Globalization and Governance: Bleak Prospects for Sustainability* JAMES N. ROSENAU ARTIKEL /ARTICLES A t first glance, the prospects for effective global governance in the realm of environmental sustainability would appear to be considerable. Recent decades have witnessed a profound and discernible shift to a worldwide consciousness of the vast scope of environmental challenges. We have collectively moved from a fragmented nimby (not in my backyard) syndrome to a keen awareness of an integrated future symbolized by the picture of the earth from outer space. 1 But appearances can be deceiving. Or at least the ensuing pages argue that the prospects for effective governance leading to sustainability are, on balance, quite bleak. Our generation lacks the orientations necessary to sound assessments of how the authority of governance can be brought to bear on the challenges posed by the prevailing disarray. As will be seen, we have not adjusted our conceptual equipment to facilitate the analysis of how authority gets exercised in a decentralized world. We are still deeply ensconced in a paradigm that locates authority exclusively in states and environmental challenges exclusively in their shared problems – the so-called tragedy of the commons. In effect, we have elevated the nimby syndrome to the national level. Our preoccupation with global problems posed by recognizing the earth as a lonely spheroid in a vast universe has led us to minimize the extent to which environmental challenges at local levels are marked by variability. Today societies can have as much difficulty exercising authority within their own jurisdictions as they do with respect to the commons. The world, in other words, is both fragmenting * An extended version of this article will be published in: James N. Rosenau, ErnstUlrich von Weizsäcker and Ulrich Petschow(eds.), Governance and Sustainability. Exploring the roadmap to sustainability after Johannesburg (Sheffield: Greenleaf Publishing, 2004). 1. Sheila Jasanoff,»Image and Imagination: The Formation of Global Environmental Consciousness«, in: Paul Edwards and Clark A. Miller(eds.), Changing the Atmosphere: Science and the Politics of Global Warming (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2001, pp. 309 – 37. ipg 3/2003 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance 11

and integrating. What is remote today is also in our backyards; what was distant is now also proximate, and the prevalence of these distant proximities underlies the messiness that sets our time apart from previous generations. 2 It was neither an accident nor pervasive malevolence that prevented the commitments made at the 1992 Rio meeting from being implemented. The pervasive inaction appears, rather, to be inherent in the structural constraints and conceptual blocks that currently prevail in the global system. Some of us are inclined to stress the Montreal Protocol and numerous other mechanisms through which the global community has successfully addressed environmental challenges. They discern a long-term trend toward state compliance with environmental treaties. 3 Others contend that »steps in the 1990s toward a more just and ecologically resilient world were too small, too slow, or too poorly rooted …. Not surprisingly, then, global governmental problems, from climate change to species extinctions, deforestation, and water scarcity, have generally worsened since delegates met in Rio«. 4 Likewise, some regard the Global Compact framed by Kofi Annan and the un as a huge step forward, 5 while still others insist the Compact is»deeply flawed« and should be»scrapped or re-designed completely«. 6 I myself am optimistic by nature, but the empiricist in me has a hard time ignoring the obstacles to progress toward effective governance that will promote environmental sustainability. 2. For an elaboration of this conception of present-day world affairs, see James N. Rosenau, Distant Proximities: Dynamics Beyond Globalization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). 3. See, for example, Edith Brown Weiss and Harold K. Jacobson(eds.), Engaging Countries: Strengthening Compliance with International Environmental Accords (Cambridge: mit Press, 1998), Chap. 15. 4. Gary Gardner,»The Challenge of Johannesburg: Creating a More Secure World«, in: Linda Starke(ed.), State of the World 2002: A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002), p. 4. 5. www.unglobalcompact.org. 6. Kenny Bruno, The un ’s Global Compact, Corporate Accountability and the Johannesburg Earth Summit(http://www.corpwatch.org/campaigns/PCD.jsp?articleid =1348), January 24, 2002, p. 4. 12 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance ipg 3/2003

Between Integration and Fragmentation It is in the context of the complexities that have rendered our world messier than ever that I want to examine the links between governance, sustainability, and globalization. First, of course, some conceptual specifications are in order. Governance Elsewhere I have suggested that the core of governance involves rule systems in which steering mechanisms are employed to frame and implement goals that move communities in the directions they wish to go or that enable them to maintain the institutions and policies they wish to maintain. 7 Governance is not the same as government in that the rule systems of the latter are rooted in formal and legal procedures, while those of the former are also marked by informal rule systems. 8 It follows that the achievement of a modicum of governance that promotes environmental sustainability on a global scale requires the development of steering mechanisms that evoke compliant actions, not just words, on the part of the innumerable actors whose work impacts upon the myriad aspects of the natural environment that need to be sustained across generations. Two key challenges here are especially acute. One concerns the local variability that defies an overall global solution. The second involves the nature of compliance, of getting relevant actors to put aside habitual responses and, instead, to yield to authorities who act on behalf of environmental standards. The sum of the world’s formal and informal rule systems at all levels of community amount to what can properly be called global governance. It is a highly disaggregated and only a minimally coordinated system of governance. 7. James N. Rosenau,»Governance in the 21st Century«, Global Governance , Vol. 1 (1995), pp. 13 – 43. 8. James N. Rosenau,»Governance, Order, and Change in World Politics«, in: J.N. Rosenau and E.O. Czempiel(eds.), Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Chap. 1. ipg 3/2003 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance 13

Sustainability Environmental sustainability has both empirical and moral dimensions. On the one hand, it refers to those empirical processes whereby humankind preserves or exploits the resources of nature in such a way that present and subsequent generations do or do not have available access to comparable standards of living. But efforts to promote a desirable future for both the unborn and the born is loaded with values and it is here where sustainability is pervaded with moral dimensions, with questions of right and wrong. Empirical data – the findings of science – on whether a particular practice promotes or deters sustainable development in the future can be interpreted in diverse ways, depending on the perspectives from which they are approached. Whatever the solidity of the empirical findings that may be uncovered about species survival, pollution, resource utilization, and all the other foci that comprise the environmental issue-area, inevitably policies designed to achieve sustainability will be deeply ensconced in unending controversies and conflicts that make widespread compliance with the policies improbable. A major source of the controversies stems from governmental structures at local, national, and international levels in which responsibility for the ecological, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability is assigned to competitive agencies that must be coordinated for meaningful policies to be adopted. The chances of consensuses and new institutional steering mechanisms forming to overcome these bureaucratic obstacles and the environmental threats they sustain are likely to be dim and thus central to a bleak view of the prospects for the future. Globalization I have found it helpful to conceive of globalization as rooted in two basic and contrary processes. One involves all those forces that press for centralization, integration, and globalization, and the other consists of those forces that press for decentralization, fragmentation and localization. In turn, these polarities can be viewed as either philosophical premises or as empirical processes. As philosophical premises, they amount to forms of either localism or globalism, both of which consist of mind sets, of orientations, of worldviews, with localism pertaining to those mental sets that focus on and value the familiar and close-at hand arrangements located within conventional community and national boundaries, and with 14 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance ipg 3/2003

globalism involving orientations toward the distant circumstances that lie beyond national boundaries. But localism and globalism can usefully be distinguished from localization and globalization, which I conceive to be empirical processes rather than mind sets, processes that are boundaryspanning in the case of globalization and that either contract within conventional boundaries or do not span them in the case of localization. The coordination needed to implement the goals articulated in Johannesburg seems unlikely to surmount the disaggregated authority structures on which global governance rests. I have coined the ungainly and contrived word»fragmegration« to capture the inextricable links between the individual and societal tendencies to integrate across boundaries that are the hallmark of globalization and the counter tendencies toward fragmentation that are fomented by localizing resistances to boundary-spanning activities. I dare to suggest that by viewing the world through fragmegrative lenses one can discern the underlying dynamics of our epoch with a clarity that is not otherwise available. 9 It is not far-fetched to assert that virtually every increment of globalization gives rise to an increment of localization, and vice versa, so thoroughly are the two contrary orientations and processes interconnected. While fragmegrative dynamics tend to be conflictual, it is useful to reiterate that many environmental issues originate in local communities and the resolution of more than a few of them involve a measure of decentralization founded on the perspectives of localism. In the energy field, for example, sustainable enterprises are estimated to be most efficient when they are decentralized in the private and nonprofit sector, 10 an estimate that runs counter to practices in many countries but that is quite consistent with the underlying tendency whereby authority is undergoing a continual process of disaggregation as the fragmegrative epoch unfolds. 9. The concept of fragmegration is spelled out most fully in James N. Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Chap. 6. 10. Wolfgang Sachs, et al., The Jo’burg Memo: Fairness in a Fragile World (Berlin: Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2002), p. 29. ipg 3/2003 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance 15

Sustainability as Fragmegrative Processes Environmental issues and their potential for sustainability fall squarely between fragmentation and integration. They are profoundly and quintessentially fragmegrative dynamics. On the one hand, they are pervasively integrative in the sense that the value of preserving the environment and maintaining its viability is widely shared at every level of community. Rare are those who overtly argue on behalf of exploiting the resources of nature or who oppose the idea of trying to prevent their degradation. Indeed, it is precisely the integrative underpinnings of environmental issues that brought leaders of 160 national governments and representatives of thousands of nongovernmental organizations( ngo s) to Rio in 1992 and comparable numbers of both types of actors to Johannesburg in 2002. And it is precisely these issues that evoked verbal affirmations of and commitments to the agreements reached in Rio throughout the subsequent decade. On the other hand, the very same issues have led to pervasive and divisive fragmentation among and within groups, communities, countries, and international systems when actions designed to implement the proposed commitments proved to be highly controversial and, with some notable exceptions, largely ineffectual. It is no accident that the series of anti-globalization protests that began with the Battle of Seattle in 1999 have in large measure focused on questions of sustainability. Indeed, the protests have reinforced a long-term process whereby the very idea of sustainability has undergone a significant change of meaning. Now it connotes»sustainable development«, with the emphasis on sustaining economies rather than nature, a semantic shift that has enabled a vast array of diverse actors to crowd under the umbrella of sustainability and to press their goals in the context of what they regard as unquestionable sets of values. 11 Sources of Fragmegration What is it about the present epoch that has so markedly accelerated localglobal tensions and strikingly raised their salience on the global agenda? I find it useful to respond to this question by identifying eight major sources of fragmegration that shape attitudes and behavior at four levels 11. Sachs, et al., The Jo’burg Memo: Fairness in a Fragile World , p. 14. 16 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance ipg 3/2003

of aggregation – the micro level of individuals, the macro level of collectivities and states, the micro-macro level at which individuals and collectivities shape and interact with each other, and the macro-macro level wherein collectivities interact and influence each other. Both the eight sources and the four levels are set forth in Table 1, with the entries in the cells being crude hypotheses that suggest some of – though surely not all – the possible consequences that may flow at each level in response to each of the various sources. 12 At the very least Table 1 highlights the extraordinary complexity that marks our time. It should be stressed that fragmegrative circumstances are not necessarily marked by tensions and conflict. Global orientations and actions can be supportive of local situations, and vice versa. For example, the u.n. ’s Commission on Sustainable Development created at Rio in 1992 has assisted numerous cities around the world promote local arrangements designed to contain and reduce environmental degradation. 13 This example is encouraging. It accords credence to the possibility of achieving harmony between local circumstances and global needs. However, here I want to focus on how the eight dynamics listed in Table 1 may serve to generate tension and conflict in the realm of environmental sustainability. Microelectronic Technologies Among the consequences that may flow from the Internet, mobile phones, and fax machines are an ever more effective capacity to mobilize like-minded people on behalf of shared goals. It is a capacity that serves those committed to localism as well as those inclined toward globalism. Equally important, such technologies level the playing field. Mobilization in local communities is facilitated by word of mouth as well as communication technologies, but the latter make it possible to reach and mobilize the like-minded across national boundaries and great distances. The Internet has been a major factor in the surging growth of the environmental movement noted below. 14 12. Both the contents of Table 1 and parts of the ensuing discussion of the eight sources of fragmegration are adapted from Rosenau, Distant Proximities , Chap. 3. 13. Hilary French, Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of Globalization (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), p. 161. 14. For a general analysis of the links between the Internet and social movements, see Ronald J. Deibert,»International Plug’n Play? Citizen Activism, the Internet, and Global Public Policy«, International Studies Perspectives , Vol. 1(2000), pp. 255 – 72. ipg 3/2003 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance 17

ipg 3/2003 18 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance Levels of Aggregation ̈ Sources of Fragmegration ̄ Microelectronic Technologies Skill Revolution Organizational Explosion Bifurcation of Global Structures Table 1: Some Sources of Fragmegration at Four Levels of Aggregation MICRO MACRO MICRO – MACRO enable like-minded people to be in touch with each other anywhere in the world expands peoples’ horizons on a global scale; sensitizes them to the relevance of distant events; facilitates a reversion to local concerns facilitates multiple identities, subgroupism, and affiliation with transnational networks adds to role conflicts, divides loyalties, and foments tensions among individuals; orients people toward local spheres of authority render collectivities more open, connected, and vulnerable; empowers them to mobilize support enlarges the capacity of governmental agencies to think »out of the box«, seize opportunities, and analyze challenges increases capacity of opposition groups to form and press for altered policies; divides publics from their elites facilitates formation of new spheres of authority and consolidation of existing spheres in the multi-centric world constrain governments by enabling opposition groups to mobilize more effectively constrains policy making through increased capacity of individuals to know when, where and how to engage in collective action contributes to the pluralism and dispersion of authority; heightens the probability of authority crises empowers transnational advocacy groups and special interests to pursue influence through diverse channels MACRO – MACRO accelerate diplomatic processes; facilitate electronic surveillance and intelligence work multiplies quantity and enhances quality of links among states; solidifies their alliances and enmities renders the global stage ever more transnational and dense with non-governmental actors generates institutional arrangements for cooperation on major global issues such as trade, human rights, the environment, etc.

Rosenau, Globalization and Governance 19 ipg 3/2003 Mobility Upheaval Weakening of Territoriality, States, and Sovereignty Authority Crises Globalization of National Economies stimulates imaginations and provides more extensive contacts with foreign cultures; heightens salience of the outsider undermines traditions and national loyalties; increases distrust of governments and other institutions redirect loyalties; encourage individuals to replace traditional criteria of legitimacy with performance criteria swells ranks of consumers; promotes uniform tastes; heightens concerns for jobs; widens gap between winners and losers enlarges the size and relevance of sub-cultures, diasporas, and ethnic conflicts as people seek new opportunities abroad adds to the porosity of national boundaries and the difficulty of framing national policies weaken ability of both governments and other organizations to frame and implement policies complicates tasks of state governments vis-à-vis markets; promotes business alliances increases movement across borders that lessens capacity of governments to control national boundaries lessens confidence in governments; renders nationwide consensuses difficult to achieve and maintain facilitate the capacity of publics to press and/or paralyze their governments, the wto , and other organizations increases efforts to protect local cultures and industries; facilitates vigor of protest movements; polarizes communities heightens need for international cooperation to control the flow of drugs, money, immigrants, and terrorists increases need for interstate cooperation on global issues; lessens control over cascading events enlarge the competence of some igo s and ngo s; encourage diplomatic wariness in negotiations intensifies trade and investment conflicts; generates incentives for building global financial institutions

Skill Revolution Elsewhere I have argued at length that people everywhere have expanded their skills at dealing with the challenges and crises that mark our accelerated epoch. 15 It is no longer plausible to take publics for granted, to assume they can be led by their officials to support any course of action. Rather, equipped with a deeper understanding and more clear-cut values than, say, their great grandparents, today they are more ready to take action in response to circumstances they find wanting. This greater readiness is perhaps especially evident with respect to environmental issues, sensitivities to which have greatly increased in recent decades. Stated in the words of one analyst,»The local efforts of citizens have always been crucial to the environmental movement. Grassroots activism is the seedbed of more organized and enduring efforts and institutions«. 16 Furthermore, the skill revolution along with the new technologies has heightened peoples’ sense of identity and their capacity to shoulder multiple identities. Organizational Explosion A central pattern of this accelerated epoch is the proliferation of organizations at every level of community, local, national, and transnational. Equally important, due largely to the Internet and the fax machine, many of them are horizontally as well as vertically structured. Networks have supplemented hierarchies as an organizational form, and many of the new organizations are conspicuously lacking in hierarchy. Combined with the processes of localization, the organizational explosion is thus enabling people to find common cause with others in their community and to come together when the need to do so arises. But it is important to note that the environmental movement is far from unified. Rather, it can be viewed as numerous environmental movements that are»very diverse and complex, their organizational forms ranging from the highly organized and formally institutionalized to the 15. For an initial discussion of the skill revolution as a micro dynamic, see James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), Chaps. 9 and 13. For an updated elaboration of the concept, see my Distant Proximities , Chap. 10. 16. Leslie Paul Thiele, Environmentalism for a New Millennium: The Challenge of Coevolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 28. 20 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance ipg 3/2003

radically informed, the spatial scope of their activities ranging from the local to the almost global, the nature of their concerns ranging from single issues to the full panoply of global environmental concerns«. 17 Taken as a whole, the movement is thus»defined by many different voices« which are often in conflict.»Each cause has its own chorus of supporters and detractors«, so much so that»when advancing their own particular interests for their own political ends, environmentalists may seem less in the business of galvanizing public commitment than dispersing it«. 18 Since some of these tensions unfold across transnational, national, and local groups, it can readily be observed that the environmental movement is itself subject to fragmegrative dynamics. Bifurcation of Global Structures Beginning sometime after World War II the overall structure of world politics began to undergo change, to bifurcate, with the flourishing of innumerable actors other than states clambering up on to the world stage and undertaking actions with consequence for the course of events. As a result, what I call a»multi-centric« world evolved that consists of a great variety of collectivities and that has come to rival the long-standing, anarchical state-centric system. One can reasonably assert that overall global structures are today marked by two worlds of world politics, two worlds that sometimes cooperate, oft-times conflict, and endlessly interact. The bifurcated evolution of the global system serves to intensify fragmegrative dynamics in the sense that it contributes to a long-term process whereby authority is undergoing disaggregation. Consequently, the multi-centric world now provides avenues for local groups to articulate their needs and goals as they join with each other in persuading governments in the statecentric world to heed – or at least to hear – their claims. 19 The environmental movement has been and continues to be both a contributor to and a beneficiary of the bifurcation of global structures. It has contributed through the explosion of environmental organizations at 17. Christopher A. Rootes,»Environmental Movements from the Local to the Global«, in: Christopher A. Rootes(ed.), Environmental Movements: Local, National, and Global (London: Frank Cass, 1999), p. 2. 18. Thiele, Environmentalism for a New Millennium , pp. 30 – 31. 19. A conceptualization of the bifurcated two worlds of world politics is elaborated at some length in Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics , Chap. 10. ipg 3/2003 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance 21

all levels of community throughout the world. In so doing the movement has helped to institutionalize and legitimate the processes of bifurcation. At the same time it has benefited from the institutionalization of the bifurcated structures in the sense that the movement’s diverse voices now have a permanent platform from which they can express and move toward their goals. It is hard to imagine any future gathering of leaders of the state-centric world that is not accompanied by a simultaneous and adjacent gathering of organizations and individuals from the multi-centric world, a reality that is profoundly and thoroughly expressive of the dynamics of fragmegration. 20 Mobility Upheaval The accelerated epoch has witnessed a vast movement of people – everyone from the tourist to the terrorist, from the business executive to the immigrant, from illegal aliens seeking work to those fleeing persecution, from students studying abroad to artists and other professionals advancing their careers, from environmentalists attending conferences in Rio and Johannesburg to protesters converging on Seattle and Washington. To cite one quantitative example, there were 635 million international tourist arrivals in 1998, whereas the figure for 1950 was 25 million. 21 In many ways this mobility upheaval, as I call it, has contributed to the integrative dimension of fragmegration, but in one important way it has served to intensify fragmentation. In many countries the migrant, legal as well as illegal, has fostered strong negative reactions in the host society. Australia’s handling of this problem, its refusal to let boatload of migrants disembark on its shores, is a classic instance of this fragmegrative dynamic. Weakening of Territoriality, States, and Sovereignty As technologies shrink the world, as people become increasingly skillful, as organizations proliferate, as the multi-centric world expands, and as the mobility upheaval sustains vast movements of people, the meaning of 20.To be sure, the G-8 have convened in remote locales that are inaccessible to protesters or groups who wish to submit policy recommendations, but such a practice cannot long withstand the bifurcated structures that facilitate demands for transparency. 21. French, Vanishing Borders , p.29. 22 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance ipg 3/2003

territory becomes less compelling and states and their sovereignty become weaker. This is not to forecast the end of the state as a central political structure. Rather it is to stress that states have increasing difficulty controlling the flow of ideas, money, goods, drugs, crime, pollution, and people across their borders, thus contributing substantially to the processes whereby authority is undergoing disaggregation on a worldwide scale. The fragmegrative consequences of these processes are considerable. Most notably perhaps, local communities and groups are acquiring greater autonomy and a heightened readiness to contest the integrative forces of globalization. The recent history of the environmental movement offers numerous examples of clashes that pit local and global forces against each other. 22 Authority Crises The dynamics whereby authority structures are undergoing disaggregation have contributed to a proliferation of authority crises on the part of governments, local as well as national. Such crises are most conspicuous when protesters crowd the streets and make strident demands, but an even more common form of authority crisis involves the inability of governments to frame goals and move toward them. Stalemate and paralysis, in other words, amount to authority crises, and they are pervasive. Japan’s inability to confront and surmount the long-term decline of its economy and the persistence of widespread corruption and unemployment in China are illustrative of authority crises that derive their strength from stalemated political systems. ngo s, churches, unions, and a variety of other institutions are also going one or another form of paralysis and upheaval. Even the Mafia has experienced an authority crisis deriving from its young members defying the dictates of its seniors. Needless to say, pervasive authority crises have important consequences for the world’s capacity to maximize the governance of sustainability. Globalization of National Economies The turn toward free enterprise economic systems and a lessening of trade barriers has had a number of fragmegrative consequences. On the 22. This is a recurring theme in Karen T. Litfin(ed.), The Greening of Sovereignty in World Politics (Cambridge: mit Press, 1998). ipg 3/2003 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance 23

integrative side the emergence of a global economy has led to a greater variety of goods and services being available to more and more people, processes that have also contributed to an ever-greater interdependence among groups and societies. On the fragmenting side, the globalization of national economies has also served to widen the gap between rich and poor both within and between countries. More relevant to present concerns, the prevalence of neoliberal economic perspectives underlies the aforementioned semantic shift of the concept of sustainability from an emphasis on sustaining economies rather than nature. These perspectives have also served to move the role of transnational corporations toward the top of the global agenda, thereby generating conditions for a wide variety of fragmegrative situations, from protests against the world’s economic institutions to boycotts of the goods of corporations that are considered to undermine environmental sustainability. The Governance of Environmental Fragmegration The discourse that probes the problem of achieving sustainability through global governance largely bemoans the lack of progress since the 1992 convergence of the two worlds of world politics in Rio. However, when it turns to investigating how more effective global governance might be accomplished, the discourse encounters conceptual difficulties that tend to block a full appreciation of the task. Three problems are especially noteworthy. One involves the confusion noted above in which the priorities attached to sustainable and economic development get confounded. The second consists of a tendency to ignore the high degree to which authority has undergone disaggregation in recent decades and instead to focus on top-down solutions to the governance challenge. And the third amounts to a disinclination to account for local variations and, consequently, an underplaying of fragmegrative tensions and an undue stress upon the universality of scientific findings. Conceptual Blocks: What Should be Developed? Intense debate surrounds the question of whether the environment or economies should be developed. It pits environmentalists against developers, which readily becomes a debate between developed and developing countries. While some appreciate that the debate can be misleading, 24 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance ipg 3/2003

that the goals of each group can be compatible and need not be mutually exclusive, 23 that the environment can be sustained even as economies flourish, the central tendency is for the economy and the developers to prevail over the environment and environmentalists. George W. Bush’s repeated contention that the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change would be bad for the American economy is a quintessential instance of this outcome as well as a succinct expression of how this conceptual block can prevent both/and formulations from replacing either/or approaches. Conceptual Blocks: Authority Notwithstanding the many ways in which the eight dynamics listed in Table 1 – and especially the organizational explosion, the skill revolution, the weakening of states, and pervasive authority crises – have cumulatively fostered a global stage that is crowded with diverse actors at every level of community who take positions and pursue policies relevant to sustainability, most assessments of what has to be done start at the level of reforming international institutions and then note how the reforms have to be implemented by national and local governments. Whether the solutions are top-down or bottom-up, they posit vertical flows of authority. In effect, therefore, the solutions are cast in the context of the aforementioned weakness wherein analysts still cling to traditional approaches to the nature of authority. They ignore the ways in which collectivities in both the public and private sectors sustain authority flows horizontally through networks as well as vertically through hierarchical structures. They continue to posit the state as the prime, if not the only, wielder of effective authority. Thus, still rooted in the notion that compliance involves those at the top persuading, instructing, or ordering those down the chain of command to conduct themselves in specified ways, no allowance is made for requests and suggestions that evoke compliance through nonhierarchical structures. In the words of one observer,»So dominant in contemporary consciousness is the assumption that authority must be centralized that scholars are just beginning to grapple with how decentralized authority might be understood ….[T]he question of how to think about a world that is becoming ›domesticated‹ but not centralized, 23. See, for example, John Gerard Ruggie, Taking Embedded Liberalism Global: the Corporate Connection(Toronto: Canadian Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, May 29, 2002). ipg 3/2003 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance 25

about a world after ›anarchy‹, is one of the most important questions today facing not only students of international relations but of political theory as well«. 24 For the agreements reached in Johannesburg to be translated into effective authority that inches the world toward sustainability, a wide variety of numerous actors, both individuals and collectivities, have to be coordinated and their differences at least minimally subordinated to the interests of their great grandchildren. Authority flows emanate from a vast array of actors whose rule systems I call»spheres of authority«( soa s) and who evoke compliance through a variety of means. 25 Global governance thus involves crazy-quilt arrangements wherein the exercise of authority is exercised partly by hierarchical structures, partly by horizontal networks, and partly by oblique links among overlapping vertical and horizontal soa s. Taken in its entirety, the system of global governance is comparable to a mobius strip or web. It is a system marked by patterns that unfold when the impetus to steer a course of events derives from networked and hierarchical interactions across levels of aggregation among transnational corporations, international nongovernmental organizations, ngo s, intergovernmental organizations, states, elites, and mass publics, interactions that are elaborate and diverse enough to constitute a hybrid structure in which the dynamics of governance are so overlapping among the several levels as to form a singular, web-like process that, like a mobius strip, neither begins nor culminates at any level or at any point in time. 26 A mobius web is topdown, bottom-up and side-by-side governance all at once. It is thus far more complex than the governance that flows from the principal of subsidiarity developed in the European Union. 24. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 308. 25. For a discussion of the social contracts on which soa s are founded, see Rosenau, Distant Proximities , Chap. 13. 26. A formulation that elaborates on»mobius-web« governance is set forth in James N. Rosenau,»Governance in a New Global Order«, in: David Held and Anthony McGrew(eds.), Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), pp. 81 – 83. 26 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance ipg 3/2003

