacking direction, they will quickly flounder – risking catastrophic defeat only a few years later.

The global financial crisis in Andrew Gamble's terms, "struck like an earthquake at the heart of the institutions, practices and beliefs of those years". The central question of the crisis is not whether it will rejuvenate nation-state social democracy, but whether it can stimulate new strategies on which a revived platform of egalitarian prosperity and social welfare might be built. The task is to frame a response so that social democracy can benefit from a new openness to ideas in domestic and world politics – against a residual neoliberalism that would frame the global financial crisis as one of the overbearing state.

In such an enterprise, several animating themes are immediately resonant.

The first relates to the nature of capitalism itself. Historically, social democracy has been developed in conjunction with capitalism. It defined the boundaries as to what is seen as politically feasible. Social democrats remained ahead of the curve by building the institutional pillars which not only shielded citizens from harsh conditions in the market economy, but helped shape it in the first place.

Critics argued that centre-left parties had become "structurally dependent" on capitalism, that is, dependent on capitalist markets to generate a surplus for investment in welfare and public services. Yet reform has proven ever more difficult, not least because social democrats have taken their eyes off the fundamental transformation capitalism has been subject to over the past decades. Understanding again the changing character of market capitalism has never been more urgent for the centre-left, which aims to bring about a more just and humane conception of the market economy.

The second theme alludes to the changing nature and form of the state. Again, social democracy has been historically dependent on state power. But the size and complexity of the state makes it more and more difficult for citizens to understand who makes decisions and who should be held accountable. The development of new technologies and scientific innovation places decision-making power in the hands of experts, putting added pressure on modern liberal forms of representative and participative democracy. Large-scale bureaucracies risk fuelling citizen disengagement and declining trust in the political system. There are other pressures on the traditional social democratic conception of the state, such as the ageing society and changing demography that will not disappear.  

Finally, left-of-centre parties have been increasingly hampered by cultural cleavages relating to increasing ethnic heterogeneity, the free movement of labour and open migration systems, the rise of new forms of politicised and assertive religious radicalism, and an apparent conflict between "cosmopolitan" and "communitarian" interests. The identities and solidarities on which social democracy in Europe has been built are under increasing strain. New actors on the far left and far right, as well as astutely positioned conservative and Christian democratic parties, will not hesitate to capitalise on the struggle to craft a clear narrative – however myopic and divisive. Providing people with a coherent sense of belonging and collective purpose has to be at the forefront of centre-left thinking, combined with openness to global and world affairs.

Each of these themes must be subject to a further test: are social democrats capable of developing a governing strategy that can live up to these enormous challenges? Although the nation-state has become the principal bastion in the fight against the financial and economic crisis, its "golden age" is irrefutably drawing to a close. There is now an urgent need for new capacities and instruments to exercise collective power locally, nationally, and globally.

For social democrats, however, this means a change in mindset, given the long-held fixation with the levers of national power expressed through the monolithic nation-state. Citizens have to be engaged in a more sophisticated dialogue about the nature of interdependence and the meaning of sovereignty, allowing the centre-left to regain ownership of a changing internationalist agenda – be it European integration, climate change, or the response to humanitarian crises.

This is the terrain on which left-of-centre parties have to forge new electoral strategies and political identities. That means bringing ideas back into the mainstream of European social democracy. Success is hardly inevitable: events can conspire against the best ideas. But even electoral success will not be enough – the left must have its own answers given that the political and economic models of neoliberalism are exhausted.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/07/is-europes-left-ready-to-govern

Has the Euro Crisis Killed Off Social Democracy For Good?

Jonathan Blitzer, 12/03/11

Madrid–Outgoing Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, of Spain, had until recently been the beneficiary of propitious circumstances. Party infighting enabled him to outmaneuver the establishment favorite in the 2000 primaries. Four years later, he eked out an eleventh hour victory in national elections when a terrorist bombing mere days before voting turned the tide against incumbent conservatives. As he took office, a booming economy—which enjoyed the second largest budget surplus in Europe as late as 2007—paved the way for an ambitious social agenda, which rallied his progressive base.

But if a flair for the unexpected studded his ascent, it was a bruising inevitability that brought him low. A rapidly worsening economic crisis left him with little choice but to announce, in April, that he would not stand for re-election. After months of daily flaying by an emboldened conservative opposition, early elections came as a relief for Zapatero, even as his party blamed him when it was trounced, as expected, two weeks ago.

But Zapatero didn’t fall alone: Center-left governments in Portugal and Greece have also fallen in recent months. All in all, it’s a long-standing trend. Leftist governments in Europe have been teetering now for over a decade. Ten years ago, social democratic governments were at the helm in half the countries of the EU. That number has since dropped to three. But their recent plight is their most dire. The sovereign debt crisis has done more than batter incumbent socialists out of office; it may well have stripped the social democratic movement of its soul in the crisis zone.