Conceptual Blocks: Universal Science and Indigenous Knowledge Despite widespread appreciation that many environmental problems originate in local communities, each of which has special circumstances that require responses tailored to their needs, all too many officials and their expert advisers tend to assess the local variations under the rubric of science. The impulse to posit scientific findings as having universal relevance and application has thus become so ingrained in the expertise of many environmental specialists and economists that they tend to give little credence to the idea that there are occasions when indigenous knowledge is more accurate and relevant than the knowledge generated through scientific methods. After all, experts tend to assert, the local insights are idiosyncratic and may even prove false when subjected to the rigors of scientific testing. More than that, they invite their superiors and local counterparts to consider global warming, a widening ozone layer, species diminution, polluted air carried by high winds, and other worldwide environmental problems as indicative of the limits of indigenous knowledge, stressing that it overlooks the big picture and is therefore less compelling than universal verities uncovered through science. This is, of course, an oversimplified characterization. There are local experts whose knowledge is respected precisely because it stems from a familiarity with circumstances on the ground. What they offer, however, may not be scientific findings, but rather the insights of experience with local conditions. Still, for many experts the habit of positing scientific findings as more reliable than any other form of knowledge is a habitual perspective not easily abandoned. For many experts forsaking the habit is viewed as a capitulation to local pressures. Expertise, in short, can be a basis for perpetuating rather than ameliorating fragmegrative tensions. Conclusions It is the crazy-quilt nature of global governance, along with the failure to conceptually allow for it, that underlies my bleak assessment of the prospects for achieving worldwide sustainability. For the agreements reached in Johannesburg to be translated into effective authority that inches the world toward sustainability, a wide variety of numerous actors, both individuals and collectivities, have to be coordinated and their differences at least minimally subordinated to the interests of their great grandipg 3/2003 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance 27

children. More than that, given the boundary-spanning nature of environmental dynamics, all concerned have to recognize that people everywhere have an interest in your grandchildren as well as their own. We have not adjusted our conceptual equipment to facilitate the analysis of how authority gets exercised in a decentralized world. We are still deeply ensconced in a paradigm that locates authority exclusively in states and environmental challenges exclusively in their shared problems. The chances of such mobius webs being fashioned as effective rule systems seem very slim indeed. Too many actors can intrude ruptures in the webs. Whether they are corporate executives who sacrifice the well being of future generations for the sake of immediate profits, states that pursue economic goals at the expense of sustainable development, sovereigntyprotective officials who are oblivious to the great grandchildren of publics other than their own, ngo s that put their narrow interests ahead of collective ecological policies, the United States that withdraws from treaties, individuals whose corrupt practices undermine efforts to preserve endangered species, or bureaucrats and analysts mired in conceptual confusion who do not fully appreciate the numerous local foundations of global structures – to mention only a few of the ways in which the diverse actors on the global stage can divert movement toward a sustainable world – the coordination needed to implement the goals articulated in Johannesburg seems unlikely to surmount the disaggregated authority structures on which global governance rests. Stated less pessimistically, »reversing ecological decline in the early decades of the new century will require innovative partnerships between many different actors, including ngo s, businesses, governments, and international organizations«. 27 This is not to suggest that no progress toward meaningful sustainability lies ahead. Already there has been a proliferation of environmental regimes:»fourteen different global environmental agreements[were] concluded in the rather short period between 1985 and 1997« 28 (though, to be sure, the record of compliance with these treaties has been, at best, 27. French, Vanishing Borders , p. 164. 28. Walter Truett Anderson, All Connected Now: Life in the First Global Civilization (Boulder: Westview Press, 2001), p. 117. 28 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance ipg 3/2003

spotty). Equally relevant, there is no lack of good, knowledgeable leaders and activists who expend a lot of energy on behalf of decent goals. Nor is there a shortage of research centers and other organizations of civil society that can make constructive inputs into governance processes. Pockets of progress will thus doubtless occur as some countries, corporations, and ngo s sign on to constructive rule systems designed to advance sustainability as the skill and organizational revolutions lead to public pressures on recalcitrant collectivities. My own view is that, on balance, the dynamics that underlie the disaggregated character of global governance seem likely to thwart movement toward a viable and worldwide sustainability. It was neither an accident nor pervasive malevolence that prevented the earlier alarms from being heeded and the commitments made at the 1992 Rio meeting from being implemented. The pervasive inaction appears, rather, to be inherent in the structural constraints and conceptual blocks that currently prevail in the global system. More on issues of global governance in international politics and society ̈ Hanns W. Maull: Containing Entropy, Rebuilding the State: Challenges to International Order in the Age of Globalization(2/2002) ̈ Ian Martin Witte/Wolfgang H. Reinicke/Thorsten Benner: Beyond Multilateralism: Global Public Policy Networks(2/2000) ̈ Dirk Messner: Globalisierung, Global Governance und Entwicklungspolitik(1/1999) ipg 3/2003 Rosenau, Globalization and Governance 29

The Future of the State in an Era of Globalization BOB JESSOP L ively debates over the future of the nation-state resurfaced in the 1980s as scholars and politicians began to suggest that it was now too small to solve the world’s big problems and too big to solve its little ones. Among the most frequently cited problems were:(1) the rise of an uncontrolled and possibly uncontrollable global capitalism,(2) the emergence of a global risk society,(3) the challenge to national politics from the politics of identity and new social movements based on local and/or transnational issues; and, more recently,(4) the threat of new forms of terrorism and decentralized network warfare. But there is little agreement about what these problems mean for the state – especially as such challenges are politically constructed and contested. Prognoses include the rise of a single global Empire; a western conglomerate state centered on the United States; a series of supranational states modeled on the European Union; the rise of a fragmented neo-medieval state system; a shift from largely state-based government to network-based governance; the re-scaling of the powers of the national state upwards, downwards, or outwards; and minor incremental changes in secondary aspects of the nation-state that leave its primary features intact. This paper reviews some major changes in the postwar state in advanced capitalist societies and relates them to other changes, including the increasing integration of the world market. But it first offers six clarifications regarding what is really at stake in the debate over globalization and the future of the state. Six Clarifications First , all forms of state are based on the territorialization of political power. A formally sovereign national state exercising control over a large territorial area is only a relatively recent institutional expression of state power. It results from a specific, socially constructed division of the global political order into many territorially exclusive, mutually recognizing, 30 Jessop, The Future of the State ipg 3/2003

mutually legitimating, sovereign states. Other modes of organizing political power on a territorial basis existed before the rise of this Westphalian system(e.g., city-states, the medieval state system, and traditional empires); and other modes have co-existed with it and/or may be superseding it(e.g., modern imperial-colonial blocs, supranational alliances such as the European Union, or complex post-national polities associations with variable geometries). Thus, even if we accept that globalization challenges the national state as one mode of territorialization of political power, it does not follow that political power will cease to assume some territorial form or another. Indeed, rather than simply withering away or being entirely superseded by non-territorial forms of organizing political power(e.g., a series of global or international regimes addressed to specific functional problems), the evidence points to continuing attempts to redesign and/or rescale territorial statehood in response to current challenges. Second , we should distinguish between the national state and the nation-state. The territorial organization of power long preceded nationformation and, whereas territorial statehood is now almost universal, nation-statehood is not. The latter can also have different, potentially overlapping, sometimes antagonistic bases. These include ethnic identity, based on a socially constructed ethnonational community(e.g., Germany); a cultural nation based on a shared national culture that may well be defined and actively promoted by the state itself(e.g., France); and a civic nation based on patriotic commitment to the constitution and belief in the legitimacy of representative government(e.g., the usa ). These three forms can reinforce each other(e.g., Denmark), be combined in a hybrid multinational state(e.g., mainland Britain), or provoke conflicts over the proper basis of the nation-state(e.g., Canada, New Zealand). Pressures exist to grant significant autonomy to regionally-based national minorities(e.g., Spain) or institute»consociational« forms of government to share power between nations in a given state(e.g., Belgium, New Zealand). Initially, then, we should consider how these challenges affect the national state form rather than different forms of»nation-state«. Third , addressing the future of national and/or nation-states requires us to look beyond the state. The latter does not normally exist in majestic isolation overseeing its own society but is more or less embedded in a wider political system, other institutional orders, and civil society. Thus state transformation involves the redrawing of the multiple»lines of difference« between the state and its environment(s) as states(and the social ipg 3/2003 Jessop, The Future of the State 31

forces they represent) redefine their priorities, expand or reduce their activities, rescale them in the light of new challenges, modify the relation between different branches and apparatuses, seek greater autonomy or develop forms of power-sharing, and disembed or re-embed specific state institutions and practices within the social order. This holds for the international as well as national dimensions of state relations. Even the dominant, neo-liberal form of globalization continues to depend heavily on state institutions and practices at many different territorial scales. Fourth , and relatedly, even in the most liberal economies, states are actively involved in shaping economic life. There is no absolute institutional separation between the political(the domain of the state) and the economic(the domain of the market). The market economy is also embedded in an ensemble of extra-economic institutions and practices that are essential for its operation. The state plays a key role here not only in securing the general institutional framework for profit-oriented, marketmediated economic activities but also in shaping their specific forms, organization, and overall dynamic. This is reflected in growing academic and practical interest in the intimate relation between forms of state and political regime and»varieties of capitalism« and in the various complementarities and contradictions among these different local and national varieties within a changing global economy. Thus even the dominant, neo-liberal form of globalization continues to depend heavily on state institutions and practices at many different territorial scales and in many different functional areas and on the survival of other ways of organizing capital accumulation both within and beyond the dominant neo-liberal economies. Fifth , globalization is not a single causal mechanism with a universal, unitary logic but is multicentric, multiscalar, multitemporal, multiform, and multicausal. It is better seen as a hypercomplex, continuously evolving product of many processes. As such it does not generate a single, uniform set of pressures on all states but affects them in different ways. Indeed, it is not the State as such(sovereign or otherwise) that is pressured by globalization(or other challenges). For the many social forces and mechanisms that generate globalization can only exert pressure on – or, indeed, strengthen – particular forms of state with particular state ca32 Jessop, The Future of the State ipg 3/2003

pacities and liabilities. Moreover, in so doing, they modify the balance of forces within states and create space for, and prompt, struggles to reorganize state forms and capacities in order to meet these challenges. Sixth , and consequently, questions about globalization and the state should not be posed in zero-sum terms. At its worse, this involves an untenable contrast between a singular, emergent, borderless flow-based economy able to operate globally in real time and a plurality of formally equivalent traditional national territorial states qua»power containers« that operate within defined territorial frontiers and according to heavily time-consuming political routines. This contrast errs in two ways. On the one hand, it misrepresents the actual complexities of globalization, ignores the extent to which it depends on changing place-based competitive advantages, neglects the general dependence of economic activities on extra-economic supports that are place- and time-bound, and, of course, overstates the extent of the global economy, even in regard to financial capital, let alone industrial and commercial capital. It also ignores the significant degree to which the unfolding economic logic (and illogic) of globalization constrains individual firms, branches, and clusters as well as the operations of the political system. On the other hand, despite the formal equivalence among sovereign states in the modern state system, as signified, for example, by membership of the United Nations, not all states are equally capable of exercising power internally and/or internationally. They face different problems at home and abroad; have different histories; have different capacities to address these problems and reorganize themselves in response in international as well as domestic matters. Moreover, just as the economy has important territorial dimensions(reflected in concepts such as industrial districts, agglomeration economies, global cities, and regional or national capitalisms), so states also operate as power connectors within various global systems as well as power containers . And, while not even the usa has an effective global reach and the ability to compress its routines to match those of hypermobile capital, many states have proved capable of reorganizing their routines to modify the impact of economic processes. Given these arguments, we should focus on the changing organization of politics and economics and their respective institutional embodiments and see frontiers and borders as actively reproduced and contingent rather than as pregiven and fixed. I will illustrate this approach by exploring: ̈ changes in the form of postwar state typical of postwar western capitalist economies; ipg 3/2003 Jessop, The Future of the State 33

̈ broad changes in six key dimensions of the state; and ̈ the temporal pressures currently facing the state and its responses thereto. The Keynesian National Welfare State This essay cannot consider recent changes in all forms of state in the interstate system. Instead it focuses on changes in the Keynesian national welfare state(or knws ). This is the form of state that became dominant in North Western Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand during the 1950s to 1970s and that was closely linked with the postwar Fordist growth dynamic based on mass production and mass consumption. Obviously, there are important differences among the states in these countries but there are enough similarities to justify describing them in terms of an ideal-typical(or stylized) state form. Each term in this fourdimensional ideal type refers to a major aspect of state involvement in securing continued capitalist expansion and, in this sense, it interprets the state from a broadly economic perspective. This is not the only way to examine changes in the state; adopting alternative entrypoints would highlight other aspects of state transformation or, indeed, reveal some continuities in state forms. But my approach does provide a benchmark for assessing some key recent changes. First, in promoting the conditions for profitable economic growth, the knws was distinctively Keynesian insofar as it aimed to secure full employment in a relatively closed national economy and did so mainly through demand-side management and nationwide infrastructural provision. Second, in contributing to the day-to-day, lifetime, and intergenerational reproduction of the population, knws social policy had a distinctive welfare orientation insofar as it(a) instituted economic and social rights for all citizens so that they could share in growing prosperity(and contribute to high levels of demand) even if they were not employed in the high-wage, high-growth Fordist economic sectors; and(b) promoted forms of collective consumption favorable to the Fordist growth dynamic. Third, the knws was national insofar as these economic and social policies were pursued within the historically distinctive matrix of a national economy, a national state, and a society seen as comprising national citizens. Within this nationally-organized matrix it was the national territorial state that was mainly held responsible for developing and guiding 34 Jessop, The Future of the State ipg 3/2003

Keynesian welfare policies. Local and regional states acted mainly as relays for policies framed at the national level; and the leading international regimes established after World War II were mainly intended to restore stability to national economies and national states. And, fourth, the knws was statist insofar as state institutions(on different levels) were the chief supplement and corrective to market forces in a»mixed economy« concerned with economic growth and social integration. Whereas denationalization concerns the territorial dispersion of the national state’s activities, destatization redraws the»public-private« divide and modifies the relationship between organizations and tasks across this divide on whatever territorial scale(s). There was never a pure knws . It assumed different national forms within the broader international framework of Atlantic Fordism. This is reflected in distinctions between, for example, Germany’s»flexi-Fordism«, France’s statist Fordism, and Sweden’s social democratic Fordism. Nor has there been a generic crisis that affects all national cases in the same way. Nonetheless, they have all faced similar pressures. The first signs of crisis in Fordist growth emerged in the mid-1970s and worsened in the 1980s. In addition, the structured coherence of a nationally-scaled economy-state-society was weakened by changes associated with globalization, internationalization, the rise of multi-tiered global city networks, the formation of triad economies(such as European Economic Space), and the re-emergence of regional and local economies. The unity of nation-states(as opposed to national states) has also been weakened by the(admittedly uneven) growth of multiethnic and multicultural societies and of divided political loyalties(with the resurgence of regionalism and nationalism as well as the rise of European identities, diasporic networks, cosmopolitan patriotism, etc.). Because many of these changes are not directly related to globalization, we should not focus one-sidedly on the latter as the decisive causal mechanism in recent political transformation. ipg 3/2003 Jessop, The Future of the State 35

Six Trends in the Restructuring of the Keynesian National Welfare State Taking the postwar knws as our benchmark, the current reorganization of the state and its capacities can be summarized in terms of six analytically distinct but empirically interrelated trends. Each trend is also linked to a countertrend that both qualifies and transforms its significance for the state’s form and functions. These countertrends can be viewed initially as specific reactions to the new trends rather than as survivals of earlier patterns. This is why they are presented as countertrends rather than as additional trends. Denationalization of Statehood This involves the transfer of powers previously located at the national territorial level upwards to supra-regional or international bodies, downwards to regional or local states, or outwards to relatively autonomous cross-national alliances among local, metropolitan or regional states with potentially complementary interests. In addition, new state powers have been allocated to scales other than the national. This re-allocation of specific state powers weakens national states qua mutually exclusive, formally sovereign, spatially segmented instantiations of the modern interstate system. Given the primacy of the national scale in the knws , this trend is sometimes termed the»hollowing out« of the national state. But this is misleading because it focuses on the transfer of specific tasks, ignores the assumption of new tasks by the national state, and, above all, overlooks the real extent to which this re-arrangement of state functions may be undertaken by state managers to enhance their operational autonomies and strategic capacities. De- and Re-Statization This involves redrawing the boundaries between state and non-state apparatuses and activities within the political system. Whereas denationalization concerns the territorial dispersion of the national state’s activities, destatization redraws the»public-private« divide and modifies the relationship between organizations and tasks across this divide on whatever territorial scale(s) the state in question acts. In other words, some of the particular activities(technical, economic, fisco-financial, juridico36 Jessop, The Future of the State ipg 3/2003

political, ideological, etc.) performed by states(on any scale) have been transferred entirely to, or shared with, parastatal, non-governmental, commercial, or not-for-profit actors, institutional arrangements or regimes. This is often described as a shift from govern ment to govern ance but this slogan is misleading insofar as it depicts the shift as unidirectional. For there is also reverse traffic as states on different scales undertake new tasks that were previously undertaken, if at all, by the market or civil society. Overall, this trend involves the increased importance of quite varied forms(and levels) of public-private partnerships in managing economic and social relations. The state is often only first among equals in these relations. This blurs the division between public and private, expands and reinforces the principle of subsidiarity, strengthens the informal sector as well as private enterprise(especially in delivering welfare and collective consumption), and reinforces mechanisms such as»regulated self-regulation« and»private interest government«. It is also linked to the state’s growing involvement in decentered societal guidance strategies based on growing recognition of functional interdependencies, the division of knowledge, and the need for mutual learning, reflexivity and negotiated coordination. This need not entail a loss in the overall power of government, however, because resort to governance could enhance the state’s capacity to project its influence and secure its objectives by mobilizing knowledge and power resources from influential non-governmental partners or stakeholders. The Retreat of the State This involves the rise of modes of exercising political power that are formally independent of state borders, even if re-scaled. This process weakens territorial»power containers« on any and all scales relative to nonterritorial forms of political power. As such it is often subsumed under the shift from govern ment to govern ance but it is distinctive because it dissociates the exercise of political power from imagined political communities whose interests are tied to territorialized state power. Destatization involves public-private partnerships in which the state devolves responsibilities to the private sphere but attempts to remain primus inter pares. In contrast, this trend involves the self-organization of functional forms of power that by-pass or circumvent state power – perhaps at the behest of state managers. The increasing importance of international regimes for the relative stabilization of a globalizing economy ipg 3/2003 Jessop, The Future of the State 37

and the rise of networks in an extra-territorial cyberspace that is allegedly beyond state control are two contrasting examples of this third trend. Re-articulating the Economic and Extra-Economic The division of labor between the political and economic systems is being redefined to take account of changed understandings of the economy and the conditions that make for sound economic performance. The economy is no longer interpreted in narrow terms but now includes many additional factors, deemed»non-economic« under the knws regime, that affect economic competitiveness. This is reflected in ideas such as»structural competitiveness«(the oecd ),»systemic competitiveness«, 1 or the »competitive advantage of nations«. 2 It requires attention to a growing range of social practices, institutions, functional systems, and domains of civil society that affect competitiveness. This has two interesting and paradoxical effects on states and politics. First, whilst it expands the potential scope of state intervention for economic purposes, the resulting complexity renders the typical postwar forms of top-down intervention less effective – requiring that the state retreat from some areas of intervention and redesign its institutional forms and functions in order to intervene more effectively in other areas. And, second, whilst it increases the range of stakeholders whose cooperation is required for successful state intervention, it also increases pressures within the state to create new subjects to act as its partners. Thus states are now trying to transform the identities, interests, capacities, rights, and responsibilities of economic and social forces so that they become more flexible, capable, and reliable agents of the state’s new economic strategies – whether in partnership with the state and/or each other or as autonomous entrepreneurial subjects in the new knowledge-based economy. Re-Ordering Political Hierarchies Political hierarchies are also being re-ordered. The nested hierarchy of state power within territorially exclusive sovereign states and formal equality among such states was never fully realized in the modern interstate system; but it did provide the institutional framework within which 1. Messner, D.(1996) Die Netzwerkgesellschaft , Köln: Weltforum Verlag. 2. Porter, M.(1990) The Competitive Advantage of Nations , Basingstoke: Macmillan. 38 Jessop, The Future of the State ipg 3/2003

forces struggled to control state power and/or modify the balance of international forces. Many of the above changes weaken the coherence of this nested hierarchy and produce increasing unstructured complexity as different scales of economic and political organization proliferate and different strategies are pursued to link them. This is reflected in the internationalization of policy regimes. This means that the international context of domestic state action(whether national, regional or local) has expanded to include a widening range of extraterritorial or transnational factors and processes; that the international context has become more significant strategically for domestic policy; and that key players in policy regimes have expanded to include foreign agents and institutions as sources of policy ideas, policy design and implementation. This trend affects local and regional states below the national level as well as supranational state formations and international regimes. It is also evident in the development of the interregional and cross-border linkages connecting local and regional authorities and governance regimes in different national formations. Re-Imagining Political Communities The political communities(or publics) around which forces in the political system orient their actions are being re-imagined in various ways. Among them are new»imagined nations« seeking autonomy within and/ or control of a defined territory below, above, or transversal to existing national states; a global civil society based on cosmopolitan patriotism, the primacy of human rights over national citizenship, or some other global identity; new»communities of fate« defined by shared risks regardless of specific territorial location and, perhaps, global in character(e.g., global warming); and new communities of interest defined by shared identities, interests, and values regardless of specific territorial location(e.g., cybercommunities). Such new territorial or extra-territorial conceptions of political community are linked to struggles to redefine the nature and purposes of the state, find alternatives to territorialized forms of political power, and redefine the imagined general interest which political power, whether territorial or not, should serve. ipg 3/2003 Jessop, The Future of the State 39

Some Countertrends Countering the denationalization of statehood and the re-ordering of political hierarchies are the continuing attempts of national states to control the relation between different spatial scales and the transfer of powers between them. It might seem that little has changed here but the denationalization of statehood has introduced two major discontinuities. First, it enhances the need for supranational coordination and opens the space for subnational resurgence. And, second, it radically extends the scope for national states to mediate between an increasing number of significant scales of action. Thus, while the national state may have lost some formal sovereignty through the rescaling of state powers, it seeks to play a central role in interscalar articulation. This is especially clear in the complex politics of the European Union as the most advanced form of a new supranational political system in which national states regularly engage in meta-constitutional deliberation about the appropriate competencies and the appropriate balance of powers between different apparatuses and levels of government and governance in relation to their substantive economic, political, and socio-cultural objectives. In addition, national states have an important role in producing and regulating extra-territorial spaces, such as offshore financial centers, export-processing zones, the »flagging out« of merchant shipping, and tax havens. They are also involved in developing the new lex mercatoria governing international economic relations in the effort to benefit their own economic spaces. The same holds for the governance of cyberspace and its new lex cybertoria. Nor does the dual shift from government to governance included in the second and third trends noted above make the state redundant. It retains an important role precisely because of these trends. It is not only an important actor in many individual governance mechanisms but also attempts to manage these mechanisms in the light of the overall balance of forces and demands of social cohesion. These attempts can be described in terms of a shift from government to meta-governance. Even as states cede their claim to formal juridical sovereignty in the face of growing complexity and interdependence among different functional systems and seek to enhance their political capacities by participating in public-private partnerships and/or delegating public responsibilities to private institutions and actors, they are also becoming more involved in organizing and steering the self-organization of partnerships, networks and governance regimes. This shift from governance to metagovernance should not be 40 Jessop, The Future of the State ipg 3/2003

confused with the survival of state sovereignty as the highest instance of government nor with the emergence of a»megapartnership« that subsumes all other partnerships. Instead, it involves a shift from the topdown political organization typical of sovereign states to an emphasis on steering multiple agencies, institutions and systems that are operationally autonomous from one another and yet coupled through reciprocal interdependence. Thus states are increasingly involved in facilitating collective learning about functional linkages and material interdependencies among different sites and spheres of action. And politicians are developing the shared visions that can link complementary forms of governance and maximize their effectiveness. States undertake such tasks not only to promote particular state functions but also to ensure political stability and social cohesion. Even as states cede their claim to formal juridical sovereignty in the face of growing complexity and interdependence among different functional systems, they are also becoming more involved in organizing and steering the self-organization of partnerships, networks and governance regimes. The expanded definition of the economic at the expense of the extraeconomic clearly involves a key role for states(on whatever scale) in redefining their relations, steering the(re-)commodification of social relations, and dealing with the repercussions of the increasing dominance of economic logic in the wider society. Moreover, whereas promoting the micro-social conditions for economic competitiveness in these changing circumstances may well be better handled at other levels than the national, problems of territorial integration, social cohesion, and social exclusion are currently still best handled through large national states. Large and rich states still have significant fisco-financial powers and redistributive capacities for these purposes – whether they choose to exercise these powers is another matter. Smaller national states require far greater cohesion to deal with the pressures resulting from globalization and, without this, they have strong interests to form strategic alliances with other states and/or enter supranational blocs. The emergence of new imagined political communities is too complex to discuss here because it is shaped by a wide range of processes from technological change and economic globalization to crises of class and naipg 3/2003 Jessop, The Future of the State 41

tional identity and the rise of new social movements. Nonetheless it has led states to introduce policies to counteract the newly perceived problem of social exclusion and to seek new bases of legitimation to counteract threats posed by growing political disenchantment with the prevailing forms of state. These policies are pursued across different scales and involve multiple agencies but the national state generally retains the leading metagovernance role in these areas. Time and Politics A key dimension of state capacities is their temporal sovereignty, i.e., their ability to make decisions according to their own political routines rather than the temporal rhythms of other systems. Much of the pressure that state managers feel in the current global era has more to do with the compression of time than the spatial extension of economic(or other) activities. This affects politics as the»art of the possible«. States increasingly face temporal pressures in policy-making and implementation due to the acceleration of time and the shortening of time horizons in other social spheres. In particular, as economic routines of superfast and/or hypermobile capital accelerate, the time available to states to determine and co-ordinate political responses to economic events shrinks. This puts pressure on states to adapt by withdrawing from areas where they are too slow to make a difference(this pressure is independent of calls from certain forces to withdraw from such areas), speeding up their routines through fast policy and fast tracking, or seeking to slow down economic movements. A laissez-faire retreat could reinforce the impact of deregulated financial markets, however, especially when market forces provoke economic crises and states cannot respond quickly. The acceleration of politics is reflected in the shortening of policy development cycles, fast-tracking decisions, rapid program rollout, continuing policy experimentation, an institutional and policy Darwinism in which only the quick and effective survive, and a relentless revision of guidelines and benchmarks. This acceleration privileges those who can operate within compressed time scales, narrows the range of participants in policy-making, and limits the scope and time for deliberation, consultation, and negotiation. This can significantly affect the choice of policies, the initial targets of policy, the sites where policy is implemented, and the criteria for success. Fast policy privileges the executive over the legislature and the judiciary, finance over 42 Jessop, The Future of the State ipg 3/2003

industrial capital, consumption over long-term investment. It is likely to increase the chances of making decisions on the basis of unreliable information, insufficient consultation, lack of participation, etc. It also tends to destroy institutional memory and to discourage long-term planning. Hence the present is extended at the expense of both past and future; and politics is lived in the mediatized world of spin and presentation, the quick fix, rapid churning of policies, and plebiscitarian forms of democracy. Rather than compressing absolute political time, states could create relative political time by slowing the circuits of capital. The most celebrated, if not yet implemented, example of this strategy is the Tobin tax, which would decelerate the flow of superfast and hypermobile financial capital and limit its distorting impact on the real economy. Other examples include a tax on fossil fuels to slow the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and global warming, inclusion of recycling and disposal costs in the pricing of goods, and resort to prudential principles in the introduction of new technologies. For these could tilt the balance away from globalization in favor of regional and local economies, slow the rate of environmental destruction, and allow proper evaluation of the likely consequences of technological innovation. This could be supplemented by a fourth political time-management option. This is to establish the institutional framework for guided self-regulation on various scales based on the principle of subsidiarity as well as for continuous monitoring of how well such self-regulation is operating in the light of agreed criteria. This strategy of reflexive metagovernance would enable the state to retain the capacity to co-ordinate activities across different time zones and temporalities without the risk of overload. Conclusions: Post-national Governance and the Resilience of the National State I conclude this review of recent changes in the state with two main sets of arguments. First, in most advanced capitalist economies, the Keynesian national welfare state is being tendentially replaced by a Schumpeterian post-national workfare regime( spwr ). The latter can be presented along the same ideal-typical lines as the knws . Thus, regarding its economic functions, the new state form is Schumpeterian insofar as it tries to promote permanent innovation and flexibility in relatively open econoipg 3/2003 Jessop, The Future of the State 43

mies by intervening on the supply-side and to strengthen their structural and/or systemic competitiveness. This invokes Schumpeter, the theorist of innovation, entrepreneurship, and competition, rather than Keynes, the theorist of money, employment, and national demand, as its emblematic economist. Likewise, as a workfare regime, the spwr subordinates social policy to the demands of labor market flexibility and employability and to the demands of economic competition. This includes putting downward pressure on the social wage qua cost of international production but, given the economic and political limits to welfare cuts, it also involves the reorientation of the inherited welfare state to economic interests. In more neo-liberal economies this leads to the partial dismantling of the welfare state and increasing polarization and social exclusion; but it is consistent with a more incremental redesign, reorientation, and rescaling of welfare in other types of economic regimes. In relation to its economic and social functions, attempts are also made to create appropriate subjects to serve as partners in the innovative, knowledge-driven, entrepreneurial, flexible economy and its accompanying self-reliant, autonomous, empowered workfare regime. Regarding the scale on which these functions are performed, the spwr is» post-national « insofar as the national territory has become less important as an economic, political, and cultural»power container«. This is associated with a transfer of economic and social policy-making functions upward, downward, and sideways. On a global level, this can be seen in the growing involvement of a growing number of international agencies (such as the imf , World Bank, oecd , and ilo ) and intergovernmental forums(such as the g 8) in the shaping of current social as well as economic policy agendas. Other scales of political organization are also increasingly active in this redesign – including the European Union as an emerging post-national polity, the emerging global hierarchy of networked cities, and a growing number of cross-border regions. Finally, the spwr relies increasingly on forms of governance rather than sovereign state capacities to compensate for market failures and inadequacies. There is an increased role for non-state mechanisms in shaping and delivering state-sponsored economic and social policies. One aspect of this is the increased importance of private-public networks to state activities on all levels from the local to the supranational. The shift from govern men t towards governance means that traditional forms of intervention are less important now in economic and social policy. This does not mean that law and money have disappeared, of course; instead, active economic and social steering 44 Jessop, The Future of the State ipg 3/2003

now tends to run more through soft regulation and reflexive law, additionality and private-public partnerships, organizational intelligence and information-sharing, etc. A key role is also played by»meta-governance«, i.e., the organization of the institutional framework and rules for individual modes of governance and the»calibration«(or re-balancing) of different modes of governance. The early stages of Europolity construction were shaped by a tension between strategies to develop a supranational European state and strategies to confine it to a limited, goal-oriented, and revocable mechanism of intergovernmental collaboration. We are now witnessing the emergence of the European Union as a complex, self-organizing system of multi-level meta-governance. My second conclusion relates primarily to the European Union as the currently most advanced form of post-national political regime that is committed to a broad range of economic and social tasks within a more or less integrated political territory. On the one hand, the eu has key roles in organizing the transition to a Schumpeterian post-national workfare regime in Europe, in promoting the competitiveness of European economic space in a globalizing knowledge-based economy, and in restructuring and defending the European social model in the face of pressures emanating from more evangelistic neo-liberal economies(most notably the United States). Moreover, corresponding to the increasingly post-national nature of contemporary political economy, the eu also acts both as a relay and a filter for the agenda-shaping efforts of international agencies (such as the wto and oecd ) at the same time as it attempts to shape the emerging global economic, political, and social agenda and to promote a distinctive European agenda in regions and countries beyond its borders. On the other hand, corresponding to these changing economic and political functions, their expanding territorial scope, and their increasing functional interdependence, the eu is being reorganized politically as part of the more general transformation of statehood and politics on a global scale. The early stages of Europolity construction were shaped by a tension between strategies to develop a supranational European state and strategies to confine it to a limited, goal-oriented, and revocable mechanism of intergovernmental collaboration. We are now witnessing the emergence of the European Union as a complex, self-organizing sysipg 3/2003 Jessop, The Future of the State 45

tem of multi-level meta-governance. This involves a variety of state and non-state political actors and a variety of non-political actors in a continuing process of meta-constitutional design and meta-governance practices. This process is concerned to produce appropriate forms of government and governance that have variable territorial and functional geometries but are also compatible with the pursuit of longer term economic and political projects and with some overall coherence and cohesion of the emerging European regime. This involves complex processes of interscalar management and the calibration of activities on different scales with careful attention to what tasks are allocated to which scales and the balance among different modes of governance. This is a distinctive feature of the European Union and excludes any easy generalization from the eu case to the other two triads – or vice versa. It is itself a sign that one should not push globalization too far as a general explanatory framework of recent changes. Finally, while globalization and the other challenges mentioned in the introduction to this essay have undermined the effectiveness of the Keynesian national welfare state, a restructured national state remains central to the effective management of the emerging spatio-temporal matrices of capitalism and the emerging forms of post- or transnational citizenship. For national states have become even more important arbiters of the movement of state powers upward, downward, and lateral; they have become even more important meta-governors of the increasingly complex multicentric, multiscalar, multitemporal, and multiform world of governance; and they are actively involved in shaping the forms of international policy regimes. This is especially clear even in the most advanced case of state transformation, namely, the emergence of the Europolity as a complex multi-level meta-governance regime. National states are also responding more or less effectively to the crisis in traditional forms and bases of national citizenship. Their activities in these respects have far less to do with globalization in the strongest sense of this polyvalent, promiscuous, and controversial word(i.e., the emergence of a borderless planetary economy – an entity widely and rightly regarded as mythical) than they do with the more general spatio-temporal restructuring of contemporary capitalism. And in this regard it is just as important to pay attention to the temporal dimensions of these transformations as it is to consider their spatial aspects. For the effectiveness of the exercise of state powers depends on its command of time as well as space. The changes in the state reviewed above reflect the complex interrelations between both aspects. 46 Jessop, The Future of the State ipg 3/2003

The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy* FRANK DECKER T here is currently a wave of interest in populism and populist politics. This is the result in particular of the spread of a new type of political party which first emerged in the 1980s and was soon characterized by the term»right-wing populism«. Apart from a few exceptions, there are right-wing populist parties today in all Western democracies. Many have now established themselves in the party system of their country and are winning double-digit percentages of the vote in elections. In some countries, the right-wing populists have even managed to establish themselves in national government. After some delay, political scientists began to study right-wing populist phenomena intensively in the 1990s. There are now numerous comparative international studies which analyze the emergence of the new parties and attempt to explain the diverging results in the various countries(for example, Betz 1994; Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Betz and Immerfall 1998; Decker 2000). There is general agreement that this is a »multi-factorial« phenomenon, which cannot be traced to any single cause. Observers at first expected that right-wing populism would be only a short-lived phenomenon, and that sooner or later the parties would disappear. This optimism has long faded, and it is now acknowledged that the right-wing populist parties have established a solid base and must be expected to continue to exist in the future. However, there is still no consensus about what consequences this will have, or about how populism should be assessed from the point of view of democratic»health«. Whereas some see it as embodying a basic democratic impulse with its criticism of the distortions of the political system, others point to the dangers that populist phenomena can pose directly or indirectly for the development of democracy. The problem is that at this general level both * The original German version of this article was published in Berliner Republik 3/ 2003 under the title»Der gute und der schlechte Populismus«. ipg 3/2003 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy 47

sides are right. From a democratic point of view, the ambivalence is already apparent in the term»populism«. Its root is the Latin word»populus«(»the people«), which exhibits a clear link with the democratic idea. Where there is democracy, in other words, there is always populism (Canovan 1999). On the other hand, the suffix»ism« signals an ideological potentiation, in contrast to the moderate character of today’s democracies. By exaggerating the democratic element and mobilizing it against the constraints introduced into democratic systems by constitutional principles, populism moves at least potentially into the proximity of opponents of the system. Promoting or Threatening Democracy? Which of the two interpretations applies to right-wing populism? In order to be able to answer this question it is necessary to distinguish between words and deeds in populist politics. Though something may in itself seem undemocratic – the ideological contents of right-wing populism, or its agitational forms – it can help to promote or stabilize democracy as a consequence of the confrontation with other agents and ideas. The emergence of populist parties and movements is not necessarily a sign of democratic instability. Even in the case of groupings with clearly hostile intentions it could promote the system’s integrational capability, if the reasons for their protests are taken up and in this way a new political balance is established. Obviously there are populist moments in today’s society,»when the system is threatening to rigidify, when the establishment lacks imagination, when there is a need for renewal, times in which such movements and energies have their positive historical function«(Puhle 1986, 32). The new right-wing populism is no exception. By giving a voice to protest, it ensures that a matter is resolved within the system, and discontent does not feed into darker channels of violence and sectarianism. 1 Second, it forces the established political 1. Comparative investigations in Europe indicate that the two forms of protest are to some extent interchangeable: the number of violent crimes with links to right-wing extremism are particularly high in countries in which the new right-wing parties have remained weak(such as Germany), whereas in other cases the willingness to use violence has obviously been restrained by the success of such parties(for example, in France and Denmark). Cf. Koopmans 1995. 48 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy ipg 3/2003

forces to address problems that had obviously been neglected, and which drove the voters to the»newcomers« in the first place. Self-confident democracies therefore have no need to fear populism(Probst 2001). However, two objections can be raised against this optimistic view. In the first place, there seems to be an underlying assumption that, once they have fulfilled their function, the populist movements will simply disappear, sooner or later. In the case of the new right-wing parties this has obviously not been the case. On the contrary: the populists have proved to be stable and are even attracting more voters in some cases. For the moderate right wing this means that in future it will have to take these bothersome competitors into account when it comes to forming coalitions, if it does not wish permanently to lose its ability to achieve majorities over left-wing parties(Decker 2002). Right-wing populists have become»acceptable« and have even participated in government in a number of countries(Austria, Portugal, Netherlands) or have even come to power(Italy). 2 Political action becomes more responsive and at the same time more irresponsible. Where the parties lost support it was often the result of internal quarrels which ruined the public image of the right-wing populists(examples are the National Front of Le Pen in France, which had to cope in 1999 with the defection of the Mégret wing, or the Danish Progress Party, which in the 1980s had to fight off the power demands of its founder Mogens Glistrup). Alternatively, the parties fell victim to the government responsibility they had taken upon themselves. An anti-establishment attitude is a key element of populism, and a massive loss of credibility threatens if the party itself becomes part of the establishment. This fate has been shared recently by the Freedom Party of Austria, the List Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands and – on a smaller scale – the Schill Party in the Land of Hamburg in Germany. In Italy it seems that the three-way coalition of Forza Italia, the Northern League and the National Alliance 2. The right-wing populist parties in Norway and Denmark, which picked up fifteen and twelve per cent respectively in the last elections, are currently lending their support to a centre-right minority government, and are therefore indirectly exercising power. ipg 3/2003 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy 49

has managed the tricky transition from anti-institutionalism to responsible government. Admittedly, this exception can be understood only by taking into consideration the complete turmoil of the Italian political system in the 1990s. However, apart from the cases mentioned, the rightwing populists remain the classic»pretenders«, and, given the concrete problems facing governments today, they should have adequate opportunity to maintain this stance in future. For other political parties this may be a depressing thought, because the populists mostly propose»solutions« barely worthy of the name(Sturm 2000). However, if the challengers manage to overcome their organizational problems and to repress ideological contradictions, it would be extremely surprising if they could be made to disappear simply through the actions of their political opponents. The second objection relates to the longer-term institutional implications of right-wing populism, which are – to put it mildly – problematic because they could contribute to the hollowing out of the democratic substance of the constitutional state. The newly established parties are trendsetters in a development which could be termed the»plebiscitary transformation« of the political process. Classic intermediary institutions such as parliaments and political parties lose importance and are replaced or overshadowed by direct links between the government and the electorate. The new populist parties are a symptom of this development, however, not the cause. To be sure, they have pushed this change more energetically than the established parties. It is characteristic, for example, that some of their representatives exhibit clear parallels with the American parties in their approaches to electioneering, which embody the plebiscitary model in its purest form(for example, Forza Italia, the Freedom Party). In addition, right-wing populists almost all favor the increased use of methods of direct participation in the democratic process in order to limit the power of representative institutions. These efforts should not, however, obscure the underlying causes of the transformation, which lie in the system and are related to the functioning of democracy itself. Constitutional Versus Populist Democracy As a real political system existing in large parts of the world, democracy represents a synthesis of two normative principles: the sovereignty of the people(which could also be viewed as the democratic principle in the nar50 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy ipg 3/2003

row sense), and the constitutional basis of the state. The two exist in an uneasy but complementary relationship. While the democratic principle postulates a form of government in which power is always exercised in the name of the people, or at least a majority of the people, the constitutional state is a response to the paradox that such a democracy could use democratic means to abolish itself(if the people so decided). The structures of the constitutional state therefore aim at strengthening democracy by limiting the scope of its sovereignty. They ensure that the rulers chosen by the people are controlled in the way they exercise power and they define an area of protected rights which cannot be impinged upon by any democratic majority – however large it may be. This is institutionally guaranteed by various checks and balances in respect of the exercise of power, and the principle of the constitutional state finds its most visible expression in the processes of judicial review. The populist-plebiscitary view of democracy favors the decision rather than patient negotiations. Preference is given to expression of the view of the majority rather than the existing variety of interests, so it is based on exclusion and has a polarizing effect. The constitution imposes external limitations on the scope of democratic power, but the principle of the sovereignty of the people is also subject to immanent barriers. Even if only for reasons of size, democratic systems can tackle the problem of government only by means of representation. Rule by the people therefore does not mean that the people carry out government business themselves, but that they delegate specific people or groups of people to exercise the powers of government in their name and in their interests. The consequence of this is that the rule of the many is replaced by the rule of the few. Viewed realistically, it is not possible to imagine a democracy without chosen leadership personnel who carry out the leadership functions and enjoy the appropriate privileges of power. The question is, whether that is how things should be.»Are elites and ruling minorities a necessary(or even unnecessary) evil, or are they an essential and useful factor?«(Sartori 1992, 173). In the normative democracy debate there is still no consensus on this point. The fundamental controversy between the constitutional and»populist« views of democracy is thus also reflected in the interpretation of the principle of the sovereignty of the people(Mény and Surel 2002; ipg 3/2003 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy 51

Taggart 2002). Some would prefer to see government power in the hands of a suitably qualified leadership group which exercised its responsibility for the people without responding to every changing mood of the general public; others argue that the people should be given the greatest possible influence on politics, because only then would it be possible to achieve the greatest possible degree of conformity between rulers and ruled. The representative view of democracy coincides with the constitutional one in the emphasis it places on the deliberative character of the political decision-making process; it therefore tends to be inclusive, aiming to take account of the widest possible range of interests. The populist-plebiscitary view of democracy favors the decision rather than patient negotiations. Preference is given to expression of the view of the majority rather than the existing variety of interests, so it is based on exclusion and has a polarizing effect. This explains the need for homogeneous identity constructions, and the efforts to present the people as a supposed unity, not only internally, against the ruling elites, but also externally, to distinguish it from other peoples and nations. It shows that populism is essentially an anti-pluralist(or anti-liberal) ideology(Rosenberger 2001, 106 f.). The plebiscitary transformation of the political process, which has already been mentioned, must be seen against the background of a development which in the past has increasingly shifted the weight from the populist to the constitutional-representative view of democracy. The main reason for this is the growing complexity of the business of government. On the one hand, the problems which have to be solved are more complicated and more urgent, although the capacity of the state to handle them has not grown correspondingly. On the other hand, in the course of social differentiation there are growing numbers of interested parties wishing to have a voice in decision-making processes. In order to be able to cope organizationally with this growing complexity, more and more government business is being transferred to specialized»policy networks«, in which the experts and representatives of special interests largely have the field to themselves. At the same time, social relationships are increasingly becoming the subject of legislation, which strengthens the influence of bureaucracy and the legal system and thus also contributes to a tendency to devalue the democratically based organs of government(Papadopoulos 2002). The implications of these developments for democracy are worrying, because to the extent that the decision-making processes on complicated 52 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy ipg 3/2003

matters are more inclusive, consensual and output-oriented, they become increasingly difficult for the general public to understand. Margaret Canovan(2002, 25 ff.) refers here to a»democratic paradox«, to which populism represents a reaction. 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(Korte and Hirscher 2000). Politics is becoming more introverted and at the same time more extroverted. The division of the two spheres raises difficult questions for the legitimization of the democratic system. One could accept that, as a result of »media democracy«, the public presentation of politics is increasingly subjected to its own laws and has less and less to do with the contents of decisions. But the problems begin when the logic of presentation gains the upper hand, and begins to affect the substance of the decisions being made. When, as we see in election campaigns, with increasing frequency, politicians not only allow themselves to be influenced by public moods, but also actively generate and influence these moods themselves, then the plebiscitary speech threatens to be degraded to populist genuflection or the politics of symbols. Political action becomes more responsive and at the same time more irresponsible. 3 Populism therefore places the legitimization of democracy under pressure from the output-side, too. 3. An amazing example is provided by Federal Chancellor Schröder’s exploitation of the Iraq crisis in the last Bundestag election campaign, when the head of government, showing a reliable populist instinct(and with hindsight amazing audacity) succeeded in linking concerns about a war in the Middle East with anti-American resentment and bringing home that argument to middle-class voters. It is open to debate whether the fact that he ignored raison d’état and destroyed much of the trust that his government had previously built up between Germany and its European and Atlantic partners is an appropriate price to pay for staying in power. What is certain, however, is that using the war in its election campaign has seriously and morally tainted the spd /Green Party coalition’s second term in office, which is bound to have repercussions in terms both of foreign and domestic policy. This will definitely influence history’s judgement of Gerhard Schröder. ipg 3/2003 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy 53

The Changing Face of Party Competition Nowhere is the change in democratic politics clearer than in the structure and function of party competition. As intermediary institutions par excellence, political parties form the link between the constitutional and plebiscitary components of democracy. On the one hand, these are de facto organs of state, which recruit almost all the political personnel and occupy all key positions of the system of government. On the other hand, as social groups and organs for the formulation of opinion, parties are the natural addressees of electoral policy. According to Peter Mair(2002), it was the combination of social segmentation and ideological polarization which in the past ensured the democratic functionality of party competition and thus also formed a safeguard against populism. The European mass integration parties were representative in that they formed a clearly outlined political identity. They stood for the interests and value systems of certain sections of the population and were firmly rooted in their social milieu. For party competition, this had contradictory consequences. On the one hand, even though competing, the parties were safe in the knowledge that they could each rely on their own loyal supporters and thus on a reliable share of the vote. On the other hand, the ideological-programmatic divide between the parties made sure that party competition still played a key steering role. The allocation of political responsibility, without which a democratic election would not be possible, was ensured because it did indeed make a difference which party was in government. As the major ideological differences have faded and identification with a party has gradually lost its social foundations, the nature of party competition has changed fundamentally. Today the competition is fiercer because the parties are competing for the favors of an electorate which is increasingly prepared to switch sides, and which often no longer feels bound by sociological or ideological loyalties. However, in parallel – and this is only an apparent contradiction – the real basis for party competition is disappearing. As the scope for national policy-making becomes smaller in an age of globalization, the desire to gain the maximum number of votes forces politicians to pursue virtually the same goals and to offer the same solutions. But in order to succeed in elections, it is still essential to establish distinguishing features of some kind. The parties face the choice between highlighting differences in the details of the solutions they propose, with the risk that the electorate will not understand them or will simply be bored, or deliberately depoliticizing the electorate 54 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy ipg 3/2003

by switching to a strategy of personalization and symbolic action, making the people the central point of reference in their rhetoric. 4 It almost goes without saying that the latter option is more attractive in today’s media society. This is also a result of the nature of presentation, particularly on television, which has a natural affinity for populist forms of address (Decker 2000, 324 ff.). For politicians it can therefore be rewarding to »give populism a try«, when they want to broaden their electoral appeal. In this way, they also have the opportunity to emancipate themselves from»their« party. The plebiscitary transformation is therefore also reflected in the internal workings of the political parties, which become increasingly top-heavy in their structures and in which all other goals become secondary to the electoral function(Panebianco 1988, 264 f.). One could accept that, as a result of»media democracy«, the public presentation of politics is increasingly subjected to its own laws and has less and less to do with the contents of decisions. But the problems begin when the logic of presentation gains the upper hand, and begins to affect the substance of decisions being made. The transformation of party democracy would seem to have other populist consequences. It ensures that political parties are the prime target of public criticism. The anti-party attitude can look back on a long intellectual tradition in Western democracies, but only in exceptional situations has this led to anti-party parties being set up. With the new rightwing populism, however, the exception has become the rule and the criticism of parties has become an increasingly important mobilization issue. The fact that this seed falls on fertile ground in parts of the electorate is a consequence of the contradictory role which political parties play in democracy today. On the one hand, they have weakened their ties to specific social groups, so that if the voters are dissatisfied they are more liable to change sides, abstain or otherwise express their objections, and the willingness to participate sinks(declining memberships, lower turnouts at elections). On the other hand, the weakening of social ties has not led to 4. An example of such a strategy according to Mair(2002, 96) is the electoral address of Tony Blair’s New Labour in Great Britain.»These are non-partisan leaders with a non-partisan programme running a non-partisan government in the interests of the people as a whole. This is, in short, partyless democracy.« ipg 3/2003 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy 55

a corresponding loss of political power for the parties at the level of government. On the contrary, because their social basis has crumbled, the parties have done all they can to fortify their positions in the state wherever possible. This lands them in a hopeless dilemma as far as legitimization is concerned:»As the different faces of the party become more autonomous of one another, and as the party leaderships increasingly turn towards the state for their resources, the relevance of linkages which are based on trust, accountability and, above all, representation, tends to become eroded, both inside and outside the parties. Thus while the parties may become more privileged, they also become more remote. It is this particular combination of developments that may well have provided the basis for the increasingly widespread anti-party sentiment which now characterizes mass politics in Western democracies«(Mair 1994, 18 f.). Counter-Strategies in Constitutional States Populism as a feature of political systems is characterized by two faces. On the one hand, it describes a plebiscitary extension of electoral politics, which can be traced back to the change in importance of party politics and affects the entire political spectrum. On the other hand, it is a protest phenomenon, giving rise to»anti-party parties« which campaign against the consequences of the party-ruled state. In both cases, of course, it is interesting to consider possible counter-strategies. If the diagnosis presented here is correct, the main problem lies in the fact that the plebiscitary and the consensual legitimization strategies of the democratic constitutional state are drifting apart. Party competition as a criterion for electoral decisions is increasingly becoming a fiction, whereas the populist aberrations it gives rise to are also affecting the substance of material politics. One answer to this problem could be to take some plebiscitary elements out of the electoral sphere and to relocate them in the consensual area of the system of government. For Germany, for example, this could involve the careful introduction at the Federal level of instruments of direct legislation which are already used locally and regionally(Decker 2001). Along the same lines, recent research recommends participation in the form of an associative or network democracy, with gradations depending on the subject matter or the geographical area affected. The intention is to strengthen the deliberative elements in the decision-making process(Abromeit 2002, 100 ff.). 56 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy ipg 3/2003

The introduction of new forms of democracy does not, of course, mean that party competition would be completely stripped of its electoral function, not least because it must remain possible to get rid of an incompetent or corrupt government. For the formulation of the contents of policy, on the other hand, it would be better to peg back the elements of majority-led democracy and to direct the focus of democratization onto the consensual decision-making mechanisms, which would have to be opened up to new forms of participation and made more responsive. The changing conditions of government today mean that democratic politics require more consensus, not less. Therefore there is a growing need to gain legitimization for decision-making processes by linking decisionmaking as closely as possible to those directly affected. The implication of this is that populism poses the greatest threat when it undermines the existing consensual elements of the political system. In other words, the more plebiscitary tendencies become established, the more important it becomes to have provisions to protect the liberties of the constitutional state(Dahrendorf 2002). As long as right-wing populist movements remain in opposition and only appear as protest parties, they will probably not pose a threat to the constitutional order. The situation becomes worrying when they acquire the power to govern and actively implement their ideas on plebiscitary democracy. The experience with right-wing populist parties sharing power in Austria or forming a government in Italy show that these worries are by no means groundless (Rusconi 2002; Rosenberger 2001). Nor can they be calmed by hopes that once the right-wing populists are in government they will inevitably fail, even though this was indeed the case in Austria and the Netherlands. A look at Latin America or Eastern Europe clearly shows that it is often only a short step from a populist democracy to quasi-democratic authoritarianism. This may not for the moment be the fate of the mature democratic states. But they should nevertheless take seriously the threats posed by populism, and take precautionary steps now against a plebiscitary transformation of their system of government. References Abromeit, Heidrun(2002), Wozu braucht man Demokratie? Die postnationale Herausforderung der Demokratietheorie, Opladen. Betz, Hans-Georg(1994), Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe, New York. ipg 3/2003 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy 57