Even before the latest crisis hit, it was widely presaged that social democracy was on the wane in Europe. The continent’s working class, fragmented under the pressures of globalization, had already been moving toward alternative parties for a number of years. But the current financial crisis has amplified those trends. The mood is uniformly grim among the continent’s center-left set.

That’s especially the case in the European periphery, where the debt problems are greatest. For left-leaning politicians in countries hurtling toward the precipice of insolvency, there is frightfully little room to alleviate mounting unemployment and anemic growth. “The crisis has shown what was probably true for some time, that these governments have limited scope to determine their own economic policy,” Says Jonathan White, of the London School of Economics.

With bond markets aflutter and Brussels demanding massive spending cuts, incumbent governments have had little choice but to embark on toxically unpopular austerity. In March, Portuguese Socialist José Sócrates was forced to resign when an austerity package was rejected by Parliament. The Greek Prime Minister’s exit, in November, was as precipitous as Zapatero’s was agonizingly protracted. In the meantime, it’s not taken long for the labor party in Ireland to come under fire for reneging on its campaign promise to put national interests first in its now infamous formulation: “Labor’s way or Frankfurt’s way.” And the arrival of technocrats in Italy after the fall of the government of Silvio Berlusconi only underscores how incompatible austerity is with electoral survival: the country’s center-left never even attempted to take the reins of power.

It is clearly not a sustainable situation for Social Democrats. They have lost credibility with the electorate not only because they’ve been virtually impotent in stimulating growth, but also, worse, because austerity has appeared to make them go against their principles. The traditional linchpins of the social democratic agenda—defense of the welfare state, a Keynesian economic vision, responsiveness to a pluralistic electorate—are in tatters. For the Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek Socialists who were forced to make cuts in their respective countries, austerity is their legacy.

Their conservative rivals, by contrast, now have the pretext they’ve been waiting for to cut government spending and privatize swaths of the education and health sectors. EU imperatives pose few ideological problems to these parties, and in the early days they could survey the ravages of the crisis from the higher ground afforded by being in the opposition. Even so, their generic campaign slogans in Portugal and Spain made conservative victories there little more than votes of no confidence to punish incumbent Socialists. Abstention reached 40 percent in Portugal’s June elections. In Spain this November the conservative People’s Party (PP) gained only a half-million votes, still shy of Socialist totals from 2008. Nevertheless, they won an absolute majority because Socialists dropped over 4 million votes.

“Although voters want to maintain the welfare state, they don’t necessarily believe that the government is the best guarantor of the welfare state’s actual benefits,” explained José Ignacio Torreblanca, director of the Madrid branch of the European Council on Foreign Relations. This partly explains voter ambivalence before a grisly political reality: They are turning out one party over austerity and haplessness on the jobs front, while its replacement promises to do more of the same, only with the added zeal brought by large parliamentary majorities.

The problem for the Spanish Socialist Party, as it tries to make sense of its recent defeat, is emblematic of the broader existential quandary facing social democrats across the crisis zone. In Spain the 4 million votes lost by Socialists were spread across the political spectrum, making it hard for the party to know whether to tack leftward or hew to the center in the aftermath of elections. Some votes evaporated into abstention, others went to the PP, and still more went to two alternative parties whose growing strength bespeaks widening fault lines in the center-left coalition. (One of the parties is the left-wing Izquierda Unida, and the other is the newly constituted UPyD, a more centrist Socialist offshoot formed by disgruntled members of the party.) The Socialists’ dilemma “is a bit like a blanket that’s not big enough to cover you completely,” said Torreblanca. “You pull it down to cover your feet, and are left exposed somewhere else. The problem, in a word, is that the blanket is just not big enough to cover [such diverse constituencies and varied grievances].”

Writers like Fernando Berlin, who is currently at work on a book about Socialism in Spain, are not entirely despondent about the party’s chances to regroup. The outgoing Socialist government, he maintained, “was, at least in its first term, the country’s most progressive to date in terms of social issues.” The public might still be able to forgive the party its bout of austerity as the extent of the conservative hard line becomes clearer. But in any case, said Berlin, “Spanish socialists have to construct a program that goes beyond the economy”: Reviving social issues is the only thing to distinguish them from conservative rivals.

What the economic and political crisis has laid bare, finally, is how brittle the social democratic tradition really is in parts of Europe. “Socialism in southern Europe has been a reactionary movement to prevailing autocracies and conservative traditions,” according to regional expert Joan Costa-Font, “and hence it evolves with how conservatism pans out.” Much of the cohesion on the left in Spain, Portugal, and Greece derived from mutual investment in overcoming despotic rule, but this made Socialist coalitions, which extended from leftists to economic liberals of the center, a somewhat porous ideological union. Any cues taken from historic founts among British Fabians and German Social Democrats, explained Costa-Font, have dissipated as these movements also find themselves in crisis.

EU policy is a kind of Maginot Line of fiscal conservatism, and social democrats in the crisis zone, under the watch of the markets and Brussels, have stumbled off into the opposition. Better to be there, perhaps, than to be held hostage while in office. It may be safest for them to weather this crisis outside the public eye.