Betz, Hans-Georg, and Stefan Immerfall(eds.)(1998), The New Politics of the Right. Neo-Populist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies, New York. Canovan, Margaret(1999),»Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy«, in: Political Studies 47(1), pp. 2–16. Canovan, Margaret(2002),»Taking Politics to the People. Populism and the Identity of Democracy«, in: Mény and Surel(2002), pp. 25–44. Dahrendorf, Ralf(2002), Die Krisen der Demokratie. Ein Gespräch mit Antonio Polito, Munich. Decker, Frank(2000), Parteien unter Druck. Der neue Rechtspopulismus in den westlichen Demokratien, Opladen. Decker, Frank(2001),»Das Kreuz mit der direkten Demokratie«, in: Berliner Republik 3(4), pp. 52–62. Decker, Frank(2002),»Rechtspopulismus in Europa. Ein unaufhaltsamer Trend?«, in: MUT. Forum für Kultur, Politik und Geschichte, no. 422, pp. 46–52. Kitschelt, Herbert, and Anthony McGann(1995), The Radical Right in Western Europe. A Comparative Analysis, Ann Arbor. Koopmans, Ruud(1995),»A Burning Question. Explaining the Rise of Racist and Extreme Right Violence in Western Europe«, Berlin(Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, fs iii 95–101). Korte, Karl-Rudolf, and Gerhard Hirscher(eds.)(2000), Darstellungspolitik oder Entscheidungspolitik? Über den Wandel von Politikstilen in westlichen Demokratien, Munich. Mair, Peter(1994),»Party Organizations: From Civil Society to the State«, in: Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair(eds.), How Parties Organize, London–Thousand Oaks–New Delhi, pp. 1–22. Mair, Peter(2002),»Populist Democracy vs. Party Democracy«, in: Mény and Surel (2002), pp. 81–98. Mény, Yves, and Yves Surel(eds.)(2002), Democracy and the Populist Challenge, Houndsmill – New York. Mény, Yves, and Yves Surel(2002),»The Constitutive Ambiguity of Populism«, in: Mény and Surel(2002), pp. 1–21. Panebianco, Angelo(1988), Political Parties. Organization and Power, Cambridge. Papadopoulos, Yannis(2002),»Populism, the Democratic Question, and Contemporary Governance«, in: Mény and Surel(2002), pp. 45–61. Probst, Lothar(2001),»Demokratie braucht Populismus«, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (2 December 2001), p. 13. Puhle, Hans-Jürgen(1986),»Was ist Populismus?«, in: Helmut Dubiel(ed.), Populismus und Aufklärung, Frankfurt a. M., pp. 12–32. Rosenberger, Sieglinde Katharina(2001),»Demokratie und/versus Populismus«, in: Andrei Markovits and Sieglinde Katharina Rosenberger(eds.), Demokratie. Modus und Telos, Vienna, pp. 101–16. Rusconi, Gian Enrico(2000),»Berlusconismo. Neuer Faschismus oder demokratischer Populismus?«, in: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 47(8), pp. 973–80. 58 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy ipg 3/2003

Sartori, Giovanni(1992), Demokratietheorie, Darmstadt. Sturm, Roland(2000),»Das Urteil steht vor dem Argument«, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (23 February 2000), p. 11. Taggart, Paul(2002),»Populism and the Pathology of Representative Politics«, in: Mény and Surel(2002), pp. 62–80. More on deliberative democracy in international politics and society ̈ Andreas Maurer: Less Bargaining – More Deliberation. The Convention Method for Enhancing eu Democracy(1/2003) ̈ Charles F. Sabel: Economic Revival and the Prospect of Democratic Renewal(1/2000) ipg 3/2003 Decker, The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy 59

Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice Social Democracy and the Rise of Political Cartelization MARK BLYTH M uch contemporary analysis of the limits of social democracy in Europe focuses upon the role of external factors(Cerny 1995, Moses 1997). In particular, the idea that globalization has»changed everything« has gained a great deal of currency. Specifically, it is held by both academics and politicians that external global constraints, capital account openness, increased trade dependence etc., have narrowed policy options for social democratic governments to such an extent that left parties are no longer able to govern as left parties(Scharpf 1991, Blair and Schroeder 1998). Instead, a new supply-side social democracy based around skill formation is seen as the only way forward for progressive politics(Giddens 1998). Another development of note in contemporary Europe is the rise of neo-populist movements and right-wing fringe parties, some of which have either gained power or have come close to doing so. Le Pen’s performance in the last French presidential elections, the emergence and consolidation of Haider’s Freedom party in Austria; and the explosion and subsequent implosion of the Fortuyn list in Holland are but the most obvious examples. Interestingly, these two seemingly discrete phenomena may have much in common. Those European social democratic parties that regained power in the 1990s have in many cases failed to produce traditional social democratic policies. Instead, with explicit reference to the external constraints of globalization, social democratic politicians have told their constituents that the policies of the past have no place in the present. Yet there is good. This »globalization« is nothing to be feared; rather, it should be embraced. As a result, welfare reforms long associated with the right are actively promoted by social democrats while»job-security« has given way to the »life-long learning« needed to flexibilize labor markets and compete in the global economy. Unfortunately, those most at risk in this new world of global competition and flexible labor markets are those concentrated at the lower end of the income scale; and it is precisely among this part of the voting population, among the social democratic core, that we see 60 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice ipg 3/2003

declining turnout and increasing voter volatility(Rodrik 1997, Hopkin 2002). A powerful explanation of how these phenomena are linked was given nearly sixty years ago by Karl Polanyi(Polanyi 1944). Looking at the nineteenth century Polanyi argued that the attempt to delegate to the market ever greater areas of social responsibility engenders an intolerable uncertainty in the life of labor, particularly those most exposed to unemployment and declining wages through competition. Moreover, as the market expands, the more fragile the social order as a whole becomes. As institutions of social protection are abandoned in the name of efficiency and competitiveness, so those most affected by market dislocations and uncertainties will turn to the state to protect them. This was Polanyi’s famous»Great Transformation«. The reaction of labor to the vagaries of market capitalism was to invent the state as protector(Polanyi 1944, Blyth 2002). The embrace of a rhetoric of globalization by social democrats enabled them to survive the 1980s by cartelizing the policy space available to them. By doing so they successfully competed with the right and lowered their own costs of defeat, but at the cost of narrowing the choices available to the electorate. The parallel between Europe today and what Polanyi described is striking. Similar to what we find today, governing parties in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s told their constituents that»there was no alternative«; that markets forces were a»fact« that demanded discipline and adjustment, that we»cannot spend our way to prosperity«, and that as much as we would like to cushion the blow, in a world of open capital flows and global markets, there is nothing government can really do. But European mass publics in the 1930s surprised their leaders by doing something unexpected. They flocked to those who said that they could protect them from the dislocations of the market. When their elected representatives told them that they could not protect them, those constituents went elsewhere, towards communism and fascism. The nightmare scenario associated with this diagnosis is that Europe stands poised to repeat its past – albeit without the communist alternative. Like the 1920s and 1930s, the left is in power but governs with market-conforming economic policies. Like the 1920s and 1930s, labor is exipg 3/2003 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice 61

pected to adjust to the external financial balance through deflation since wages are, once again, seen as a fixed cost rather than a source of demand. And like the 1920s, mainstream parties are loosing voters while populists and extremists are gaining support across the continent in the midst of economic hard times and mass unemployment. There is much to commend this account. It takes the forces of globalization and populism seriously and joins them together in a»causal story« that is invoked by contemporary social democratic politicians; and intuitively, it seems to fit the facts(Stone 1984). Yet, I want to suggest why such an explanation may in fact be flawed. First of all, if the claim that globalization has somehow»changed everything« is contestable, then it cannot follow that resurgent right-wing populism is a result of it. Second, if the much invoked logic of global constraints and the politics of necessity it demands are somewhat undermined by the available evidence, then we must ask why European politicians, particularly social democrats, invoke these constraints and act»as if« they are as real and pressing as their rhetoric maintains. Following this line of argument suggests an alternative, or at least complimentary, rendition of the rise of European neopopulism and its relationship to social democracy. One where party politics drive economic logics, and not the other way round. How Tight are the(Global)»Ties that Bind«? There are a huge number of possible»globalization effects« that have supposedly rendered social democratic policies redundant. The basic »globalization has changed everything« thesis has the following structure. The shift undertaken by developed economies to open capital accounts and floating exchange rates in the 1970s and 1980s combined with the independent growth of capital mobility to produce a world where foreign direct investment is an increasingly important source of growth (Helleiner 1994). Such capital is mobile however, and international investors will exit economies with higher than the equilibrium rate of inflation (Przeworski and Wallerstein 1992). In order to avoid such dis-investment and the attendant problems of devaluation and unemployment that it brings, states must eschew fiscal and monetary policies that are either inflationary or redistributive(Cerny 1995). In such a»globalized« world traditional social democratic policy tools such as deficit financing become redundant, and states must deregulate 62 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice ipg 3/2003

their product, labor, and financial markets to capture globally mobile capital. Taxing locally, it is argued, no longer produces growth, just capital flight. 1 While there is certainly something in this account, we must question to what extent such global constraints are truly constraining, for there is a great deal of current research that suggests otherwise. Let us examine a few core claims of the»globalization as constraint« thesis and a few objections to these claims. First of all, many of the counterfactuals implicit in these claims do not stand up to scrutiny. If capital is now so globally mobile that deficits are out of the question, why is it that in the pre-globalization period(1950– 1970) deficit financing was not actually practiced very much at all? Indeed, far from the popular picture of social democratic governments in the post-war period constantly running deficits to promote an inflationary and unsustainable employment level, the fact is that most oecd countries in this period did not run deficits. Even the poster children of neoliberal reform, the uk and Sweden, do not fit this pattern. The uk ’s first post-war deficit was recorded in 1975, while Sweden’s occurred in 1976 (Callahan 2003, Blyth 2002). To what extent then are markets eager to punish behaviors that never took place? Indeed, why should contemporary social democracy be constrained by the lack of a policy option that it did not exercize in the first place? Second, arguments about trade competitiveness and its effects on both growth and employment in Europe are overblown. Competitiveness is often seen as an issue of cost reduction to remain in business(Prestovitz 1994). Yet this is a shallow way of looking at the issue since many industries trade on quality, not quantity. bmw , after all, has not been shut down by Kia. Similarly, arguments about trade substitution through import competition are often exaggerated. The four major East Asian newly industrialized countries(South Korean, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) accounted for less than six percent of world trade by 1990(Wade 1996 p. 69). How this can account for an average three-fold increase in unemployment across the whole of the developed world during the 1980s is far from clear. Third , and particularly germane for the European context, if one takes Europe as a single unit rather than as individual competing countries, while trade between these countries has increased rapidly, trade between 1. Such policy statements have become commonplace among contemporary social democratic leaders(Blair 1998, Brown 1998). ipg 3/2003 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice 63

»single unit Europe« and the rest of the world has actually decreased. Europe, as a single market and single monetary unit, is turning inward and de-globalizing its trade(Hay 2001). Given this, if Europe as a whole has experienced higher than average unemployment and lower than average growth, then the answer why may be similarly parochial. One may blame global competition for the loss of jobs, but the strict monetary stance of the European Central Bank and the deflationary effects of the Maastricht convergence criteria are arguably just as important in explaining patterns of growth and employment(Howell 2002). Fourth , capital flight, the great constraint to be avoided, oftentimes does not occur as the theory outlined above would dictate. For example, in the run-up to the Swedish elections in 1994 several of Sweden’s largest firms sponsored a newspaper advertisement that threatened a capital strike if the Swedish social democratic party( sap ) was elected. Yet such a threat – as clear an example of a»capital mobility as constraint« argument one could wish for – merely seemed to push up the sap ’s vote. After the election and the victory of the sap , none of the firms that made the threat actually left Sweden(Blyth 2002 pp. 235–6). Indeed, cross-national examination of financial market behavior suggests that partisan composition of a government matters little to market actors, and overall, the response of financial markets to partisan policy shifts in advanced economies is quite mild most of the time(Mosely 2000). One could continue and discuss how other global factors often identified as the limits to social democracy are either similarly undermined by the evidence – for example, how tax rates have not »raced to the bottom«. Instead, let us now consider an alternative explanation where party politics drives policy imperatives, and not the other way about. Parties and Political Change Part of the problem in developing an alternative explanation of policy change as driven by party politics instead of external environmental shifts is that most of the literature on political parties tends to see them as passive creatures who respond to external changes but seldom initiate them (Blyth and Hopkin 2003). For example, the classic Lipset and Rokkan model of European political alignments saw parties as functional responses to the demands of industrialism and nation building(Lipset and Rokkan 1964). In such a world parties responded to external stimuli by 64 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice ipg 3/2003

occupying the specific class locales opened up by external environmental changes. Parties react, they do not act to change the world around them. Such a»structural bias« is also seen in the way we think about the evolution of political parties. For example, Duverger’s classic interpretation of how elite-based cadre parties give way to mass parties of integration was undone by the fact that mass parties stopped behaving as mass parties(Duverger 1954). As Kirchheimer noted, in the changed context of the post-war welfare state, the integration of party members gave way to the provision of public goods for constituents. Elite parties adopted mass party forms and began to act as»catch-all« coalitions that sought to supply ever-wider electorates with alternative baskets of public goods(Kirchheimer 1966). While this is certainly a fair interpretation of the politics of this period, note once again how in this treatment parties appear as passive creatures. The external environment changes, and parties respond to those changes. Elites give way to classes because of industrialism and demands for suffrage, while classes in turn give way to masses as industrialism turns into the equalitarian post-war welfare states. Parties accommodate to the environment, they do not shape it. Yet is this a satisfactory view of parties and what they do? Parties are unique creatures in that they are simultaneously agents and structures. They are institutions of democratic representation at the same time as they are agents who seek to manipulate their environment in order to win elections. This side of the story – of parties as creative agents – has been much neglected in the literature on parties. 2 Recently though, this has began to change. Colin Hay’s work is instructive in this regard. Rather than put parties in the passive, Hay focuses upon how parties can engage in one of two strategies: preference accommodation and preference shaping(Hay 1999). Preference accommodation occurs when parties take the world as given, and acting as vote-maximizers seek to capture the median voter by offering different baskets of policies(Downs 1957). Parties thus compete in a policy space pre-determined by voters’ preferences. In contrast to this model, Hay offers an alternative way of viewing the relationship between parties and their environment. For Hay, parties do not offer calculable policy outcomes. Rather they prospectively offer voters policies that will supposedly bring about certain»states of the world«. Thus an act of interpretation is required by the voter(Mackie 2001). Voters do not»buy policies« so much as they accept 2. Except of course for the literature on political business cycles. ipg 3/2003 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice 65

certain narratives of how, for example, tax cuts will increase investment, or how labor market flexibility will increase employment. Therefore, the median voter’s position is not a structurally given fact that parties must take as given. Rather, parties must engage in the politics of preference shaping in order to win elections; that is, actively shaping where the median voter lies, and what content the median policy can have(EspingAndersen 1985). Two key changes have occurred that have effectively turned parties from vote maximizing competitors into risk averse colluders: the limits of catch-all politics, and the rhetoric of globalization. Parties in Hay’s world shape their environment; they are agents more than they are structures. Hence, if we wish to understand their policy choices and outputs, perhaps we should look for reasons internal to their operations and organizations, rather than simply accept the argument that external constraints determine their choices. This is not to deny external constraints any role in limiting political choices. Clearly such a position would be too extreme. Nonetheless, with the less than overwhelming evidence in favor of the»globalization equals no alternative« narrative, we should take seriously approaches that see parties as agents of their own destinies; destinies that may produce the very constraints we commonly attribute to external causes. The New Political Economy of Party Politics: Firms, Parties and Policy Choices One promising avenue of research in this regard has been the notion of the cartel party(Katz and Mair 1995). Building upon Panebianco’s notion of the»electoral professional party« where changes in the technology of elections and the life-cycles of politicians have combined to create a new party form, Katz and Mair argue that political choices have effectively become cartelized. With the rise of electoral-professionalism, parties have less need for members at the same time as the costs of being a party increase. As such, parties increasingly rely upon state subventions to survive. These established parties also raise barriers to entry for smaller parties(thresholds etc.,) thus creating an insulated policy environment 66 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice ipg 3/2003

among established elites. By cartelizing the political market in this way the risks of failure are mitigated by insulating parties against catastrophic failures at the polls through increased public funding and restricted choices. Such an approach offers a promising angle on thinking about how parties may themselves create their own constraints. However, in order to better specify a model of cartel politics, it is necessary to lay out what a cartel is in economic terms and what it is not. Only then can we see how much explanatory leverage such theory can give us in the political realm. A cartel is a joint sales agency(Steigler 1964). The purpose of a cartel is to maximize joint profits of oligopolistic firms through the restriction of competition. Firms are able to collude by varying either prices, quantities, or both. The rationale for joint sales maximization rather than competition is that the long-run average cost curve for an oligopolistic firm reaches its minimum point at a relatively large fraction of the size of the total market. Consequently, price competition between firms will not necessarily drive any individual firm out of business. Being large enough that market price is not simply a structural fact presented to firms that they have to accept, firms’ price decisions are»strategically interdependent« – they depend upon other firms’ choices. Market price can be set by the firms themselves rather than being dictated by competition, so long as they cooperate, which is precisely the problem with cartels. While joint maximization would be profitable, the individual first-best choice in such a situation is to defect and go for market share at the other firms’ expense. 3 However, realizing this, all firms should then defect at the first possible opportunity. As a consequence, cartels should be very difficult to get started and very costly to maintain, and indeed, experience shows that stable cartels, in the economy at least, are somewhat rare. There is however a possible solution to such stability problems. Few things in life are a one-shot game. Iteration, multiple play, and thus learning by doing characterize most of social and economic life. Firms can learn from past defections how costly price wars can become, and in order to avoid such costs in future, firms may be willing to»follow the leader« to stabilize their market share. That is, one firm may act as the leader and others will follow. Stability can thereby occur without overt conspiracy. By announcing a price rise(or a quantity cut) this leading firm »tacitly signals« to the others their own revised outputs. In such circum3. Periodic airline fare wars are a good example of this type of behavior. ipg 3/2003 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice 67

stances other firms follow the leader, thus limiting their own outputs and achieving higher long-run profits rather than what would be achieved by competition. The costs of providing public goods began to exceed the capacity of states to provide them at the same time as the costs of running electoral campaigns increased beyond the capacity and willingness of the party members to foot the bill. In order to understand why contemporary politics mimics cartel dynamics we need to find political analogs for firms and for quantities. First of all, given that contemporary Western European party systems are oligopolistic in terms of numbers and market share, it is hardly a stretch to see such a system as oligopolistic and major parties as the equivalent of major firms(Taagapera and Shugart 1989, Gallagher, Laver, and Mair 2001). 4 However, establishing this fact alone does not make it a cartel. To make this further claim we need to find analogs for quantities. If we assume that, economically speaking, quantities represent outputs, and that the output of parties in government are policies, then we can further assume that policies are the functional equivalent of quantities. If this is the case then the key question is how parties set policy quantities, that is, tacitly collude and thus cartelize the market for votes? Indeed, why would parties do this rather than compete? Contra the above claims about the pressing necessity of global constraints, I argue that two key changes have occurred that have effectively turned parties from vote maximizing competitors into risk averse colluders: the limits of catch-all politics, and the rhetoric of globalization. In turn, these changes have themselves encouraged new adaptive strategies that have together cartelized the party system, created cartel parties, and prompted the rise of right wing neo-populism. 4. During the 1980s, the effective number of parties in European parliaments exceeded five only in Finland(5.1), Italy(6.9), the Netherlands(5.1), Belgium(8.5), and Switzerland(5.8). 68 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice ipg 3/2003

Why Cartelize? The Fiscal Limits of Catch-all Politics For clarity of exposition, assume a party system that is dominated by two parties that produce the catch-all policies typical of the post war era; full employment, public housing programs, and redistributionary taxation. Further assume that each catch-all party has attempted to maximize support through its expansion of such public and private goods provisions. Logically, if both parties pursue the same strategy, then voters will become increasingly indifferent to party choice. If we further assume that voters would prefer more public goods to less, but also assume that there is a defined fiscal limit beyond which such provisions cannot be made without creating a fiscal crisis, then the catch-all strategy runs into a structural limit that may be both welfare decreasing and election loosing. 5 Two consequences follow from this. First, the space for policy competition is effectively reduced. States cannot squeeze any more resources out of their societies for the production of public goods without harming growth itself. Consequently, policy competition, in terms of providing more and more public goods in order to win elections becomes less feasible. Second, at the same time as reaching such fiscal limits, as many states arguably did in the late 1970s and early 1980s, two further problems arose that finished off catch-all politics: the technologies and costs of elections changed while party members actually became less relevant for the problem of winning elections. First, the technology of elections moved away from mass participation to media marketing. Union blocs became less valuable than such things as newspaper endorsements, television time, and large private donations. Thus the costs of providing public goods began to exceed the capacity of states to provide them at the same time as the costs of running electoral campaigns increased beyond the capacity and willingness of the party members to foot the bill. Second, the risks to both individual politicians and parties increased pari passu with these costs. By the 1980s the days of politics as a gentlemanly vocation were over for major Western European political parties(Panebianco 1979). Parties were composed of permanent representatives whose livelihoods depended upon election and large bureaucracies that depended upon stable counter-cyclical funding. Thus, 5. In that the costs of producing such provisions(lost growth, sluggish investment etc.) exceed the benefits they produce. ipg 3/2003 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice 69

on a systemic level, catch-all politics reached its fiscal limits as a strategy that would promote party success and stability. Meanwhile, on a more micro level, the catch-all party form, with its dependence upon mass memberships and steady voting blocs, became a less reliable organizational form in the face of rising costs, declining turnout, increasing volatility, and the declining utility of members. This squeeze was particularly problematic for social democratic parties. While parties of the right had never been too comfortable with ever widening public goods provisions, using the public purse for the public purpose was what social democracy was all about. Caught in the double squeeze of diminishing returns to catch-all policies and a dysfunctional organizational form, social democrats throughout the 1980s sought to win elections by contesting the policies of the right. Specifically, fighting unemployment was the key issue that the left focused upon during this period. However, after 1975 governments of all complexions effectively reduced the reservation wage by increasing, or at least allowing the increase of, unemployment. Thus an individual risk traditionally compensated for by the presence of full employment gave way to a new market discipline(Kalecki 1944, Shapiro and Stiglitz 1984, Korpi 2002). Consequently, voters could state their public preference against unemployment in survey after survey during the 1980s and then vote against those preferences at election time, much to the chagrin of social democrats. 6 As the cartel thesis would dictate, competition was not working for the left. Perhaps then, collusion would? Driven by organizational survival more than by conviction, left parties began to not compete on the issue of unemployment. Inflation was similarly declared the number one enemy above unemployment after forty years of holding the opposite. Monetary policy was»depoliticized« and handed to»independent« experts, and those who would benefit least from such changes, social democratic voters, were neglected as left parties sought to target professionals and middle income groups. After all, if members were no longer financially useful, did not vote anyway, and if they pushed the party in»extreme« directions, why appeal to them? However, abandoning policy in the face of electoral expedience is one thing, justifying it is another, and this is where the logic of global constraints becomes compelling; but not in the form commonly presented. Cartelization may make sense for the party in terms of a survival strategy, but to win elections by not competing over tradi6. See Eurobarometer, any year 1980 – 1990. 70 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice ipg 3/2003

tional areas needs a whole new rationale. Luckily, such a rationale was at hand. How to Cartelize? The Rhetoric of Globalization The social democratic parties that produced social democratic outputs were creatures of the Keynesian era. Governing parties of the left and the right were assumed to have primary responsibility for ensuring jobs and growth, and were also assumed to be able to marshal fiscal instruments to those ends. Unfortunately for the practice of catch-all politics, but fortunate for a new generation of social democrats concerned with the very survival of their parties, a reformation in the way policymakers and their economic advisors thought about the economy occurred over the same period. This was the new logic of global constraints. In contrast to Keynesian era policy making, which assumed that»people had no knowledge of the economic system and did not perceive any interrelationships between the(hypothesized) variables«, economic policy-making in the 1980s became increasingly dominated by new theories such as rational expectations, which argued that people do indeed invest in being correct – to the point that»economic agents are assumed [to be] completely aware of the ›true‹ structure of the economy … and make full use of this in forming their expectations«(Bleaney 1985 p. 142, 143). The consequences of such an ideational shift are dramatic, for it argued that while we can expect individual market participants to make mistakes, systematic mistakes by markets are impossible. If the point of social democracy was to correct for market failures, what was the point of social democracy in a world were markets did not fail? If one further assumes that»[deregulated] financial assets embody the true value of their real counterparts, creating an environment in which individuals trading in these assets can make Pareto efficient decisions« then it is hard to avoid the conclusion that free and integrated markets will yield superior economic performance to regulated markets with employment and output being produced up to the»natural rate« possible. This »neo-liberal« worldview»present[s] a picture of economic efficiency being dependent upon free markets for goods, labor, and finance, and a ipg 3/2003 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice 71

minimalist state. Market liberalization is accordingly beneficial because it involves the removal of market distortions, which are by definition inefficient«(Eatwell 1996 p. 10). In such a world, social democratic catch-all parties and their attendant policies become counter-productive. For if they accept this logic, then any intervention into the market, whether done for the private interest of election or for the public interest of boosting the economy with the public good of growth, can only end in disaster. If the point of social democracy was to correct for market failures, what was the point of social democracy in a world were markets did not fail? The attraction of such arguments as a way of eschewing policy commitments, arguments proffered with such gusto by contemporary social democratic leaders, is not difficult to see. These new ideas, so antithetical to traditional social democratic objectives, combined with the very pressing electoral and financial constraints social democratic parties faced during the 1980s to produce two new survival strategies: a downsizing of constituent expectations and an externalization of policy commitments. The end result of which was to»reform« social democracy back into power; or more appropriately, to cartelize it. Cartelizing the Party System: The Discourse of Downsizing Expectations The first survival strategy was to downsize voters’ expectations since social democratic parties had an interest in reducing the policy commitments that had overextended them in the first place. Once the limits of catch-all politics were reached, social democratic party elites quite instrumentally embraced the new ideas about the economy detailed above as a way of ratcheting down constituent expectations. In cartel terms, they were signaling other parties that they were limiting quantities(policies) and encouraging joint maximization(stability of tenure). Consequently, if other parties did the same, they could cartelize the market and get more profit(hold on office) and security(minimal cost of electoral defeat) for less(lower policy commitments.) How then does one ratchet down expectations? The first way, particularly apparent in the uk , the us , Sweden, and increasingly Germany today, was discursive. Social democratic parties proclaimed their devotion to the free market and the global economy, despite 72 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice ipg 3/2003

all its draw-backs for their traditional constituencies. They did this because they had discovered a»third way« or»neue Mitte«, which held that states should not produce the public goods they had in the past because the market could do it better. Whether the market could in fact do it better was a moot point. What was important was that the deployment of such a discursive strategy got parties»off the hook« for the production of such goods in the first place. Thus, in order to survive in a post-catchall environment the rhetoric of globalization and various»third ways« were employed by social democrats throughout Europe(Hay and Rosamond 2002). Cartelizing the Party System: The Externalization of Policy Commitments Having achieved power by encroaching on traditionally right-wing policy areas, parties could signal their resolve to each other by creating institutional fixes to the problem of policy commitment. This would lock in expectation reduction and thereby signal a credible commitment to the cartelization of the political market as a whole. The logic of central bank independence illustrates this nicely. According to the new ideas developed to justify state rollback, politicians – through their overproduction of public goods – tended to mesh the electoral cycle to the business cycle in order to get reelected(Nordhaus 1975, Hibbs 1976). Consequently, the equilibrium rate of inflation was always going to be higher than what it would be absent such political»interference«. Since the electoral cycle was a recurrent fact, although politicians may proclaim that they will reduce inflation once they are in office, they cannot actually do so in practice because their inflation preferences are said to be»time inconsistent«. Given this, politicians should not be given the instruments to reflate the economy in the first place. The best way of assuring this was then to devolve monetary policy to unelected central bankers with long time horizons. Only such a group would have preferences that would produce low inflation and thus safeguard growth(Kykland and Prescott 1977, Persson 1988). Such policy externalizations and exercises in downsizing expectations have been embraced by social democratic parties across Europe as the optimal solution to the multiple dilemmas they face. By devolving policy to others who are not directly responsible to their electorate at the same time ipg 3/2003 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice 73

as discursively ratcheting down expectations, parties of all complexions are able to institutionally fix policy quantities and qualities regardless of who is in office. By doing so major parties can cartelize the market for votes by reducing the policy space over which parties can conceivably compete. Seen in this way, such institutional fixes are the equivalent of binding quotas on policy production. Having an independent central bank means that politicians are no longer responsible for either creating or managing economic outcomes. As such, they cannot be held accountable for their effects. Policy externalization to other»independent« institutions, such as the eu and the wto , further insulates politicians from voters’ preferences and effectively truncates the possible supply curve of policy. Deploying such strategies in an uncertain electoral environment effectively insulates elites from claims by their constituents. Responsibility for monetary policy is given to central bankers, responsibility for employment is devolved to regional parliaments, welfare provision is given over to private institutions and nongovernmental organizations, while public investment is awarded to »public-private initiatives«. Rather than maximizing votes as competitors, social democratic politicians may have discovered that governing less may be less risky than promising more. Where then do we see such dynamics? The preceding section suggests that we should see policy convergence among oligopolistic parties coming from two angles: from the deployment of policy rhetorics designed to downsize expectations and from the increasing institutional externalization of policy commitments. Examples would include the privatization of welfare services, the independence(from elected officials) of central banks, and the transfer of responsibilities, either upward to supranational institutions or downward and outward to devolved assemblies and the private sector. In this final section we examine these hypotheses with regard to two polar cases: the most liberal of European states, the uk , and arguably the most social democratic, Sweden. Cartelization in the United Kingdom Catch-all behavior was typical of British politics in the 1960s with the general acceptance of the welfare state and Keynesian economics that came to be known as»Butskillism«. This development was short-circuited, however, in the late 1970s by both parties’ inability to deliver sufficient 74 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice ipg 3/2003

material benefits. This culminated in the Conservative’s defeat at the hands of the Miners Union in 1974 and Labour’s fabled»winter of discontent« and defeat in the 1979 general election. These events led initially to the victory of the so-called»hard left« within the Labour party and extended electoral defeat. Being faced with an unelectable opponent and unpopular policies, the Conservative Party had no incentive to behave like an oligopolist and behaved as a policy monopolist, effectively closing Labour out of the market. Given this, the last twenty years of British party politics has been the story of the Labour Party’s attempt to reestablish its position within a cartel, and in order to do so it had to create an oligopoly out of a monopoly. By 1992, the Labour leader Neil Kinnock had reestablished some control over the party manifesto, and after loosing two elections the party began to drop many of its traditional commitments. Internally, in 1993 the Labour party adopted the one-man one-vote principle for choosing both parliamentary candidates and members of the national executive, thus eliminating the unions’ block vote. Under Tony Blair, this process has gone much farther.»New« Labour has actively courted and successfully solicited funds from business groups, while strongly signaling that the trade unions no longer have any special relationship with the party. Evidence of the strategy of discursively downsizing expectations and truncating the policy space is famously indicated in the joint statement by Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder entitled»Europe: The Third Way/Die Neue Mitte«. Instead of catch-all inspired analyses of social problems, the document embraces the»globalization as constraint« arguments noted above. It explicitly(and without any evidence) declares that»corporate tax cuts raise profitability and strengthen the incentives to invest … It helps create a virtuous circle of growth …«;»the taxation of companies should be simplified and corporation tax rates cut«;»companies must … not be gagged by rules and regulations«, all of which signals a cartelization of the space for possible policy competition. Regardless of the truth or virtue of such policy statements, they are hardly what one traditionally would have associated with the European Left. However, what this does show is how commitments and expectations have been downsized and how the possible space for policy competition has been reduced. We also see clear evidence of the externalization of policy commitments in the British case. In May 1997, the new Labour Government gave the Bank of England effective independence to set interest rates, subject only to the advice of an eight member Monetary Policy Committee apipg 3/2003 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice 75

pointed by the government. This major shedding of economic responsibility by the government was not even mentioned in the party’s election manifesto. Meanwhile, the deepening of the European Union, in particular the commitment to join emu in the near future, represents a further externalization of policy commitments as the government’s obligation to take responsibility for economic policy can instead be blamed on the European Central Bank. Similarly, the institution of a Scottish parliament and a directly elected executive mayor for London allow the central government to shift responsibility for outcomes in these arenas as well. While these changes are usually interpreted as New Labour simply adjusting to the»new realities«, it is perhaps more accurate to recall that the global constraints often appealed to are rather underwhelmed by the evidence. Such policies are thus more accurately seen as a survival strategy than a structural fait accompli. Cartelization in Sweden In contrast to the perceived end of catch-all politics elsewhere during the 1970s, the Swedish Social Democrats( sap ) attempted a reflationary strategy called the»third way« upon returning to power in the early 1980s. The third way was a large devaluation aimed at giving Sweden a one-time terms-of-trade boost in exports. In this regard it was quite successful with Swedish economic performance throughout the early to mid 1980s being far superior in terms of employment and output than those pursued in the uk (Bosworth and Rivlin 1985). Despite the good economic news, Swedish business groups were far from happy. Still hurting after the so-called Wage Earners Funds debacle in the mid 1970s where the sap and the blue-collar trade union confederation( lo ) attempted a leveraged buy-out of Swedish capital with their own funds, Swedish business went on an ideological counter-offensive (Steinmo 1988, Pestoff 1991, Blyth 2001). The Swedish Employers Federation( saf ) spent heavily, reinvigorating pro-market think tanks and influencing the public debate through lavish campaigns(Pestoff 1993, Blyth 2001). Simultaneously, the Swedish economics profession, which was strongly integrated into policy-making, underwent the same neo-classical reformation that had already occurred in the us and the uk (Blyth 2002). The effect of which was the transformation of the ideational context within which policy was made, a transformation that facilitated the 76 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice ipg 3/2003

eschewing of traditional areas of responsibility that Swedish business and its parliamentary allies were now no longer willing to accept. The Swedish finance ministry of the 1980s was an important receptacle for these new ideas about the costs of welfare institutions on growth, the need for»competitiveness« in the»new global economy«, and the costs of high taxation and capital controls. Tax reform and financial deregulation became a crusade within the sap ’s finance ministry. Unfortunately, the tax reform enacted in the late 1980s was under-funded and financial deregulation took place with external capital controls in place. Taken together this merely succeeded in creating a real estate bubble which, when it burst, increased unemployment to twelve percent – its highest level since the 1930s. Unsurprisingly, the sap lost the election and the Conservatives came to power for the first time in forty years – and here the story gets interesting. Given the influence of these new ideas on both the sap and the newly empowered Conservatives, the Conservatives engineered a deflation after the real estate bubble burst which turned the deflation into a general collapse of economic activity(Blyth 2002). However, rather than capitalizing upon this error, the sap took this as evidence that, in the words of the head of the Swedish Employers Federation,»after a long illness, the Swedish Model is dead«, and upon returning to power the sap carried on with the same restricted and market-conforming set of policies. 7 Indeed, by the 1998 elections both major parties’ policy proposals had converged to the point where neo-liberal restructuring was very much the only choice on the menu. In terms of policy choices, both parties targeted inflation fighting over employment creation while sick pay and other welfare benefits were reduced. Moreover, policy externalization proceeded apace. Sweden joined the eu in the early 1990s in order, as the then Conservative prime minister put it, to make»tax cuts(and hence welfare reductions) more or less inevitable«. 8 Similarly, the Swedish central bank was made independent in the same period and the traditionally close relationship between sap and lo became increasingly distant during the 1990s. Here we see the same dynamics in Sweden as we saw in the uk . Sweden shows evidence of downsizing expectations, the externalization of 7. Ulf Laurin, quoted in SAF Tiden , 16 February 1990. 8. Carl Bildt. Quoted in P. Kurzer, Business and Banking: Political Change and Economic Integration in Western Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1993). ipg 3/2003 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice 77

policy commitments, the truncation of the policy supply curve, and the cartelization of the system. All conditions receive partial confirmation in the Swedish case. Partial in the sense that since the late 1980s the first three have occurred, but the fourth has not. The reasons for which tells us a great deal about the limits of cartelized systems. Populist parties can ignore what the cartel parties take to be reality and raise issues that the cartel parties have attempted to bury in their efforts to truncate the policy space. They may promise to deliver levels of public service that are deemed impossible by the cartel parties, secure in the knowledge that they will not be called upon to deliver on those promises. Despite the sap and the Conservatives insisting that»there was no other way« and that policy convergence to a neo-liberal agenda of diminished expectations and reduced commitments was the only choice on the menu, the Swedish public forgot to listen. The presentation of a cartelized set of policies by the two major parties in the 1998 elections resulted in a drop of support for the governing sap from 45.4 percent of the vote in 1994 to 36.5 percent. However, this was not translated into support for the Conservatives as their share of the vote also plummeted, thus allowing the sap to remain in office as a minority government, but only with the support of the Left Party – which gained 5.8 percent over their 1994 showing. In sum, cartelization as a survival strategy reached its limits in that despite both parties’ cartelized policy agendas, the sap was forced by a popular demand for»restoration« of the welfare state to promise more money for health care and social services. As the New York Times noted, »the most repeated claim in this election was not the dynamic pledge to bring about change common to campaigns elsewhere in Europe but a solid promise to restore what was«. 9 Substitutes, in the form of the Greens and the former Communists allowed the Swedish public to exit the cartel and signal that while there may be only one choice on the menu, they may be prepared to eat elsewhere, thus exposing the limits of any cartelization strategy. And this is where an alternative account of the link 9. Warren Hoge,»Swedish Party Pledging Expanded Welfare Gains Slim Victory« New York Times , 21 September 1998. 78 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice ipg 3/2003

between social democracy, globalization and neo-populism can be reconstructed. Conclusion: Populism and the Limits to Cartelization This paper has argued the following. The logic of global constraints often invoked to explain the anemic nature of contemporary social democracy may be less constraining than is often claimed. If this is the case, then the rise of right-wing neo-populism as a reaction to globalization, understood as a series of structural imperatives, may not be so clear-cut. However, what is important is that social democrats either do believe that these constraints are real, or as suggested above, have embraced such ideas as a way of downsizing expectations, externalizing policy commitments, and freeing policy-makers from the constituents’ demands as a survival strategy. The embrace of a rhetoric of globalization by social democrats enabled them to survive the 1980s by cartelizing the policy space available to them. By doing so they successfully competed with the right and lowered their own costs of defeat, but at the cost of narrowing the choices available to the electorate. The result was to lower turnout and turn away from their core constituents. Such strategies of discursive construction, institutional binding, and policy externalization may make the cartel of parties who do not really compete more secure, since they effectively compete over less, but such a strategy is immensely costly in the longer term. Cartels face two threats. One is defection by members seeking shortrun advantage at the expense of their colleagues. This paper has argued why such defections are unlikely. The other threat to a cartel comes from the availability of substitutes, that is, outsiders. Populist parties can ignore what the cartel parties take to be reality and raise issues that the cartel parties have attempted to bury in their efforts to truncate the policy space. They may, for example, promise to deliver levels of public service that are deemed impossible by the cartel parties, secure in the knowledge that they will not be called upon to deliver on those promises. Or they may attack the cartel itself as a conspiracy against the public on the part of selfserving political parties. Indeed, such appeals are increasingly common features of European politics. Regardless of the strategy employed, cartels invite challengers. And if the cartel parties in their efforts to secure themselves from failure tell their traditional constituents that there really ipg 3/2003 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice 79

is no alternative, then those constituents may well turn to those who do offer alternatives. This is, of course, what also happened in Sweden in 1998, where in addition to the Left Party, the other big winner was the Kristdemokraterna, which gained 7.8 percent over 1994. What if a populist party achieves power and actually does want to change things? Riding on the back of mass discontent such a party may well prove the weakness of the global ties that bind, in a way reminiscent of the last time Europe refused to give its mass publics any real alternatives. As populist parties increase in strength, cartel parties have two options. One is to try to co-opt these parties into the cartel. One could certainly argue that this was what was attempted in Italy during the socalled period of national solidarity, is perhaps what has been happening with the Greens in Germany since 1998, and has certainly been the response of the Austrian cartel to Haider’s Freedom Party. Indeed, such examples may well show that populists do not really want to change all that much. Rather, they simply want to be part of the cartel themselves. Another possibility exists however – continued exclusion. But this is likely only to reinforce the perception of a lack of choice or a political conspiracy, and continue the decline both of the vote received by the major parties and the decline of electoral turnout that has been observed throughout the industrial democracies. Such outcomes paint a gloomy prospect for liberal electoral democracy, let alone social democracy, with its legitimacy sapped by a lack of choice leading to declining interest and increasing cynicism. But to bank on continued exclusion is risky in another way. For what if a populist party that contests these external constraints achieves power and actually does want to change things? Riding on the back of mass discontent such a party may well prove the weakness of the global ties that bind, but in a way far more reminiscent of the last time Europe refused to give its mass publics any real alternatives. This may be the real cost of saying»globalization made us do it«. 80 Blyth, Globalization and the Limits of Democratic Choice ipg 3/2003

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The Populist Deficiency of European Social Democracy * RENÉ CUPERUS It is only when leftists and liberals themselves talked in populist ways – hopeful, expansive, even romantic – that they were able to lend their politics a majoritarian cast and help markedly to improve the common welfare . Michael Kazin L ess than six years ago, the vast majority of European Union member states were run by center-left governments. The average eu summit was a»red« or»pink« affair. However, the European political landscape would soon look completely different. Social democrats lost ground, with parties of the center and right winning elections. Particularly striking in this rightward shift was the rise of a new family of political parties, the right-wing populists. Italy, Flanders, France, Hungary, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands – everywhere they stormed the political stage. These parties can be called populist because they claim to represent »the people« and to be mobilizing them against a domineering Establishment. And they can be classified as right-wing because they claim to be defending national or cultural/ethnic identity against»outsiders« or external influences. One could call this new populism, as espoused by Haider, Berlusconi, Orbán et al., a»third way of the right«, a middle road between the democratic and the undemocratic right, between traditional conservatism on the one hand and the antidemocratic extreme right of the past on the other. 1 * With thanks to Frans Becker for his lucid comments. 1. Cf. Michael Ehrke, Rechtspopulismus in Europa: Die Meuterei der Besitzstandswahrer, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, International Policy Analysis Unit, p. 3.; also Meindert Fennema, Populist Parties of the Right ( imes Paper, 23 July 2001). ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 83

More recently, the right-wing populist parties in countries such as Austria and the Netherlands have lost considerable ground. Both the Austrian Freedom Party( fpö ) and the Dutch List Pim Fortuyn( lpf ) have fallen prey to internal conflict when given the chance to participate in government. Both have experienced an implosion, as a result of which they lost a large number of their parliamentary seats in recent elections. But does this mean that the meteoric rise of right-wing populism will appear, with hindsight, as no more than a brief, hysterical episode? Are political conditions now»normalizing«, with the traditional political parties regaining their power? This article is an attempt to show that nothing could be further from the truth. The»populist moment« – that specific constellation of conditions under which populism is able to thrive as a political force – may well have passed, at least for the time being, but its underlying causes most certainly have not disappeared. First and foremost, right-wing populism in Europe must be regarded as a response to a social crisis. Almost by definition, populist movements react to the downside of modernization. They are a response to current social friction and turbulence which for many people – objectively or subjectively at the conscious level – go hand in hand with an apparently impending crisis and an actual or feared collective loss of identity. In addition to dynamism and new opportunities for prosperity, the processes of globalization – including immigration – individualization, meritocratization and post-industrialization which have for some time been at work in Western society also breed resentment, frustration and unease. And these, under certain circumstances, can lead to a political eruption. Looked at in this way, populism is a backlash against a world in flux: an anxious, angry cry to preserve a familiar way of life and identity. It is a protest against threats from outside, and at the same time an alarm signal that the existing political and social system is failing to represent people. And it is that signal, far more than populism’s political power as expressed in parliamentary representation, which deserves to be taken seriously – not least by social democrats. 2 This article concentrates upon the difficult relationship between social democracy and populism. To put that complex relationship in a real-life 2. See Paul Taggart’s clear introduction to the phenomenon of populism: Paul Taggart, Populism , Concepts in the Social Sciences(Open University Press, 2000); and Pierre-André Taguieff, L’Illusion Populiste. De l’archaïque au médiatique (2002). 84 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

perspective, it begins with an examination of the topical case of the socalled»Fortuyn Revolt« in the Netherlands. How could the Dutch political system, and social democracy in particular, have been caught unawares by the late Pim Fortuyn’s mass movement? Where do the causes lie? What is the background? And who is to blame? The Fortuyn revolt: a Textbook Case of Populism In retrospect it is obvious: the Pim Fortuyn»revolt« in the Netherlands came straight from the pages of»Populism for Beginners«. Anyone who flicks through the theoretical literature on the new populism, describing the breeding conditions, the requirements and the characteristics of the recent wave of right-wing populism in Europe, will realize – again, it must be stressed with the wisdom of hindsight – that a de facto paradise was being created for it in the Netherlands during the 1990s. The periods of»Purple Coalition« government(1994–2002), in particular, inadvertently paved the way for Pim Fortuyn. So what happened? Most leading theoreticians of populism, such as Taggart, Betz and Kitschelt, 3 set out from the fact that in our type of society there exists a large and growing reservoir of dissatisfaction, protest and frustration. This arises out of massive transformation and turbulence, in particular, globalization and the transition from an industrial society to a postindustrial»knowledge society«. Such processes produce winners and losers, and it is the latter – known in the German debate as»Modernisierungsverlierer« or»modernization losers« – in whom we largely find the fear and frustration. It is these»losers in contemporary societies, unskilled and semi-skilled workers, people with little cultural capital« who form the potential electorate of the right-wing populist parties. A change in their political preferences can be empirically established: a shift towards right-wing authoritarian ideas. According to the theorists, this repressed frustration and desire to protest will, under specific conditions, lead to political mobilization and expression in the form of right-wing populist parties. The following conditions for the rise of right-wing populism can be distilled from the research 3. P. Taggart, Populism (2000); H. Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe. A Comparative Analysis (1995); H.G. Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (1994). ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 85

literature: 4 (i) a post-industrial economy;(ii) dissolution of established identities, fragmentation of culture, multiculturalization;(iii) growing salience of the dimension of socio-cultural cleavage;(iv) widespread political discontent and disenchantment;(v) convergence between the established parties in political space;(vi) popular xenophobia and racism;(vii) economic crisis and unemployment;(viii) a reaction against New Left or Green parties and movements;(ix) proportional representation; and(x) experience of a referendum which cuts across the old party cleavages. Not all these conditions need to exist, but a combination of a number of them will often lead to the formation of right-wing populist parties and so they are usually cited by academics as the explanation for this process. The»populist moment« – that specific constellation of conditions under which populism is able thrive as a political force – may well have passed, at least for the time being, but its underlying causes most certainly have not disappeared. It does not take much effort to evaluate the»Fortuyn Revolt« against these criteria. According to the»political« explanation of Pim Fortuyn’s success, 5 its key cause was the fact that the differences between left and right in Dutch politics had disappeared. This in turn was due to the fact that the two main parties, which had previously confronted one another across the left-right divide, each excluding the other from power, – the social-democratic PvdA and the conservative, pro-market vvd – had started to work together during the early 1990s in the so-called»Purple Coalition«. The void created by the disappearance of the left-right confrontation was, in effect, filled by another fundamental political cleavage: the characteristic opposition of populism, political outsiders against the established order. 4. Mentioned by the Swedish sociologist Jens Rydgren in his paper»Why not in Sweden? Interpreting radical right populism in the light of a negative case«( ecpr Paper, 2001). 5. See R. Cuperus,»From Polder Model to Postmodern Populism. The Fortuyn Revolt in the Netherlands«, R. Cuperus, J. Kandel and K. Duffek(eds.), Migration, Multiculturalism and European Social Democracy (forthcoming 2003), I analyze five explanations of the Dutch»Citizens’ Revolt« in detail. I have classified and defined these as follows:(i) the political explanation;(ii) the multicultural explanation;(iii) the public-sector explanation;(iv) the media-democracy explanation; and(v) the sociological explanation. 86 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

The reasons why this populist definition of politics – the idea of an inward-looking political establishment divorced from the electorate – found fertile ground in the Netherlands are, first and foremost, political and sociological. The Fortuyn Revolt has with some justification been called »the Revolution of the Excluded«. 6 Those excluded or unrepresented citizens fell into two very different groups. On the one hand, those with »new money« – such as entrepreneurs in information and communications technology( ict ), the law and property – who feel misunderstood by society and do not form part of the organized business community which has a formal stake in the so-called»Polder Model«; and on the other hand, misunderstood and neglected native Dutch residents of run-down, socalled»multicultural« urban working-class neighborhoods, who felt unable to express their dissatisfaction with turbulent cultural changes – the spread of foreign languages, customs and habits, and Islam – and crime in their immediate living environment without being branded as racist by the politically-correct»chattering classes«. So the Fortuyn Revolt was an almost unholy alliance of frustrated emotions, ambitions and expectations on the part of two groups which felt unrepresented by established politics. A second reason for the populist momentum was the disappearance of ideological confrontation in politics and the creation of a generally depoliticized climate during the 1990s. Many factors contributed to this: from postmodernism, through Fukuyama’s»end of ideological history«, to the international debate on the»Third Way« with its transcendence of traditional left-right positions. To this must be added the centripetal force of a middle-class society, divorced from its traditional social, political and religious affiliations, increasingly gravitating towards the center, as a result of which all political parties shifted towards the electoral middle ground in order to win votes. A third reason which could be posited to explain why an»anti-Establishment frame« fell upon fertile ground in the Netherlands can be linked to Max Weber’s theory of»Herrschaft«(»mastery« or»rule«). This states that, after a long period of dominance by a bureaucratic style of government which is regarded as incapable of solving what are seen as pressing social issues, it will be replaced by a phase of charismatic authority. And it does have to be said that the rise and impact of Pim Fortuyn can quite convincingly be described as such a case of charismatic authority. 6. Adri Duivesteijn,»De revolutie der buitengeslotenen«, Socialisme& Democratie , no. 5/6(2002), pp. 60–67. ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 87

To be sure, a technocratic administrative style had come to dominate the Netherlands under the Purple Coalitions. Fortuyn caused an earthquake in the country’s political system of alliances and Polder models simply because, before he emerged, politicians had been used to solving the issue of primacy during the Dutch welfare state’s period of adaptation to globalization and European economic and monetary union through »wheeling and dealing« between employers and the labor movement, through off-stage policymaking by interest groups and civil servants, and through a trade-off between the conflicting interests of the PvdA and the vvd in the form of the Purple Coalitions led by Wim Kok. The citizenvoter was left simply standing on the sidelines and looking on. The void created by the disappearance of the left-right confrontation was, in effect, filled by another fundamental political cleavage: the characteristic opposition of populism, political outsiders against the established order. Alongside this populist attack on the self-absorbed, bureaucratic political class, Fortuyn’s rapid rise can also without doubt be attributed to the burning social issues of immigration and integration, which he addressed head on. In this respect, one could with equal justice associate him with Haider’s anti-Establishment populism and describe him as a radical defender of Western liberal culture. As a matter of fact, political significance must be attached to his homosexuality. It is no coincidence that in the supposedly progressive, libertarian Netherlands – with its tolerance towards sex, drugs, rock’n roll, and euthanasia to boot – it was a gay man who climbed the barricades to take up the struggle against the notion of the multicultural society and unchecked immigration. At least, that is one way of looking at it. Fortuyn considered it his task to sound the alarm»against the Islamization of our culture«, as the title of a book he published in 1997 put it. Fortuyn’s criticism of the multicultural society arose out of his fear of such»Islamization«: of a culture in which there would be little place for individual autonomy or freedom for women and homosexuals. He wanted to defend hard-won Western liberal and democratic freedoms – such as gay and women’s rights, the separation of Church and State, and freedom of expression – against Islam, which he called a»backward culture«. Muslim immigrants, particularly those from a fundamentalist background, could threaten those 88 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

Western values. For that reason Fortuyn also attacked the West’s cultural relativism, which he viewed as dangerous and threatening, given the antidemocratic nature of Islamic regimes. This Islamophobic discourse not only became less controversial following the terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001, but it could also count upon more support in the Netherlands. As elsewhere, a fear of political Islam and of Muslim fundamentalism gripped the country. There was something else, too. Particularly since the Dutch publicist Paul Scheffer had intervened with a ground-breaking article entitled»The multicultural drama« in the newspaper nrc Handelsblad, the debate on multiculturalism in the Netherlands had been dominated by notions of failing integration, adaptation, assimilation and cultural integration. This instead and to the detriment of the previous discourse, which had been about multiculturalism or»interculturalism«: actively stimulating people to learn to accept one another’s differences. We can now say that Pim Fortuyn simply managed to transfer, using provocative and radicalized language, the public and intellectual debate already being conducted in the opinion columns of the newspapers onto »the street« and into relatively run-down city neighborhoods, particularly those of Rotterdam. Places where members of ethnic minorities grouped together in large numbers, not to form ghettos in the socio-economic sense but certainly creating segregated communities in the cultural sense. The other main issue in the 2002 general election campaign was the public sector. Political discontent and disenchantment in the Netherlands focused upon government performance in its delivery, both quantitatively and qualitatively, of public services. Health-service waiting lists became the symbol of that dissatisfaction, along with alarm about increased and »multicultural« crime. The political program of Pim Fortuyn and his lpf , as set out in his book»De Puinhopen van Acht Jaar Paars«(»The ruins of eight purple years«), was mainly concerned with the so-called decay of the public sector. 7 The neglected public sector was also the main target for 7.»After two Purple Coalition governments«, wrote Fortuyn,»the public domain and the collective sector are in a disastrous state. They have minded the shop, but nothing more. Health-service waiting lists are unjustifiably long, education is in an alarming state, public security is too low, the public administration has lost its credibility, and so on and so forth«, Pim Fortuyn, De Puinhopen van acht Jaar Paars (2002), rear flyleaf. ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 89