Jonathan Blitzer is a journalist living in Madrid.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98096/spain-euro-crisis-social-democracy

Liberal No More: The Far Right Gains in Sweden's Election

Behrang Kianzad / Malmo, 09/20/10

Swedish voters on Sunday re-elected the ruling center-right coalition, giving the Conservative Party a record 30% of the vote. It's the first time in Sweden's political history that a non-socialist Prime Minister has won a second term, and the first time the Conservatives have had such a high share of the polls. But those historic events are being overshadowed by another first, one that has politicians, the media and the public wondering which direction their country is headed: the Swedish — famous for their middle-ground politics, generous immigration policies and reputation for tolerance — also handed the far-right Sweden Democrats a place in Parliament.

Despite the Conservative Party's record share of the vote, the coalition — which also includes the Folk Party, the Center Party and the Christian Democrats — lost its overall majority after the Sweden Democrats, led by the young and charismatic Jimmie Akesson, took 5.7% of the vote. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has until Oct. 5 to nail down a new government, and he indicated on Sunday that he would be looking to the Green Party for support. In his victory speech, Reinfeldt categorically rejected the idea of any cooperation between the coalition and the Sweden Democrats. Which means if he can't make a deal with the Greens, the coalition will have to either rule with an unstable minority government or look to a repeat election. (See pictures of immigration in Europe.)

But as far as the Sweden Democrats are concerned, they've already won. "We have been counting on this," said Björn Söder, Secretary of the Swedish Democrats and second in command, on Sunday. Even if the coalition snubs the Sweden Democrats, the party still has a seat at the table. Its entry into Parliament signals a move to the right that has become common in Europe, which most believed Sweden was immune to. An outright Nazi party in the '90s, the Sweden Democrats have been galvanized by the debate in the country on Islam, the crime rate among migrants and the populist demand for a more restrictive immigration policy inspired by Denmark, which tightened its borders following the populist Dansk Folkeparti's move into government in 2002. But, commentators argue, the Sweden Democrats' policies would have gone mostly unnoticed had it not been for the abundant media coverage of the party in the run-up to the vote — coverage that critics blame for making the party impossible to miss and therefore boosting it into power.

Around the country and online, many Swedes are in a state of shock, worried about how the far right's gain will tarnish the nation's image. On Monday, protesters in cities such as Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö took to the streets and chanted anti-racist slogans in response to the Sweden Democrats' rise. Migrant-rights activist Damon Rasti says he and his friends cried when the final results were reported. "This is not the Sweden we want," he tells TIME. "I woke up and felt the bitter cold slipping in, not knowing if it was the weather or the politics. But this only strengthens us to go on." (See more on Europe's voters rewarding the right.)

As of Monday, all of Sweden's parties refused to hold any discussions with the Sweden Democrats. But there are other politicians who are happy to see the party come in from the fringe. "Sweden now is a normal country," Pia Kjaerskgaard, head of the Dansk Folkeparti, told reporters on Sunday. During the election campaign, Kjaerskgaard claimed that Swedish democracy was more grotesque than the rule of East European regimes, after Sweden's TV4 decided not to air a campaign ad by the Sweden Democrats that depicted Muslims as a threat to society. Charging the station with censorship, she called for election observers to be sent to Sweden. It never happened.

While Sweden may be moving a little further to the right, Robert Klemmensen, an associate professor at Denmark's Syddansk University, does not believe that Swedish politics will ever take on the aggressive rhetoric of Denmark's far-right parties. "The political sphere in Denmark is generally more confrontational than in Sweden," he says. "The Swedish will have to expect a more restrictive policy on immigration, but other areas will probably not be affected."

But for how long? Many describe the Sweden Democrats as smart, tactical and media-savvy — and warn that, left unchallenged, the party could become a growing force in the Swedish government. "They were very skilled in mobilizing the small portion of Swedish society that is critical of migrants and other ethnic groups," says Ulf Bjereld, a political science professor at Gothenburg University. "It all comes down to the Green Party. If they refuse an invitation made by Reinfeldt, then the chances of the Sweden Democrats' gaining more access to politics are greater." (Comment on this story.)

By Monday afternoon, Reinfeldt still hadn't approached the Green Party about forming a government, while the Greens insisted that they wouldn't necessarily accept if he did. Political observers say the Greens will wait until the last minute before making any deal, in order to increase their chances of winning a ministerial role — preferably Minister for Environmental Affairs. (See pictures of New York City going green.)

In the end, the ruling coalition could be faced with two choices: form a minority government and hope that the Green Party will support it on individual issues or call for a re-vote. Extending a hand to the Sweden Democrats, say commentators, is not an option. "The Prime Minister and his coalition would lose all political credibility by doing so, since 94% of Swedes did not vote for and are disgusted by the Sweden Democrats," says Bjereld. "I would deem such a solution unthinkable."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2020349,00.html