Jan-Peter Balkenende’s Christian-Democratic cda , which in its election manifesto promised a»post-Purple reconstruction«, and of the radical socialist sp , which accused the PvdA in particular of»neoliberal betrayal of the public sector« and even talked of the»clearance sale of civilization«. The coalition partners were unable to defend themselves convincingly against such a mass attack. The question remains, however, whether this image of a totally collapsed and crumbling public sector represents reality, or is merely a perception, perhaps even a manipulated one? To summarize, it is striking just how much the criteria defined in the political science literature concerning the rise of right-wing populist movements seem to apply to the Netherlands of the 1980s and 1990s. The extensive convergence of the main political parties, the evaporation of the left-right divide and the replacement – once the problem of mass unemployment had been solved – of a socio-economic cleavage by a socio-cultural one; the slow breakdown of the taboos imposed by political correctness, enabling the exposure of more and more critical problems in the integration of ethnic minorities and high levels of dissatisfaction with the »multicultural society«; and disinvestment from and strong negative perceptions about the public sector. Just as the rise of populism went by the book, so too has its recent fall in both the Netherlands and Austria. The implosions of both the lpf and Haider’s party follow a pattern which proves that populist movements are usually extremely unstable internally. The populist aversion to institutions and representation, and hence its allergy to the formation of parties along traditional lines, means that it lacks powerful political machines built around»cadres« and with some degree of continuity and consistency in their programs. Instead, it often seeks refuge in charismatic or authoritarian leadership. It goes without saying that a populist party which loses its undisputed leader through a tragic murder on the eve of a general election is going to find itself with major problems, especially if it is set to participate in the new government. And governing always has been the Achilles heel of and main source of conflict within populist protest movements. Just as leadership conflicts are endemic to them – as in the Haider case, for example. Right-wing populist parties are much better at being an alarmsounding protest movement than a stable partner in government. One could say, in fact, that their power lies in that ability to signal, to agitate and to raise issues. And this, too, goes entirely by the book. Regardless of their actual political power, populist parties have a great ability 90 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

to affect the political debate. In other words, right-wing populism as a body of thought can exist and propagate itself without requiring the lasting presence of populist parties, particularly when the political mainstream in a country adopts or even internalizes parts of the populist agenda, thus effectively making right-wing populism part of the mainstream. 8 Populism is a backlash against a world in flux: an anxious, angry cry to preserve a familiar way of life and identity. It is a protest against threats from outside, and at the same time the alarm signal that the existing political and social system is failing to represent people. In this respect, the situation is more or less a mirror image of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when social democracy was by no means in government all the time or everywhere, but particularly in the countries of north-west Europe certainly set the political tone with its paradigm of the social welfare state. The right-wing populist agenda, on the other hand, focuses upon the following themes and issues: the social upheaval caused by the ongoing process of modernization; the»illusion« of the multicultural society; crime and insecurity, and the restoration of standards and values, order and authority; abuses of power by governing political elites and the established»cartel« of political parties; shortcomings of democratic representation in today’s parliamentary party democracies; the apparently unstoppable European integration and expansion being imposed by elites; leftist tolerance(political correctness, libertarian permissiveness); and the»crisis« in the public sector caused by government’s failure to perform. This agenda does encompass real problems and it mobilizes difficultto-ignore discontent. The rise of populism sometimes even assumes the guise of a»Citizens’ Revolt«, evidently based upon a great unease about society and liberal democracy, the causes of which are more cultural and 8. This has been called the»Haidering« of the political system as a whole. Perger writes:»the importance of right-wing populist parties lies first and foremost not in the party-political arena, as expressed in election results and parliamentary representation, but above all in the discursive arena. Populist right-wing politics is part of a new, postmodern political debate centering on the question of political culture.« Werner Perger,»Vorwort«, ZEITdokument: Populismus in Europa (2002), p. 4. ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 91

socio-psychological than socio-economic. The obvious question, then, is: what are the deep-seated roots and causes of this right-wing populist revival in Europe? What explains this huge yet unexpected explosion of dissatisfaction and desire for change amongst the European electorate? Populism: a Revolt Against the Modern Age Ever since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, the modernization of Western society has been one continuous story of detraditionalization, demystification and rationalization. This process of technical, rational and material»progress« has always been accompanied by fear and criticism, countermovements and protest. In their most extreme variants, these manifest themselves as religious fundamentalism and Fascism; in milder forms, as democratic conservatism, intellectual cultural pessimism and archetypal populism. Let us look at this last phenomenon. In the late nineteenth century it was Russian peasants(»Narodniki«) and American farmers who formed populist movements to resist modernity. Both, in their own way, turned against a capitalist modernization and rationalization of»their« agriculture. The American version of this populism arose out of resistance by small farmers who felt threatened by the expanding railway system. The Populist Party which emerged as their representative exploited the farmers’ distrust of professional politicians in Washington, and of lawyers, bankers and big business. These personified the»bulldozer« of modernization which was destroying their land, life and traditional economy. Just as those American farmers resisted the relentless advance of the railway system and all that came with it – uncontrollable modernization, the technical and scientific rationalism which was filling, disrupting and dominating their lives – so one can understand the basic motive behind the new populism which emerged on the threshold of the third millennium. What the arrival of railways and banks meant to small farmers in America over a century ago is – although the parallel is rather forced – what globalization in all its forms means to large groups of people today. 9 As for the most fundamental cause underlying the rise of right-wing populism in Europe today, Betz and Kitschelt state that»the emergence 9. For this parallel, see Helmut Dubiel,»Die Stunde der Verführer«, ZEITdokument: Populismus in Europa (2002), pp. 10 et seq. 92 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

of populist parties is a consequence of a profound transformation of the socio-economic and socio-cultural structure of advanced Western European democracies«. 10 The virus of»plebiscitary democracy« advances insidiously, with the culture of democratic debate between equals being replaced by personalized leadership with a»democratic« mandate. So it is about far-reaching social turbulence and such processes as globalization, post-industrialization, individualization, immigration and meritocratization which, particularly during the closing decades of the twentieth century, led to accelerating economic, social and cultural modernization. Since the 1950s Western economy, society and culture have been»hypermodernizing«, which has led to new and intense forms of »detraditionalization«, real or perceived: fragmentation, differentiation, individualization, splintering communities and collectivities, disrupted identities. Above all else,(right-wing) populism must be regarded as a manifestation of the»downsides« and»flipsides« of that hypermodernization. The new populism is resistance against a changing world, a retrospective desire for the lost world of the past(which sounds more romantic than it should: that desire can easily manifest itself in xenophobic or racist ideas which result in a horrible social and political climate). It seems, too, that the rise of right-wing populist movements changes not only the political color and themes, but also the political style(»Us against the Establishment« and»plain language« rather than official, technocratic verbosity). The tone of this movement is classically populist, anti-Establishment and classically nationalist, for maintaining national identity and against further European integration, sometimes mixed with xenophobic ethno-nationalism. In the wake of the rise of parties of this kind, the very nature of democratic legitimacy also seems to change. The virus of»plebiscitary democracy« 11 advances insidiously, with the culture 10. Quoted in Jens Rydgren, op. cit., p. 5. 11. See Bart Tromp,»Het virus van de plebiscitaire democratie«, Socialisme& Democratie , no. 12(2002), pp. 31–34, and J. Raschke,»Die Zukunft der Volksparteien erklärt sich aus ihrer Vergangenheit«, in Matthias Machnig and Hans-Peter Bartels(eds), Der rasende Tanker , pp. 19 et seq. ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 93

of democratic debate between equals being replaced by personalized leadership with a»democratic« mandate. A tendency which is reinforced by the logic of the prevailing media democracy, which demands extensive »personification without consultation«. As already stated, processes of social transformation create winners and losers – plus a vulnerable group between the two. Flexibility, adaptability, resilience and susceptibility are distributed unequally amongst individuals and groups of people. The most common explanation of the rise of the new right-wing populism is that it is, above all, a revolt of the »Modernisierungsverlierer«. All the forces bearing upon society also bear upon people, their communities and their identities. The knowledge-intensive, dynamic market and media society into which the West has been transformed requires an enormous ability to be flexible and adaptable, plus considerable social and cultural capital. Just as some people are better than others at coping with upheavals in their way of life, so the current social transformations are creating winners and losers. This has been called a»new class society«, in which the criteria for upward mobility are intelligence and education, and those without them form a»meritocratic underclass«.»The advantage«, writes Ultee,»is that everyone ends up where they should. The drawback is that people at the bottom are left without hope.« In particular, they are those employed in disappearing unskilled or semi-skilled factory work. The jobs in the service sector which are replacing that often require social and communication skills which have not necessarily been mastered by members of the traditional working class. Those affected are not just unskilled workers and the unemployed, but also private-sector professionals, members of the middle class and small businesspeople who fear social decline and loss of status. Empirical research has confirmed that these groups are heavily – and increasingly – over-represented amongst the grassroots and potential electorates of the new populist parties. This has been called the»proletarianization« of right-wing populism. In recent years the populist parties in Europe have been developing more and more into workers’ parties. For example, 45 percent of unskilled and semi-skilled workers and 48 percent of skilled manual workers voted for Haider’s fpö in the Austrian general election of 2000. More than half the electorates of both Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National in France and of Pia Kjaersgaard’s Folkeparti in Denmark are made up of the unemployed, manual workers and those with few or no educational qualifications. 94 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

But right-wing populism appeals not only to the poorly educated. It also attracts middle-class and»nouveau riche« groups. And this was particularly so in the case of Pim Fortuyn. Research by the Netherlands Institute for the Social Sciences( siswo ) into social discontent in Rotterdam and in Almere – a new town founded during the 1970s on reclaimed land to house people leaving Amsterdam’s inner city – identified two groups as the main harborers of dissatisfaction with society. The»stragglers« were those who had failed to benefit from the»seven fat years« of the Purple Coalitions in terms of increased prosperity, employment and social mobility. They lacked the abilities needed for the new jobs and had not moved to the modern, out-of-town housing estates built during the period. Educationally disadvantaged, on low incomes and often literally left behind in the deprived problem districts of cities like Rotterdam, with their rising crime rates, disturbance, declining social cohesion due to very high rates of population turnover and the influx of ethnic-minority newcomers, this group can be classified as the Netherlands’ own victims of modernization. And they voted in huge numbers for Pim Fortuyn, as shown by the election results from across such»problem areas« – including the former eastern coalfields of Limburg. But there was also support for Fortuyn in suburban, apparently flourishing towns like Almere, Purmerend and Capelle aan den Ijssel. According to the siswo research, this came from the»social climbers« – people who have done well materially during the past decade, with better jobs, better houses and better cars. But the survey found that this group, often people living on new owner-occupier estates in places like Almere, increasingly felt dissatisfied with society – sometimes with a xenophobic dimension – because the inner-city problems from which many had fled seemed to have followed them in the form of disturbance, crime, insecurity and »foreigners«. And there is a third group, much smaller but highly visible in the upper ranks of the lpf : the»nouveaux riches«, a new class of entrepreneurs from the worlds of ict , property and the law who feel insufficiently represented and appreciated by the current sociopolitical system. But sometimes even progressives have been receptive to the new rightwing populism, particularly in respect of its anti-globalist sentiments: the defense of Dutch national and social identity in the face of Europe and globalization. Many»liberals« also share Fortuyn’s abhorrence of antigay, anti-women Islam. Betz even goes so far as to describe the new rightwing populism as not merely a popular resistance movement but also the standard bearer for an alternative model of Western European identity deipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 95

signed to maintain a common identity in the face of the threat from multiculturalism and globalization. He writes of a populist politics of identity with components drawn from the left and the right, which allow it to appeal not just to»modernization losers« but also to middle-class groups. 12 To explain why it was that right-wing populism become such a force during the final decade of the twentieth century three factors can be identified. First, the theme of immigration increasingly appeared on the journalistic and political agenda in Europe. Not only because of the increasing numbers of immigrants, but also due to the realization that the right to asylum was being used more and more by»economic migrants« – and by organized people-smugglers – as a way into Europe. This was coupled with the fear, particularly in countries like Austria, of massive waves of immigration from Central and Eastern Europe as a result of eu expansion. And there was something else, too. The issue of multiculturalism and integration, the»new social question«, became an ever-more important aspect of the political debate in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Ever since alarmist analyses of the failure of immigrant communities to integrate began to appear the debate has been dominated by notions of failing integration, adaptation, assimilation and cultural integration. This last aspect is regarded as ousting and working to the detriment of the previous discourse, which had been about multiculturalism. That, however, is now regarded, pejoratively, as»politically correct«. In some countries more than in others, the idea of the new right-wing populism as a»third way« between the democratic and the far right has come to be viewed as acceptable as an outlet for»multicultural frictions«. Second, the 1990s were the decade of»the ideology of change«. »Embrace change« became the slogan of the New Democrats under Bill Clinton. At a summit in Lisbon, Europe officially declared its intention to win the global race with the United States and Japan by becoming»the most competitive socially-inclusive knowledge economy in the world«. 13 The apparent determinism and inevitability of processes such as globali12. Betz, op. cit., p. 258. 13. At the very least, it can be said that there was a rhetorical dramatization of the Great Divide, as expressed in the New World ideology of the information gurus and the new-economy hype, and all massively reinforced by the dramatic power of the modern media. As Michael Ehrke rightly states, it is mainly the mass media, the economists and the consultants – the»rhetoricians of upheaval« – who in recent decades have incessantly been telling nations, state welfare systems, companies and individuals alike to»adapt or die«, Michael Ehrke, op. cit., p.27. 96 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

zation, ict , deregulation and the creation of a new post-industrial knowledge economy have even been declared subject to the» tina « principle – »there is no alternative«. First, right-wing governments and later the more or less social-democratically inspired»Third Way« administrations like those of Britain’s Tony Blair, Holland’s Wim Kok and Germany’s Gerhard Schröder fell in line with the neoliberal»Washington Consensus« of the imf and the World Bank, with its ideology of a world in flux, a world of permanent change, all of it in the same direction. Much more than people realize, this has created a climate of huge uncertainty in which, for example, individual unemployment is regarded as a punishment for not being sufficiently flexible, mobile or willing to take risks. Harsh processes of selection and meritocratization in education and the labor market have come to be dominated by this theme:»Don’t miss the boat to the New World.« Third, and as a natural extension of the above, there is the fact that social democracy has more or less disappeared as a counterweight to and buffer against the prevailing social dynamic. First – certainly in the case of Germany’s spd and the British Labour Party – because of a long, forlorn period of opposition and then, once finally back in power, a desire not to force a sudden change of policy direction but instead to»ride the wave« of dynamism with the world in flux. This was the»Third Way« as an ideology of adjustment to the new global knowledge society,»beyond left and right, beyond state and market«. This ultimately left a vacuum which right-wing populism – the cultural revolt of the»little man« against social change – eagerly filled. The Predicament of Social Democracy Right-wing populism can in many respects be regarded as the competitor, the foe or the antithesis of social democracy. The populism which emerged in Europe after the Second World War, in particular, can be defined as a reaction against the social-democratic welfare-state consensus of mixed economies, the Beveridge Plan and Keynesianism; a consensus which also embraced other institutional arrangements, such as a strongly interventionist bureaucratic state, a representative democracy based upon mass parties and collective bargaining between employers and workers. Populism – which by nature is anti-institutional and anti-representational – rejected this post-war consensus, viewing it as counter to the real ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 97

interests of»the people«, if not a form of self-enrichment for special interests and corrupt party elites. Populists regard the sociopolitical system as a whole, and certainly political parties such as the social democratic »machines«, as a corrupt filter separating»the rulers« from»the people«. It is no coincidence that right-wing populism has most prospered in social-democratically inclined nations like Austria, Denmark and, to a lesser extent, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, where it has concentrated its wrath against various models of consensus democracy: the »Church of the Left« in the Netherlands,»concordance democracy« or »proportional democracy« in Austria and»cohabitation« in France. For this reason alone populism throws down the gauntlet to social democracy, which it accuses of betraying the people and which it portrays as a corrupt component of the high-handed Establishment. For a mass party which considers its raison d’être to be»social justice for all« and equal rights, achieved by challenging the prevailing elites of capitalism, this is nothing less than a frontal political assault. Something like this attacks the progressive social-democratic principle of an open society. In terms of both internationalism and international cooperation – European unification, world citizenship – and, culturally, in terms of tolerance and liberal values; certainly since it embraced new social movements and »liberated« intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s, social democracy and the progressive left have represented a libertarian, cosmopolitan and postmaterial ideal of citizenship built upon the values of ecological sustainability, feminism, international solidarity with the Third World and multiculturalism or cultural relativism. Social democracy has refused to side with the anti-globalization movement, yet it has also failed to develop its own model of globalization which differs substantially from that favored by neoliberalism. On this point, in particular, right-wing populism can be viewed as an attack upon the very culture of social democracy. The populists counter the progressive values of social democracy with the argument that they threaten cultural, national and even ethnic identity. This, they say, is the »dark side« of those values, the price to be paid for modernization and immigration. In Austria, the fuel for populist resistance against»Konkordanzdemokratie«(»concordance democracy«) was the equal distribution of power 98 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

across the entire social and political system between the main social democratic and Christian Democratic milieus. The form in which populism appears is highly dependent upon the national context. In Scandinavia it is about resistance to the»extravagant and paternalistic welfare state«, with the excessive tax burden and – formerly – cosmopolitan immigration policy as core issues. The trigger in Belgium is the federal constitution, with the»Flemish card« being played against the supposedly favored Francophone provinces. The system of patronage and clientism endemic within the established parties also plays a role there, as does immigration policy(»Our people first«). In France there was the Poujadist movement of small shopkeepers opposed to Parisian centralism, from which Le Pen would eventually emerge. In the Netherlands, much later, Pim Fortuyn would insist that»the Netherlands is full« and fulminate against the»ruins of the Purple years«, the imperious»Polder Model« and the bureaucratic»manager state«. Social Democracy as the Establishment So, whilst the national contexts may vary, virtually everywhere social democracy is in the dock, facing a whole list of charges. The first is that, much more than its own self-image would like, social democracy is an integral part of the Establishment in the Western liberal democracies. Since the 1950s it has been a standard bearer for the European model of the welfare state, alongside Christian Democracy in its role as a traditional movement of actual or potential government. It is this friction between being part of the»ruling Establishment« on the one hand and the»party of the common man« on the other which is the Achilles heel of social democracy, making it highly and increasingly vulnerable to populist attack. As a result of growing political cynicism, better education and people’s greater assertiveness, the tension between political elites and the public which has long been an integral part of representative democracy has, if anything, increased, whereas the technocratic-consensus politics of social-democratic governments has tended to point in a different direction. Government has sometimes so stifled democracy that in Austria, for example, social democrats have been branded»Haidermakers«: their style of and attitude in government was such that they effectively brought right-wing populism – in this case, Haider’s success – upon themselves. 14 14. Perger, op. cit., p.8. ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 99

Ideological Inertia Second, there is an ideological and policy problem. The political project of social democracy can be defined, in a few words, as»to organize capitalism according to standards of justice and emancipation so as to achieve full citizenship«. But social democracy has recently aroused the suspicion, at the very least, that impotence has caused it to abandon this project, unable as it is to organize the ideological and political process of globalization and shareholder capitalism at world level. Not only does social democracy rightly no longer think in terms of an alternative to capitalism since the total collapse of Communism, but now it also seems unable to adjust capitalism on a global scale even to the extent of humanizing it or tempering it socially. Social democracy has refused to side with the antiglobalization movement, yet it has also failed to develop its own model of globalization which differs substantially from that favored by neoliberalism. The idea of presenting the European social model as a blueprint for the world as a whole has not yet really taken off, to put it very mildly. Indeed, it is still not even clear whether the»Rhineland« or corporatist model of capitalism could be globally competitive in the long term. That will depend upon the prospects for economic renaissance in Germany or Japan. The Third Way philosophy is a perfect illustration of the ideological dilemmas facing social democracy. This was originally a refreshing criticism of social-democratic»etatism« – addressing the failures of government as well as those of the market – and provided a useful recognition of the importance of an active welfare state and a dynamic private sector. But it eventually became far too much of a reconciliation with the dominant Anglo-American neoliberalism of the 1990s. Here, sadder but wiser, I would like to share an observation made by Werner Perger, »Third Way correspondent« of the German newspaper»Die Zeit«.»That the large traditional parties increasingly resemble one another«, he writes,»is probably due in part to the ›majority strategy‹ adopted by the social democrats – the much vaunted ›Third Way‹. In the age of globalization, left politics seems to consist mainly of cuts, labor-market reforms, benefit reductions and deregulation. Perhaps these were unavoidable, but it is difficult to view them as anything other than neoliberal revisionism in a ›light‹ form. Whatever the case, the new revisionism has failed to impress the traditional grass roots of the governing leftist parties … As soon as the impression set in that only foreigners and marginal groups were 100 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

still profiting from the slimmed-down welfare state, the authoritarian face of ›worker culture‹ appeared.« 15 This seems to be a crucial factor. According to many people, the welfare state no longer offered – or was perceived as no longer offering – a safety net. And what security remained went – or was perceived as going – to those with no right to it: undeserving recipients of long-term disability benefits, recent immigrants, tax exiles, and so on. As a result, the alliance between social democracy and its traditional supporters in the educationally underprivileged low-income groups – whose link with it was the protective, reliable welfare state – was put under strain. But beware! It would be wrong to think that the Purple Coalitions and the associated»Third Way« route adopted by the PvdA was the most risky option it could have taken. It is certainly possible to strongly criticize the pragmatic»strong and social«(a party slogan) middle way chosen by Dutch social democracy during the 1990s, just as there is much in that course which is defensible. But those seized by nostalgia for the»true left« and the old, trusted ideological certainties forget that the left-wing credentials of, for example, the PvdA during the 1980s – prior to it becoming a party capable of government under Wim Kok – were based largely upon such themes as nuclear disarmament, the environment, feminism and the Third World – a program that simply did not appeal to ordinary people in ordinary neighborhoods. During the 1980s the PvdA in the Netherlands – like the spd in Germany and the Labour Party in the uk – became so unelectable precisely because, amidst economic crisis, mass unemployment and a welfare system bursting at the seams, it decided that it should be concentrating upon post-materialist issues like nuclear missiles, nuclear energy, the environmental apocalypse and the unconditional basic income. However unsatisfactory it may be in so many respects, the Third Way was a reaction against that attitude and should therefore be considered as a return to the socio-economic bread-and-butter issues, and as a necessary acknowledgement of the process of globalization and the appearance of the post-industrial service-based economy. 16 15. Perger, op. cit, p. 9. 16. The most shocking example of the dominance of post-materialist over materialist themes which I ever witnessed in social democracy was at a conference of the German spd in Mannheim in 1991, shortly after reunification, when the topic»The economy of the former gdr « was scrapped from the agenda so that a debate on the gender distribution formula for appointments to party bodies could be extended. ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 101

The Cultural, Political and Sociological Fault Line The third reason, therefore, that social democracy has been put in the dock by populism is its political program in the area of»post-materialist« issues. For example, its internationalism in terms of European integration, foreign policy and development cooperation, and its ideal of an open society at the global level. In principle, social democracy resists economic and cultural protectionism. All this rests upon a so-called progressive view of humanity and the world, one which is rather cosmopolitan, culturally relativistic and»politically correct«, and dovetails with a generally progressive stance in terms of libertarian tolerance, pluralistic democracy and respect for individual human rights. It is here that a clash occurs with the rightist populism defined by Taggart as»the politics of the heartland – a backward utopia, a justification for the exclusion of the demonized – which accounts for the inward-looking nature of populism. Internationalism and cosmopolitanism are anathema to populists.« 17 By»the demonized« can be meant everything which threatens the»heartland«: the old, trusted world and identity of the past. In the case of right-wing populism that includes, and not unemphatically, foreign influences – in particular, the influx of immigrants and foreigners. But, and this complicates the matter, this is a clash which cuts right across social democracy, too. Or, at any rate, does not pass it over. Research shows that social democracy’s electorate divides into two sharplydefined groups: materialists and post-materialists. And the dividing line between them largely coincides with the cultural split which is defined by educational level, between those with few qualifications who feel insecure and vulnerable and the well-educated who, armed with social and cultural capital, are consciously working to carve out their place in the world. This fault line passes right through social democracy far more than it divides any other political party or movement. And that fact conceals a whole story about the sociological basis of social democracy and what groups it can and does represent. Historically speaking, the alliance within social democracy between the proletariat and the professionals, between the working and middle classes, between the intellectuals and the managers has never been an easy one, particularly during the post-war period. At the time of its ideological reorientation 17. Taggart, op. cit, p. 96. 102 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

during the 1930s, a debate raged within social democracy about whether it was a workers’ movement or people’s one: class-based versus nationbased social democracy. This discussion was conducted against the menacing backdrop of advancing Fascism, which portrayed itself as both anticapitalist and anti-socialist and which proved highly attractive to farmers and the petty bourgeoisie who had fallen victim to the economic crisis of capitalism. So the revisionist debate within social democracy was also about»deterring the petty bourgeoisie and the workers from extremism – read: Fascism and Communism – by generating prosperity«. 18 This extension of social democracy’s ambitions beyond the traditional boundaries of the proletariat and the working class would later, after the Second World War, become permanent. Ever since it was founded, the Dutch Labour Party has attempted to forge an electoral coalition of the working and middle classes; 19 of those with some way still to go towards gaining full membership of society in the face of deprivation and discrimination, and of those who support social democracy from a more comfortable position. The sociological links between the party and its electoral grassroots have become much looser in the structural sense since the 1970s, driven by the breakdown of traditional religious and sociopolitical affiliations in favor of individualization. This phenomenon is in turn linked to that of political parties’ own estrangement from their grassroots. The close links between society and politics, between parties and their rank and file, have largely been broken. The structure of our society itself has changed significantly, and that of representation no less so. Voters have become floating voters, their behavior considerably more capricious than only a few decades ago. Ideological loyalties and class identification have become less and less significant. In an increasingly meritocratic society, lifestyle and cultural identity profile have gained ground. The type of individualism practiced by today’s citizen is difficult to reconcile with attachment to a collective entity such as a political party. And the modern media landscape has further encouraged the loosening of ties 18. F. de Jong Edz.,»De Nederlandse sociaal-democratie en de dreiging van het fascisme 1930–1940«, Socialisme& Democratie , no. 6(June 1984), p. 198. See also Annemieke Klijn, Arbeiders- of volkspartij. Een vergelijkende studie van het Belgische en Nederlandse socialisme 1933–1946 (Maastricht, 1990). 19. The following passages are partially drawn from the report of the PvdA’s»De Boer Committee«. With many thanks to Frans Becker. ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 103

between citizens and parties by giving the business of politics a new logic and dynamic, and by taking over traditional party functions such as socialization, communication and the dissemination of information. This means that not only has the relationship between voters and parties changed, but also that between parties and their own members. Politics has become a marketplace in which political entrepreneurs compete for the votes of citizen-consumers, and the traditional mass parties have extensively rationalized and professionalized themselves, with, as a result, even more drastic social deracination and the further expansion of the state’s influence. The party organizations are centralized. Especially when a party is in government, its center of gravity shifts to the corridors of power. The logic of the media has stimulated more plebiscitary elements within the organization – the personalization of a politically mediagenic leadership – and turned internal debate and differences of opinion into an electoral liability. In the shadow of power, the party organizations have withered. In general, the political leaders of the parties have shown little interest in fundamental policy debates. Their maxim in running their party has been risk management; they have shied away from more open, intellectual debate. In practice, when in government a pragmatic middle way has prevailed and the party’s political profile faded. In its style, communications and program, social democracy should dare to be more»populist«, in a leftist way, if it is to combat and compete with right-wing populism. As a result of all this, the»natural« rank and file of social democratic parties such as the PvdA has become highly fragmented. Large sections of the traditional working class have become part of the broad middle class. From the 1970s on, the PvdA became in many respects a»party of the collective sector«: for teachers, nurses and civil servants. And new groups have appeared, mainly as a result of immigration. The increased heterogeneity of what a social democratic party wants to regard as its electoral base is a breeding ground for different and difficult-to-reconcile interests. Traditional working-class bastions alongside free thinkers and the new knowledge workers, the traditional intelligentsia and immigrants. And, for fear of alienating groups within its electoral base, the party has suppressed the growing frictions between them. 104 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

Just whom the PvdA does represent and wants to represent was therefore one of the main questions following its May 2002 general-election defeat. The modernization of social democracy in Europe – the so-called »Third Way« or»Neue Mitte« – has been a conscious attempt to break further into the sociological middle ground, including those working in business and commerce. At the same time the social democrats still counted the remnants of the old working class, and in a more general sense those at the bottom end of the labor market amongst their core support. But not only did they fail to represent those diverse groups simultaneously in a credible way, but they have also not adequately acknowledged that problem. Herein lies the new representational dilemma for social democracy, including the issue of the multicultural society and all that is projected onto and around it. The election outcomes in several European countries may possibly have brought to the surface a more structural change within the electorate, a change which could confound social democracy for a long time to come. It could well become more difficult for the left to forge successful and robust alliances between the well-educated and the less welleducated, between rich and poor, and between the middle class and less privileged groups. Conclusion A number of conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of the Fortuyn revolt and the success of similar political movements. First, the Fortuyn Revolt was a natural consequence of the comprehensive convergence of the main streams in Dutch politics which occurred during the closing decades of the twentieth century. With the participation of supposed arch rivals, the free-market liberal vvd and the social-democratic PvdA, in a series of so-called»Purple Coalitions« the traditional left-right divide in mainstream politics all but disappeared and existing processes of de-ideologization and technocratization were accelerated. At the same time traditional socio-economic fissures disappeared with the successful solving of the mass-unemployment problem, but this opened the way for non-materialistic issues such as immigration and integration to take center-stage and allowed the culture of political correctness which had grown in this area to be smashed. ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 105

The second conclusion is that the Fortuyn Revolt was an integral part of the wider pattern of rising right-wing populist movements in Europe. This indicates that, as well as its cyclical and specifically Dutch origins, that revolt also had more structural causes. And that they were part of a bigger international phenomenon. It is argued that right-wing populism is a resistance movement against a world in flux and an alarm signal for dysfunction in the representative political system. Third, right-wing populism hits social democracy particularly hard. The new populism which developed in Europe after the Second World War can be characterized as the arch foe of the post-war welfare-state consensus, à la Beveridge and Keynes, which was largely colored by social democracy. That consensus rests upon a mixed economy, collective bargaining through employers’ and workers’ organizations, the bureaucratic institutions of the welfare state, a representative democracy built upon mass political parties and, finally, a culture of liberal – sometimes libertarian – freedoms and international co-operation. All this is complicated by the fact that, both electorally and in their sociological background, social democracy and right-wing populists are partly fishing in the same pond – that of the»little man«. In places their electorates overlap: educationally underprivileged working and lowermiddle-class groups from the cities and their suburbs. The result of this is that a populist»revolt of the little man« highlights the long-standing divide within left-wing and progressive social-democratic parties between the well-educated and the less well-educated, between so-called »materialists« and»postmaterialists«. Looked at in this way, could rightwing populism be the cultural revenge of the»working class« against the intellectual elites within what are supposedly»workers’ parties«? If, despite everything, social democracy still regards its historic task as being»to keep society together«, to face up to the disruptive and destructive powers which are acting upon society to the detriment of liberal democracy and the social constitutional state(Rechtsstaat), then it should start by paying far more attention to the darker aspects and unsettling effects of the hypermodernization which has gripped world society in recent decades. Social democracy must show more courage in making use of the political room for maneuver which this apparently deterministic process still allows. As Michael Ehrke puts it,»Politics in the Age of Globalization appears to be subject to a process of progressive desubstantialization: it is being reduced to making minor adjustments to inevitable processes and managing crises. The lack of fundamental options is under106 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

mining political competition and forcing politicians to dramatize the most minimal of differences or to substitute them altogether with symbols and media events.« 20 Are competing political options for globalization possible? Can a global social capitalism be developed as a competitive alternative to the Anglo-American model, and what alliances and global agreements will this demand of European social democracy – if we can even say that it exists? As a»force of political moderation«, social democracy must in essence keep the so-called»modernization losers« away from right-wing populism and even worse forms of extremism and radicalism. This means both that the forces of modernization need to be tempered and steered as far as possible and that its economic, socio-psychological and cultural impact has to be cushioned as much as possible. This on pain of entering an»authoritarian century«, as the Anglo-German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf recently warned us, if we do not succeed in solving the crisis of democracy in the Western sociopolitical system. 21 A civilized democracy can survive in the long term only if the political moderates sing the best tunes, and keep on doing so. That it is an end which justifies many means. Put simply, 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(the socalled»Antwerp scenario«), then its program, style and communications must make concessions to its educationally underprivileged constituency – if necessary, at the expense of its other constituency: the well-educated intellectuals. This is the painful dilemma facing European social democracy amidst a situation of social turbulence, unfavorable political conditions and attacks from a right-wing populism which promises to protect »the little man« as»a bulwark against real or imagined global forces«. 20. Ehrke, op. cit., p. 19. See also Susanne Falkenberg, Populismus und Populistischer Moment in Vergleich zwischen Frankreich, Italien und Österreich , Elektronische Dissertationen, Universitätsbibliothek Duisburg(2003), www.ub.uni-duisburg.de/diss . 21. Ralf Dahrendorf, Die Krisen der Demokratie (Beck, 2003). ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 107

I must make it absolutely clear that I am not calling here for»Haidering« – adoption of the rhetoric and program of right-wing populism for strategic reasons – in any shape or form. What I am appealing for is that the underlying causes and reasons for the rise of that populism in Europe be taken very seriously; and for a populist discourse and style as the»language of true reality« to be taken more seriously alongside, against and in confrontation with the»language of policy reality« used by politicians, political parties, experts, observers and technocrats. As Michael Kazin formulated it for the situation in the United States,»The desire to transcend populism is shortsighted. It ignores the very persistence of the language, rooted in the gap between American ideals and those institutions and authorities whose performance betrays them … At the core of the populist tradition is an insight of great democratic and moral significance … We should not speak solely within the terms of populism, but, without it, we are lost«. 22 In its style, communications and program, social democracy should dare to be more»populist«, in a leftist way, if it is to combat and compete with right-wing populism. Even if this risks creating major existential problems in the long term: the cleaving of social-democratic parties along cultural lines. »Left-wing populism« entails:(i) acknowledging the»dark« sides of the current process of modernization and the forces which directly affect people’s lives far more than is done at present;(ii) prioritizing the plight of those who have been left behind by the process of economic and cultural modernization as it has accelerated(specifically, through a generous program of compensation for the residents, black and white, of deprived and decaying inner-city districts), as well as making crime-fighting and prevention policy more effective and immigration and integration policies more coherent, as a matter of urgency, in order to check the tendency towards social disintegration; and(iii) disengaging as far as possible from technocratic and bureaucratic complexes so as to»repoliticize politics«. The cozy, introverted and isolated world in which political power is concentrated needs to be smashed. Through better political communication, greater respect for common sense and increased politicization – fewer technocratic inevitabilities, more political freedom of choice – the gap, be it perceived or real, between debate-defining, decision-making elites and ordinary citizens should be closed as far as possible. A civilized left-wing 22. Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, An American History( 1995), pp. 282–84. 108 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency ipg 3/2003

populism is necessary if the wind is to be taken out the sails of a rightwing populism which is rooted in authoritarian and xenophobic sentiments, if not worse things. A civilized democracy can survive in the long term only if the political moderates sing the best tunes, and keep on doing so. That is an end which justifies many means. ipg 3/2003 Cuperus, The Populist Deficiency 109

Populismus an der Macht Das Phänomen Berlusconi MICHAEL BRAUN P arlamentsabgeordneter, Vorsitzender der mit 29,2 Prozent stärksten Partei Italiens, die sich mit ihrer Zugehörigkeit zur Europäischen Volkspartei in der christdemokratisch-konservativen Familie Europas verortet, 1994 erstmals für wenige Monate Ministerpräsident, dann Oppositionsführer und schließlich seit 2001 wieder Regierungschef: Nähme man nur diese Daten zur Kenntnis, dann könnte man Silvio Berlusconi für einen Politiker wie viele andere auch halten. Doch in der italienischen wie in der internationalen Öffentlichkeit stellt Berlusconi zumindest für die westlichen Demokratien eine Ausnahmeerscheinung dar. Der reichste Mann Italiens kontrolliert auch nach seinem Einstieg in die Politik weiterhin eine der mächtigsten Unternehmensgruppen des Landes; vor allem aber ist er der mächtigste Medienunternehmer des Landes und hält ein Quasi-Monopol im privaten Freetv Italiens. Ungewöhnlich ist aber nicht nur die Herkunft, sondern auch der Politikstil Berlusconis. Scheinbar ist Berlusconi ein Mann der absoluten Beliebigkeit, der schon bei der Gründung seiner Partei»Forza Italia« Wahlforscher damit beauftragt haben soll, von links bis rechts die Segmente in der Wählerschaft daraufhin zu untersuchen, wo eine neue Partei die größten Erfolgsaussichten habe; der später in den Wahlrechtsdebatten mal dem britischen, dann dem französischen Majorz- und schließlich dem deutschen Proporzmodell das Wort redete; der mal eine Verfassungsreform nach dem Kanzlermodell, dann eine Präsidialverfassung favorisiert; der zuletzt auch außenpolitisch im Irakkonflikt mit täglich wechselnden Stellungnahmen auffiel. Als Konstante erwies sich dagegen in nunmehr fast zehn Jahren politischer Aktivität die Inszenierung des eigenen Ich, die Berlusconi ohne Bescheidenheit betreibt. Ob er sich nun als»vom Herrn gesalbt« bezeichnet oder einen berechtigten»Überlegenheitskomplex« bescheinigt, ob er verkündet, alle Welt beneide Italien um seinen Regierungschef, oder ob er sich als Gesetzesvater an die Seite Napoleons und Justinians rückt – Berlusconi spitzt die auch in anderen Demokratien gängige Personalisie110 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

rung der Politik in bisher einzigartiger und bisweilen grotesker Manier zu. Entsprechend einfach gerät ihm in der Selbstdarstellung das politische Geschäft. In allen bisherigen Wahlkämpfen trat seine Forza Italia mit dem Versprechen einer»italienischen Revolution«, eines»neuen italienischen Wunders« an und konkretisierte diese Verheißung mit Slogans, die generelle Steuersenkungen bei Erhöhung aller Mindestrenten und einer gleichzeitigen massiven Steigerung der staatlichen Investitionen in Aussicht stellten oder bündig»eine Million neue Arbeitsplätze« versprachen. Bürge für die Einhaltung dieser Versprechungen war und ist immer wieder allein Silvio Berlusconi; seine Biographie weise ihn als einen dem üblichen Politikbetrieb fremden Mann der Tat und des Gelingens aus. Gerade deshalb – weil ihm selbst am Image der eigentlich politikfremden Ausnahmeerscheinung gelegen ist – fällt es ihm auch nicht schwer, gelegentlich mit seiner Inkompetenz zu kokettieren. So berichtete er selbst, auf einem eu -Gipfel habe er als turnusgemäßer Präsident eine halbe Stunde lang eine Diskussion über die ksze (Konferenz für Sicherheit und Frieden in Europa) geleitet, ohne überhaupt zu wissen, was sich hinter diesem Kürzel verberge. Dabei ist Berlusconi eine Person, die nach ihrem unternehmerischen auch ihren politischen Erfolg systematisch organisiert hat – und er ist ein Politiker, der sich als Träger einer Mission versteht. Der Aufstieg: Ein Unternehmer in Symbiose mit der Politik Darf man Berlusconi glauben, dann ist sein unternehmerischer Aufstieg die Geschichte eines Self-made-man, der aus dem Nichts heraus, gestützt nur auf die eigenen Fähigkeiten und fern der Politik, sein Imperium geschaffen hat. Die Realität allerdings sah anders aus. Berlusconi finanzierte einerseits seine Bau-, dann seine Medienaktivitäten aus bis heute im Dunklen gebliebenen Quellen anonymer Kapitalgeber. Andererseits suchte der Unternehmer von Beginn an die Nähe zur Politik. Schon für den Bauunternehmer waren die entsprechenden Kontakte lebenswichtig: Kommunalpolitiker sorgten dafür, dass kommunale Bebauungspläne zu seinen Gunsten geändert wurden; staatlich kontrollierte Banken gewährten Kredit; öffentliche Versicherungsanstalten kauften im großen Stil von Berlusconi errichtete Wohnungen. ipg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 111

Erst recht bediente sich Berlusconi politischer Protektion, als er von Ende der Siebzigerjahre an zum Medienunternehmer mutierte. Anders als seine damaligen Konkurrenten genoss er bei von der Sozialistischen Partei kontrollierten staatlichen Banken unbegrenzten Kredit; er konnte deshalb nicht nur das eigene Network»Canale 5« erfolgreich aufbauen, sondern durch den Aufkauf zweier weiterer Networks die Konkurrenz faktisch vom Markt verdrängen und schon 1984 eine Quasi-Monopolposition im Privatfernsehen errichten. Dabei bewegte sich Berlusconi weitgehend im rechtsfreien Raum: Italien verfügte über kein die privaten Aktivitäten regulierendes Mediengesetz. Allein ein Spruch des Verfassungsgerichts hatte festgelegt, dass Privattv nur auf lokaler Ebene erlaubt sei. Berlusconi umging diese Norm mit gleich drei Sendern. Als aber 1984 mehrere Richter die Suspendierung des Sendebetriebs verfügten, sprang der damalige Ministerpräsident, der Sozialist Bettino Craxi, seinem persönlichen Freund Berlusconi bei und setzte mit einer Regierungsverordnung die Urteile außer Kraft. Die Sozialisten waren es dann auch, die 1989 gemeinsam mit den Christdemokraten ein Berlusconis Monopolstellung festschreibendes Mediengesetz verabschiedeten, dass einem Anbieter den Besitz dreier Sender gestattete. Berlusconi revanchierte sich, indem er seine Sender politisch im Interesse der beiden Regierungsparteien zum Einsatz brachte.»Unsere Informationsprogramme werden im Einklang mit jenen stehen, die in Craxi, in Andreotti die Verteidigung der Freiheit sehen«, fasste die Nummer zwei der Berlusconi-Holding Fininvest, Fedele Confalonieri, zusammen. Mit den Sozialisten und der rechten Mehrheit der Christdemokraten teilte Berlusconi das politische Feindbild: die starke Kommunistische Partei. In dieses Bild fügt sich, dass er auch der Geheimloge p 2 beitrat, in der die gegen die politische und gesellschaftliche Linke gerichteten Eliten aus Politik, Wirtschaft, Militär, Justiz und Geheimdiensten zusammengefunden hatten. Berlusconi war also wie kaum ein anderer Unternehmer ein Geschöpf der Ersten Republik; seine Gegner waren die starken linksoppositionellen Kräfte im Land sowie jene Segmente der Regierungsparteien – wie der linke Flügel der Christdemokraten –, die den Dialog mit der Kommunistischen Partei( kpi ) suchten. 112 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

Der erzwungene Einstieg in die Politik Berlusconi wäre wohl zeitlebens Unternehmer geblieben, wären nicht die Parteien der Ersten Republik Anfang der Neunzigerjahre im Sog der von der Mailänder Staatsanwaltschaft ausgegangenen Korruptionsermittlungen untergegangen. Binnen Monaten zerfielen die Sozialistische Partei Bettino Craxis genauso wie die Christdemokratie. Vom Volkszorn über die bestechliche politische Klasse profitierten einerseits Parteien von rechts wie die faschistische msi und die populistische Lega Nord; andererseits zeichnete sich mit den Kommunalwahlen von 1993 die Möglichkeit ab, dass ein Linksbündnis um die mittlerweile zur Partei der Demokratischen Linken mutierten ehemaligen Kommunisten die Regierung des Landes erobern könnte. Für Berlusconi ein enormes Risiko: Auch gegen ihn waren staatsanwaltschaftliche Ermittlungen wegen illegaler Parteienfinanzierung und Bilanzfälschung angelaufen. Zudem musste er mit der Modifizierung des Mediengesetzes, sprich mit dem Verlust wenigstens eines seiner drei Sender, rechnen. Drittens war seine Fininvest damals hoch verschuldet; ein neues Mediengesetz hätte auch ihren Zusammenbruch mit sich bringen können. Berlusconis rechte Hand Confalonieri fasste die Gefahr bündig in den Worten zusammen, nach einem Sieg der Linken hätten er und sein Chef wohl entweder unter Brücken geschlafen oder sich gar im Gefängnis wiedergefunden. Berlusconi reagierte auf diese Situation, indem er binnen weniger Monate seinen Einstieg in die Politik improvisierte. Zunächst gründete er mit Forza Italia eine eigene Partei; hierbei stützte er sich vor allem auf das dichte Netz der Büros seines Tochterunternehmens Publitalia, das in Italien seine tv -Werbezeiten vermarktet. Zweitens schmiedete er eine Allianz mit jenen politischen Kräften, die wie er einen Sieg der Linken verhindern wollten: einer christdemokratischen Splitterpartei, der sich rasch zur postfaschistischen Alleanza Nazionale wendenden msi und der Lega Nord. Drittens setzte er – unter Einsatz seines Medienimperiums ebenso wie seiner Geldmittel – einen fulminanten Wahlkampf ins Werk. Gezielt spielte Berlusconi dabei die Karte der Politikverdrossenheit. Segensreich sei das Wirken der Korruptions-Staatsanwälte gewesen, verkündete er; sie hätten»eine beschissene politische Klasse« hinweggefegt. Nun sei gegen die»berufslosen Politikaster« die Stunde des Aufbruchs gekommen. Ein Aufbruch, als dessen Inkarnation er sich selbst inszeipg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 113

nierte; nolens volens sei er»aus dem Schützengraben der Arbeit« in die Politik gegangen, um gegen die»Schwätzer« von der Linken Italiens Freiheit zu verteidigen; mit seinem Lebenswerk als Unternehmer stehe er für Taten statt für Worte. Der einfache, politikferne Bürger, dem erst im»wirklichen Leben« und dann auch in der Politik alles gelingt, dies war die Botschaft, die Berlusconi vermittelte und auch beim Parteiaufbau in Anschlag brachte: Forza Italia war, beginnend bei der Wahl des Namens (»Italien vor!«), sein Geschöpf; er suchte die Kandidaten aus(unter anderem mit einem Kamera-casting), er schrieb die Hymne der Partei, er wählte die azurblaue Parteifarbe aus und entwarf das Partei-Banner in den Nationalfarben. Berlusconi spitzt die auch in anderen Demokratien gängige Personalisierung der Politik in bisher einzigartiger und bisweilen grotesker Manier zu. Berlusconi musste sich von Kritikern in Italien wie im Ausland dafür viel Ironie gefallen lassen – doch er war erfolgreich. Im März 1994 gewann seine Koalition die Wahlen; Forza Italia wurde mit zwanzig Prozent zur stärksten Partei im Land. Nach dem Sieg allerdings kam das schnelle Scheitern an der Regierung: Die Koalition vor allem mit der Lega Nord erwies sich als reines Negativbündnis gegen die Linke und brach nach wenigen Monaten auseinander. 1996 schließlich gewann das Mitte-Links-Bündnis des»Ölbaums« die Wahlen und regierte für fünf Jahre bis 2001. Berlusconi schien damit in den Augen der großen Mehrheit der politischen Beobachter erledigt. Doch er selbst war weitsichtiger als seine Verächter; er hatte nämlich erkannt, dass sein Bündnis mitnichten am Wählervotum gescheitert war: Auch 1996 erreichte Forza Italia wieder zwanzig Prozent; die Rechtsparteien insgesamt legten sogar zu und überstiegen 52 Prozent. Ihre Niederlage kam einzig dadurch zustande, dass die Lega Nord separat angetreten war und zahlreiche Wahlkreise deshalb an die Linke gefallen waren. Berlusconi konnte durchaus mit Recht behaupten, dass erstens die Linke weiterhin Minderheit im Lande war und dass es ihm zweitens gelungen war, mit seiner Forza Italia im Verbund mit den verbliebenen Partnern jenes Vakuum zu füllen, das im Mitte-Rechts-Segment nach dem Zusammenbruch der alten Regierungsparteien entstanden war. Er zog den nahe liegenden Schluss: Es galt den Bruch mit der Lega Nord zu kitten; 114 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

ansonsten aber setzte und setzt Berlusconi mit hoher Konstanz jene Politik fort, die er 1994 zunächst überstürzt und improvisiert begonnen hatte. Das permanente Plebiszit Forza Italia( fi ) entstand 1994 in Personal und Ausstattung gleichsam als Tochterunternehmen der Fininvest, und immer wieder wurde fi als »Plastikpartei« eines Telekraten verspottet. Diese Phase hat die Organisation mittlerweile hinter sich gelassen; fi ist im ganzen Land mit Ortsvereinen und Parteibüros verankert. Nicht zuletzt gelang eine Verbreiterung des politischen Personals auf lokaler wie nationaler Ebene. Neben den direkt aus den Berlusconi-Unternehmen stammenden Aktivisten stehen heute zahlreiche Politiker, die in der Christdemokratie und in der Sozialistischen Partei ihre Karrieren begonnen hatten. Weiterhin aber ist fi eine autokratisch geführte Partei geblieben. Berlusconi, ihr»Presidente«, hat sich nie einem Parteitagsvotum stellen müssen.»Präsidial verfasst« sei fi , erklärt er selbst – und meint damit, dass er seinem Geschöpf als Monarch vorsteht. Der engere Führungszirkel ebenso wie alle relevanten Entscheidungsträger auf nationaler wie regionaler Ebene werden von Berlusconi nominiert, Zwiste durch ein Machtwort des Partei-Präsidenten entschieden. Und wer sich seinen Entscheidungen entgegenstellt, muss mit dem abrupten Ende seiner politischen Karriere rechnen. Dieser Führungsstil ist durchaus adäquat: Forza Italia ist und bleibt eine Partei ad personam, in der die Seilschaften unterschiedlicher Provenienz allein durch die Treue zum Vorsitzenden zusammengehalten werden; träte Berlusconi von der politischen Bühne ab, so wäre ihr Überleben unmittelbar in Frage gestellt, denn er allein verkörpert – wie in populistischen Parteien üblich – in seiner Person das Erneuerungsversprechen einer»italienischen Revolution«, das Forza Italia für die Wähler bereithält. Auch das politische Angebot, das Berlusconi seinen Wählern unterbreitet, ist weitgehend konstant geblieben. Berlusconi argumentiert einerseits weiterhin sehr prinzipiell: Obwohl er seit nun bald zehn Jahren politisch aktiv ist, geriert er sich bis heute als der große Antagonist zum gewöhnlichen Politikbetrieb. Politiker nennt er gemeinhin»Politikaster«, die in ihrem Leben noch nie gearbeitet hätten, ja, die oft genug nicht einmal ihr Studium zu Ende gebracht hätten, und gerne bedient er sich der ipg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 115

gesamten populistischen Klaviatur der Parteien- und Politik-Kritik: Die hergebrachten Parteien seien Machtkartelle, die auf Ausbeutung statt auf Dienst am Bürger zielten, die Prozeduren des Parlamentarismus verhinderten schnelle und effektive Entscheidungen, der Staat sei bisher vor allem damit beschäftigt, die Bürger zu gängeln. Auf die andere Seite der Waagschale legt Berlusconi nicht nur sein allgemeines Versprechen, in einer»Revolution« die Bürger vom Elend der bisherigen Politik zu befreien und damit die Voraussetzungen eines »neuen italienischen Wunders« zu schaffen. Zugleich unterfüttert er diese Verheißung mit ebenso»konkreten« wie unerfüllbaren Versprechungen. So stellte er 1994 eine Million neue Arbeitsplätze in Aussicht, und so versprach er vor seinem Wahlsieg 2001»weniger Steuern für alle« bei gleichzeitiger Anhebung der Mindestrenten auf gut 500 Euro im Monat wie auch einer allgemeinen massiven Steigerung der staatlichen Infrastrukturinvestitionen. Berlusconi ist es gelungen, mit seiner Forza Italia im Verbund mit den verbliebenen Partnern jenes Vakuum zu füllen, das im MitteRechts-Segment nach dem Zusammenbruch der alten Regierungsparteien entstanden war. Wenn er einmal Konkretisierungen vornimmt, dann allerdings gibt er sich als überzeugter Neoliberaler zu erkennen. So favorisiert er in der Fiskalpolitik die Einführung von nur noch zwei Steuersätzen – von 23 und 33 Prozent –, sprich: eine drastische Entlastung der oberen Einkommen ebenso wie der Unternehmen; so will er zum Beispiel in der Gesundheitsund der Schulpolitik in Zukunft massiv private Anbieter fördern. Als Gegner in seinem populistisch-neoliberal geprägten Politikentwurf erscheinen aber nicht bestimmte Bevölkerungsgruppen(Arbeitslose, Leistungsempfänger etc.), sondern allein die»Apparate« der»AltParteien«(von der Linken) oder der Gewerkschaften. Negativ besetzte Angstkampagnen führte und führt Berlusconi nur zu dem Themenkomplex Kriminalität/Immigration. Jahrelang zeichnete er das Bild einer aus dem Ruder laufenden Immigration und –»in ihrer Folge« – explodierender Kriminalitätsraten. Wahr ist das Gegenteil. Während Berlusconi von einer»Verdreifachung der Verbrechen« redete, sank in Italien die Kriminalität quer durch die Deliktgruppen Einbruch, Diebstahl, Raub, Mord. Umgekehrt argumentiert Berlusconi, seit er regiert, die Verbrechen zu116 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

rückgedrängt zu haben(die einem nunmehr mehrjährigen Trend folgend schlicht wie gehabt weiter sinken) und gibt den Grund unter anderem mit der aberwitzigen Zahl an, er habe die illegale Einwanderung»um 247 Prozent gesenkt«. Berlusconi argumentiert auf diesem Feld faktenfrei – aber gestützt durch seine Medienmacht: Nachrichten- und Magazinprogramme seiner Sender waren vor den Wahlen von 2001 voller alarmierender Meldungen über vorzugsweise von Ausländern begangene Delikte; seit dem Wahlsieg dagegen hat eine radikale Wende in der Berichterstattung stattgefunden. Wie in den Frühzeiten von Forza Italia aber ist Silvio Berlusconi selbst das Hauptargument in allen Wahlkämpfen. In einem nur aus Diktaturen bekannten Personenkult inszeniert er sich selbst als einzigartige SuccessStory:»Es gibt weltweit keinen, der beanspruchen könnte, sich mit mir zu vergleichen, keinen unter den Protagonisten der Politik, der meine Vergangenheit, der eine Geschichte wie ich hätte. Wenn man die Personen betrachtet, dann gibt es einen, der im Vorteil ist, und das bin ich …. Meine Fähigkeit steht außerhalb jeder Diskussion, von meiner menschlichen Substanz und meinem Werdegang können die anderen nur träumen.« Und:»Ich muss mich mit Leuten auseinandersetzen, die im Leben nichts geleistet haben, … die bloß auf der Bühne sind, weil sie eine Partei geerbt haben. Ich, der ich meine Partei aus dem Nichts aufgebaut habe, der ich eine Unternehmensgruppe besitze, die sich an der Börse glänzend entwickelt – ich werde mit Leuten auf eine Stufe gestellt, die in meiner Firma nicht mal einen Job als Archivare bekämen.« Im letzten Wahlkampf wurde ein Fotoalbum an alle italienischen Haushalte versandt, in dem schon dem zehnjährigen Silvio von ehemaligen Lehrern»Genialität« bescheinigt und in dem auf 128 Seiten mit über 200 Fotos der Erfolgsweg Berlusconis ausgebreitet wurde. Immer wieder legt Berlusconi den Wählern nahe, er werde das»Unternehmen Italien« genauso erfolgreich führen wie seine eigene Holding. Den anderen Forza-Italia-Politikern ist es überlassen, in diesen Chor einzustimmen, die einzigartige Tatkraft ihres»Presidente« zu preisen, oder zu verlautbaren, es sei»eine Tragödie, wenn ich mal eines Tages zwischen meiner Familie und Berlusconi wählen müsste«(so der Parteisprecher Sandro Bondi). In dieses Bild fügt sich, dass im letzten Wahlkampf – einer von Berlusconi mit acht Monaten Vorlauf begonnenen Materialschlacht – ausschließlich das Konterfei von Berlusconi geklebt werden durfte, während die Wahlkreiskandidaten allein mit ihrem Namen, nicht aber mit ihrem Bild werben durften. ipg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 117

Sind das Spielen mit populistischen Argumenten oder die wachsende Personalisierung der Politik aber durchaus noch Elemente, die sich auch im Wirken anderer,»gewöhnlicher« demokratischer Parteien finden lassen, so gilt dies gewiss nicht für den Umgang Berlusconis mit dem politischen Gegner. Obwohl Italien ganz so wie andere Länder das Zeitalter der Ideologien hinter sich gelassen hat, tut Berlusconi so, als werde heute immer noch der Kampf zwischen Demokratie und Kommunismus ausgefochten: ein Antikommunismus ohne Kommunisten, eine Ideologisierung ohne Ideologien wurde zum zentralen Instrument seiner politischen Propaganda. Schon 1994 verkündete er, er müsse Italien vor einer»illiberalen Zukunft« retten; und seitdem lässt er zu jedem Urnengang wissen, dies könnten»die letzten freien Wahlen in Italien« sein. Folgerichtig erklärte Berlusconi in seinen Oppositionsjahren 1995–2001 immer wieder, Italien lebe unter einem»roten Regime«:»Italien ist keine Demokratie, sondern ein Polizeistaat, ein im Westen einmaliger Staat, dessen Regierung von einer linksextremen Partei gestützt wird, die immer noch an Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels glaubt.« »In Italien ist zum ersten Mal etwas noch nie da Gewesenes geschehen. Seitdem die Menschheit jene wahnsinnige Ideologie kennen gelernt hat, die sich Kommunismus nennt, ist es noch nie passiert, dass der Kommunismus, einmal an der Macht, sie dank freier Wahlen wieder aufgegeben hätte: In Italien ist dies mit dem Votum des 13. Mai geschehen.« Zugleich suggerierte er – ohne je Beweise beizubringen –, die MitteLinks-Allianz sei durch Wahlbetrug an die Macht gelangt. Die auf Dämonisierung und Delegitimierung des Gegners zielende Kampagne steigerte sich nach 1998: Nachdem Romano Prodi als Ministerpräsident durch Massimo D’Alema abgelöst worden war, erklärte er angesichts des für D’Alemas Parlamentsmehrheit entscheidenden Umschwenkens einiger Abgeordneter aus dem Berlusconi-Lager, die neue Regierung sei illegitim, weil durch Verrat am Wählervotum zustande gekommen. Diese Kampagne gegen die»Usurpatoren« der Macht sollte er bis 2001 durchhalten. Nach seinem Wahlsieg dann sah er durch den reibungslosen demokratischen Wechsel seine Propaganda keineswegs widerlegt, sondern feierte einen grotesken historischen Erfolg:»In Italien ist zum ersten Mal etwas 118 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

noch nie da Gewesenes geschehen. Seitdem die Menschheit jene wahnsinnige Ideologie kennen gelernt hat, die sich Kommunismus nennt, ist es noch nie passiert, dass der Kommunismus, einmal an der Macht, sie dank freier Wahlen wieder aufgegeben hätte: In Italien ist dies mit dem Votum des 13. Mai geschehen.« Die Tatsache, dass Berlusconi sich also auch nach seiner Rückkehr an die Regierung als Scharfmacher betätigt, wäre mit dem Begriff»permanenter Lagerwahlkampf« nur unzureichend charakterisiert. Wenn Berlusconi systematisch auf die Polarisierung gegenüber dem politischen Gegner zielt, wenn er trotz der Tatsache, dass in der italienischen Politik die Linke schon lange nicht mehr für ökonomische oder gar politische Systemalternativen ficht, ebenso systematisch das Bestehen eines demokratischen Grundkonsenses negiert, dann leistet er mehr. Zum Einen vermittelt er die Botschaft – dafür stehen die permanenten Angriffe auf die »Kommunisten« – dass es bei Wahlen in Italien keineswegs um das ganz gewöhnliche demokratische Alternieren zwischen einander respektierenden, konkurrierenden Kräften geht, sondern um eine Schicksalsentscheidung, in der er selbst die Rolle des»ganz Anderen« gegenüber der Konkurrenz spielt, dem es obliegt,»die Demokratie zu retten«. Es ist verräterisch, dass bei Berlusconi die Kritik an der»Partitokratie« der Ersten Republik, am angeblich übermächtigen, gängelnden Staat und an den »Kommunisten« ganz selbstverständlich zusammenfließt, etwa in der Behauptung, er habe das Land aus fünfzigjähriger roter Hegemonie befreit – so als hätten die Christdemokraten nie regiert: Berlusconi bedient so den bei vielen konservativen Wählern Italiens tatsächlich in eins fließenden Affekt gegen die Linke und gegen den Staat; damit erhebt er deren Ärger über zu hohe Steuern oder einschränkende Regelungen in den Rang eines Freiheitskampfes. Zum Anderen fügt sich in diese Logik der von Berlusconi angeführten »Volksrevolution« gegen das»Regime« der roten»Politikaster«, dass letztere nur Usurpatoren der Macht sein können, während Berlusconi sich selbst auch in Oppositionszeiten zum eigentlichen Vertreter der Mehrheit, des Volkswillens erklärte. Das Reden von der illegitim amtierenden Regierung, das geradezu manische Hinweisen auf Meinungsumfragen, die ihm dagegen recht gäben, oder die 1995 aufgestellte, ungeheuerliche Behauptung, die»Kommunisten« wollten ihn»auch physisch eliminieren«, signalisierten eben dies: Ein Berlusconi, der sich als vorgeblicher Vollstrecker des Volkswillens gegen»die Politik« in die Politik begeben hat, kann sich höchstens deshalb auf den Oppositionsbänken wieipg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 119

derfinden, weil er mit unlauteren Instrumenten um seinen verdienten Erfolg gebracht worden ist. In dieser Logik – in der Demokratie nur dann wirklich herrscht, wenn er selbst die Wahlen gewonnen hat – erhebt Berlusconi sich populistisch in den Rang des Sprachrohrs der»einfachen Leute«, der immer wieder beschworenen»übergroßen Mehrheit«, und macht sich zugleich zum Verfechter einer plebiszitären Demokratie, in der ganz gewöhnliche Parlamentswahlen zum Votum für den Retter des Landes werden:»Es wäre wirklich schwerwiegend, wenn ein von den Leuten Gewählter, ein vom Herrn Gesalbter – denn es ist etwas Göttliches darin, von den Leuten gewählt zu werden – daran denken könnte, das von den Bürgern gegebene Mandat zu verraten.«»Die Menschen haben verstanden, dass es hier einen Revolutionär gibt, der das Land verändern will und der zur Glückseligkeit aller regieren will.« Nicht zuletzt gestützt auf seine enormen finanziellen Mittel und wohlwollend begleitet von den Medien seines Konzerns – neben seinen drei tv -Sendern auch die größte politische Wochenzeitung, die größte tv Programmzeitschrift sowie zwei formal Bruder und Ehefrau gehörende Tageszeitungen – gelang es Berlusconi so, seit 1994 alle Wahlgänge vorneweg zu einer Abstimmung über seine Person zu machen. Zwar blieben dann die Resultate von den jedes Mal seinerseits vorhergesagten Erdrutschsiegen entfernt. Erstens aber gelang es Berlusconi, stabil zwanzig Prozent – und 2001 sogar annähernd dreißig Prozent – der Wähler zu einem Votum für Forza Italia zu bewegen. Zweitens erreichte er sowohl 1994 als auch 2001 mit seiner Koalition den Sieg; 2001 betrug der Abstand in den Wahlkreisen(wo 75 Prozent der Parlamentssitze nach Mehrheitswahlrecht britischen Musters vergeben werden) gegenüber den Mitte-Links-Parteien nur knapp zwei Prozent, dies reichte aber für deutliche Mehrheiten in beiden Kammern. Drittens schließlich setzte Berlusconi sich im Laufe der Jahre auch innerhalb des Rechtsbündnisses als eindeutiger Hegemon durch: Während seine Forza Italia 1994 deutlich weniger als die Hälfte der Rechtsstimmen verbuchen konnte, ist sie heute deutlich stärker als alle anderen Partner zusammen. Berlusconi mag also von einer plebiszitären Investitur durch die per Meinungsumfragen regelmäßig beschworenen übergroßen Mehrheit der Italiener noch weit entfernt sein – doch mehrheitsfähig ist er mit seinem populistisch-plebiszitären Politikstil gewiss geworden. 120 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

Die Wählerschaft Erst der rasante politische Aufstieg Berlusconis, dann die stabil verzeichneten positiven Wahlresultate mögen überraschend erscheinen – wenn man vom Bild eines nüchtern-rational abwägenden Wählers ausgeht und wenn man zudem den italienischen Kontext ausblendet. Italien war nach dem II. Weltkrieg über fünfzig Jahre lang einerseits ein Land, in dem die ideologische Polarisierung eine große Rolle spielte; andererseits kam den Parteien rechts wie links eine überragende Rolle im politischen Geschehen zu: Das Land war eine»blockierte Demokratie«, in der der Wechsel zwischen der Regierung und der(kommunistischen) Opposition ausgeschlossen war, in der die Parteien stärker als gemeinsam anerkannte demokratische Institutionen und Prozeduren die Loyalität ihrer Anhänger beanspruchen konnten. Ideologische Ansprache der Wählerschaft einerseits, dazu eine vor allem von Seiten der Regierungsparteien – erst der Christdemokraten, später auch der Sozialisten – in breitem Maßstab praktizierte Klientelpolitik andererseits, die in einem direkten Tausch zwischen Votum und gewährter Gefälligkeit an den unmittelbaren persönlichen Vorteil des Wählers appellierte, sorgten dafür, dass ein abstrakter, den demokratischen Institutionen geltender Konsens in Italien nie Allgemeingut wurde. Die Schwächung stabiler Parteibindungen im Zuge von Entideologisierung und Individualisierung macht natürlich keineswegs eine Besonderheit Italiens im Konzert der westlichen Demokratien aus – wohl aber die explosionsartige Parteienkrise im Zuge der Korruptionsskandale Anfang der Neunziger Jahre. Vordergründig brach diese Krise aus, weil große Teile der Wählerschaft sich, erzürnt ob der Korruptheit vor allem der Regierungsparteien, enttäuscht abwandten. Faktisch aber spielte eine entscheidende Rolle, dass in Zeiten knapper Kassen der jahrzehntelang gehandhabte klientelistische Tausch nicht mehr praktizierbar war und stattdessen die Regierungen der Ersten Republik sich ihre eigenen Anhänger mit einem Mix aus stetig sinkenden Leistungen sowie steigenden Steuern entfremdeten, während spätestens nach dem Mauerfall die Bindekraft der Ideologien deutlich schwächer geworden war. Tangentopoli – dies der in Italien geprägte Begriff für den Großskandal um das verbreitete Schmiergeldregime – wurde in Italien wie auch im Ausland gern als Revolte mündiger Bürger missverstanden, die sich ihrer korrupten Politiker entledigten. Nicht wahrgenommen wurden die populistischen Züge des Unmuts: Bezeichnend war hier gerade die Veripg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 121

engung auf die politische Korruption – so als sei Italiens enormes Staatsdefizit allein durch diebische Politiker und nicht vorwiegend durch die flächendeckende Klientelpolitik produziert worden. Auf der einen Seite gab es die schmutzige Politik korrupter Parteien, auf der anderen die saubere Zivilgesellschaft – ganz so, als hätten nicht jahrzehntelang Millionen Wähler ihrerseits von der Klientelpolitik profitiert. Berlusconi bedient den bei vielen konservativen Wählern Italiens tatsächlich in eins fließenden Affekt gegen die Linke und gegen den Staat; damit erhebt er deren Ärger über zu hohe Steuern oder einschränkende Regelungen in den Rang eines Freiheitskampfes. In dieser Haltung versteckte sich einerseits das Ressentiment enttäuschter Klientelgruppen, die angesichts der über Jahre praktizierten Politik spezifischer Vergünstigungen – beginnend bei dem den Selbständigen faktisch konzedierten Recht, Steuern zu hinterziehen, bis hin zu Vorrechten für bestimmte Arbeitnehmer- und Selbständigengruppen bei wichtigen Sozialleistungen oder zu individueller Begünstigung bei Einstellungen im Öffentlichen Dienst – ihr Verhältnis zu Politik und Parteien immer bloß im engen Horizont konkreter, individueller Vorteile definiert hatten. Neben dem Ressentiment aber spielten natürlich auch handfeste Interessen eine Rolle: vorneweg nun das Interesse des»Rette sich, wer kann«, das Interesse daran, in Zeiten der Stabilisierungspolitik und der Haushaltskonsolidierung vom Staat nicht zur Kasse gebeten zu werden. Vor diesem Hintergrund erscheint das von Berlusconi unterbreitete politische Angebot der Nachfrage seitens der Wählerschaft durchaus adäquat. Denn Berlusconi deckt übergreifend ein breites Spektrum der Bürger ab und konnte so Forza Italia zu einer echten Volkspartei machen. Verantwortlich hierfür ist ein gelungener Mix verschiedener Elemente. Ideologische Ansprache . Jene Wähler, die mit dem Wegbrechen der Christdemokratie, aber auch der Sozialisten gleichsam verwaist sind, die nach fünfzigjähriger harter innenpolitischer Konfrontation einen Sieg der Linken als Erfolg der»Kommunisten« fürchten oder die schlicht in der italienischen Linken die Partei etatistischer Lösungen sehen, sind durch Berlusconis scharfe Polemik gegen den innenpolitischen Gegner bestens bedient. Die Wahlforschung zeigt, dass dieses Motiv für große Teile der christlich-konservativen Wählerschaft vorrangig ist gegenüber einer positiven Übereinstimmung mit Berlusconi. 122 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

Interessen . Berlusconi hat es immer vermieden, seine Partei als Vertreterin spezifischer gesellschaftlicher Interessen zu profilieren. Dennoch ist zum Beispiel in seinen Vorschlägen zur Steuerpolitik oder zur Schwächung der wie die»Altparteien« zum verkrusteten System gerechneten Gewerkschaften durchaus deutlich, wer die Nutznießer seiner Politik sein sollen. So gewann der Berlusconi-Block unter Unternehmern bei der Erststimme(Wahlkreis) im Jahr 2001 63,4 Prozent, unter Händlern und Handwerkern 54,2 Prozent(gegenüber 45,4 Prozent in der Gesamtbevölkerung) – ein kaum zu unterschätzendes Resultat angesichts der Tatsache, dass auch heute noch ca. sechs Millionen Personen und damit knapp dreißig Prozent der Erwerbsbevölkerung in Italien selbständig tätig sind. Hoffnungen . Berlusconi setzte und setzt in seiner Wahlpropaganda einerseits auf konkrete Versprechungen einer besseren Zukunft. Hierzu gehören die in Aussicht gestellten Resultate am Arbeitsmarkt(»eine Million neue Arbeitsplätze«) ebenso wie das Lockangebot für die gut sieben Millionen Rentner, die im Jahr 2001 mit weniger als 500 Euro pro Monat auskommen mussten(»525 Euro Mindestrente«). So gewann das Berlusconi-Lager 2001 unter den Arbeitslosen 57 Prozent, unter den über 65Jährigen erreichte allein Forza Italia vierzig Prozent(gegenüber 29 Prozent in der Gesamtbevölkerung). Mindestens ebenso wichtig wie die konkreten Versprechen war aber wohl die allgemeine Verheißung, mit Berlusconi gebe es das»neue italienische Wunder«. Hier spielte seine Medienmacht eine zentrale Rolle; immerhin 77 Prozent der Wähler gaben 2001 an, das Fernsehen sei im Wahlkampf ihre erste Informationsquelle gewesen. Es ist bezeichnend, dass die Stimmabgabe für Berlusconi sich direkt proportional zum tv -Konsum verhält(siebzig Prozent der Berlusconi-Wähler sehen die Nachrichten seiner Sender, rai -Zuschauer dagegen votierten mit deutlichem Übergewicht für Mitte-Links), dass sie umgekehrt proportional zur Zeitungslektüre und zur Informiertheit über Politik ist. Vor diesem Hintergrund gelang es dem Berlusconi-Bündnis, vor allem bei den Frauen klar zu siegen. So erhielt Forza Italia 37 Prozent der weiblichen, aber nur 27 Prozent der männlichen Proporzstimmen. Dies ist auf das Wahlverhalten der Hausfrauen zurückzuführen, bei denen Forza Italia auf fast 45 Prozent kam. Berufstätige Frauen, politisch informierte Frauen, Frauen mit tv -Konsum unter zwei Stunden täglich wählten hingegen vorwiegend Mitte-Links. Ängste . Vor dem Hintergrund des eben Gesagten wird auch klar, warum die von Berlusconi über Jahre kontrafaktisch vorgetragene ipg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 123

Kampagne gegen Immigration und Kriminalität so erfolgreich sein konnte. Er selbst schuf mit seiner Partei, seinen Alliierten, vorneweg aber seinen eigenen Medien bei stetig sinkenden Kriminalitätsraten jenes Bedrohungsgefühl, das Slogans wie»endlich sichere Städte!« plausibel erscheinen ließ – und nach seinem Wahlsieg sorgt er samt seinen Medien mit teils erfundenen Erfolgen, vor allem aber mit dem plötzlichen, radikalen Verzicht auf Sensationsberichterstattung über Rumänenbanden oder die albanische Mafia dafür, dass wieder Ruhe eingekehrt ist. Die Politik der Regierung Berlusconi: Vom Konsensmodell zur Mehrheitsdemokratie»all’italiana« Anders als 1994 gelang es Berlusconi 2001, eine über eine reine NegativAllianz gegen die Linke hinaus tragende Koalition zu schmieden, zu der neben den Dauerpartnern – der postfaschistischen Alleanza Nazionale und der christdemokratischen udc – auch wieder die Lega Nord unter Umberto Bossi zählt. Ausschlaggebend hierfür war, dass Bossi eingesehen hatte, dass er nur an der Seite Berlusconis regierungsfähig werden konnte, nicht zuletzt weil das spezifische Gewicht der Lega in den letzten Jahren deutlich gesunken ist(Proporzstimmen 1996 gut zehn, 2001 knapp vier Prozent). Berlusconi hat deshalb heute angesichts deutlicher Mehrheiten in beiden Kammern des Parlamentes alle Chancen, mit seiner italienischen Revolution Ernst zu machen – und er zeigte in den ersten zwei Amtsjahren, dass er entgegen der Vermutung vieler Protagonisten des Mitte-LinksLagers auch in der Regierung seinen polarisierenden Kurs beizubehalten gedenkt. Berlusconi ist insofern durchaus kohärent: Er hat nie weniger versprochen als das Ende der italienischen Konsensdemokratie. Jahrzehntelang nämlich war die nach dem II. Weltkrieg entstandene italienische Demokratie trotz – oder gerade wegen – der hohen innenpolitischen Polarisierung zwischen den Regierungsparteien einerseits, der mächtigen kpi andererseits, von einem starken Zwang zum Konsens geprägt. Proporzwahlrecht ohne Sperrklausel, starke Stellung des Parlaments(und in ihm der Opposition), schwache Stellung der Regierung (und in ihr des Ministerpräsidenten); Zersplitterung der Koalitionen sowie Präsenz starker gesellschaftlicher Gegenkräfte beginnend bei den Gewerkschaften zwangen die Exekutive zu einer kontinuierlichen Politik des Ausgleichs und des Konsenses mit der Opposition. 124 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

Nach der Krise der Ersten Republik und dem Zusammenbruch der sie tragenden Parteien zu Beginn der neunziger Jahre hatte Italien eine höchst unvollständige politische Reform erlebt, die sich im Wesentlichen auf die Einführung eines neuen Wahlrechts beschränkte, wonach nun drei Viertel der Sitze im Parlament nach Mehrheitsmodus britischen Musters sowie ein Viertel nach Proporz mit Vier-Prozent-Sperrklausel vergeben werden. Dieses Modell sorgt gewiss für Mehrheiten und schafft Auf der einen Seite gab es die schmutzige Politik korrupter Parteien, auf der anderen die saubere Zivilgesellschaft – ganz so, als hätten nicht jahrzehntelang Millionen Wähler ihrerseits von der Klientelpolitik profitiert. damit eine entscheidende Voraussetzung für Regierungsfähigkeit: Die Berlusconi-Koalition verfügt in der Abgeordnetenkammer über 370 der 630 Sitze. Italien hat jedoch sein Institutionengefüge nicht an den Übergang zur Mehrheitsdemokratie angepasst. Mit anderen Worten: Das Land ist trotz Berlusconis plebiszitär-populistischen Politikstils weiterhin vom Übergang zu einer plebiszitären Demokratie weit entfernt. Berlusconi mag zum Beispiel das Parlament als»teatrino« – als lästiges Theater – abtun oder sich darüber beklagen, dass er gar nicht die Vollmachten eines Chirac oder Blair habe, muss er bisher doch mit den mühsamen Prozeduren des italienischen Parlamentarismus leben. Mit gutem Grund sieht er hierin einen elementaren Widerspruch zu seinem plebiszitären Modell, in dem vermittelnde Instanzen zwischen dem Willen der»überwältigenden Mehrheit« der Wähler und dem von ihnen betrauten starken Mann nicht vorgesehen sind – und erst recht nicht Gegengewichte. Berlusconi sucht dieses Problem auf seine Weise zu lösen: indem er alle noch bestehenden und der kompletten Machtentfaltung der Rechtskoalition entgegenstehenden Kräfte in den staatlichen Institutionen, in der Politik und der Gesellschaft schwächt und möglichst beseitigt. Immer gleich dabei ist, passend zu seinem plebiszitären Ansatz, die Argumentationslinie Berlusconis: Sie besteht in dem schlichten Hinweis, die Rechte habe schließlich die Mehrheit der Wähler hinter sich, während alle Gegenkräfte von der unabhängigen Justiz über ein kritisches Staatsfernsehen zu starken Gewerkschaften Überbleibsel der Proporz- und Konsensdemokratie seien – so als gebe es in den klassischen Mehrheitsdemokratien keine checks and balances! Justiz-, Medien- und Sozialpolitik waren ipg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 125

bisher die Felder, auf denen die Regierung den Übergang zu einer Mehrheitsdemokratie all’italiana erprobte, um schließlich in den letzten Monaten zum zentralen Kern vorzustoßen: zur Verfassungsreform. Die Justizpolitik Eine umfassende Reform der Justiz gehört seit je zu den politischen Zielen Silvio Berlusconis. Es ist kein Geheimnis, dass hier die persönliche Betroffenheit des italienischen Ministerpräsidenten eine unmittelbare Rolle spielt: Seit Jahren verfolgt die Mailänder Staatsanwaltschaft ihn unter dem Verdacht zahlreicher Straftaten, die er als Unternehmer begangen haben soll und die von Bilanzfälschung zu Korruption und Richterbestechung reichen. Teils erhielt Berlusconi bisher Freisprüche(während jedoch enge Mitarbeiter verurteilt und von Berlusconi nicht etwa entlassen, sondern mit Parlamentssitzen belohnt wurden), teils wurden Verfahren wegen Verjährung eingestellt. Auf die noch laufenden Verfahren reagiert Berlusconi nicht etwa in der Weise, dass er sich den Gerichten stellt und die Vorwürfe entkräftet. Stattdessen wählte er eine andere Strategie: In den Verfahren spielen seine Anwälte auf Zeit und verschleppen die Verhandlungen mit immer neuen Einsprüchen. Zugleich aber hat Berlusconi zahlreiche seiner Verteidiger auf den Listen von Forza Italia ins Parlament wählen lassen – damit sie dort per Justiz-»Reform« ihr Werk vollenden. Schon im Jahr 2001 gelang so die Verabschiedung eines Gesetzes, das die Bilanzfälschung zum puren Bußgeldtatbestand herunterstuft; gleich drei Prozesse gegen Berlusconi stehen deshalb vor der Einstellung. Weiterhin aber muss der Ministerpräsident sich vor einer Kammer in Mailand gegen den gravierenden Vorwurf der Richterbestechung verteidigen. Seine Anwälte beantragten wiederholt die Verlegung des Prozesses in eine andere Stadt, da in Mailand die Voraussetzungen für ein unbefangen geführtes Verfahren nicht gegeben seien. Als alle diese Anträge negativ beschieden wurden, reagierte Berlusconi auf seine Weise: indem er die Rechtslage ändern ließ. Nach monatelangen, äußerst heftigen Auseinandersetzungen im Parlament wurde ein Gesetz verabschiedet, das in Zukunft die Verlegung von Prozessen schon dann vorsieht, wenn der Angeklagte den»legitimen Verdacht« auf fehlende Unbefangenheit am bisherigen Gerichtsstand hegt. Berlusconis Anwälte in Mailand – und in Personalunion Vertreter der Forza Italia im Rechtsausschuss des Parla126 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

ments – stellten umgehend den Antrag auf Verlegung, der aber vom Kassationsgericht abschlägig beschieden wurde. Auf diesen letzten Entscheid reagierte Berlusconi so, wie er bisher auf die Ermittlungen der Mailänder Staatsanwaltschaft geantwortet hatte: Weit entfernt davon, sich der Justiz zu beugen, ging er zum Generalangriff über und erklärte,»rote Roben« verfolgten ihn politisch – obwohl es um sein Wirken als Unternehmer geht. Nach dem Beschluss des Kassationsgerichts wandte er sich in einer Fernsehrede an die Nation, in der er argumentierte, angesichts der Tatsache, dass er die Mehrheit der Wähler hinter sich habe, sei es ein Unding, dass die Dritte Gewalt sich anmaßen wolle, über ihn zu richten. Die von Berlusconi beklagte»Politisierung« der Justiz soll ausgerechnet dadurch bekämpft werden, dass die Regierungsmehrheit einen umfassenden politischen Zugriff auf die Justiz erhält. Es wäre jedoch verkürzt, Berlusconis Politik auf die Lösung seiner ganz persönlichen prozessualen Probleme zusammenzuziehen. Weitergehend plant nämlich die italienische Rechtskoalition Reformen, die es ein für alle Mal der Justiz verunmöglichen sollen, mit Ermittlungen und Prozessen in den Gang der Politik einzugreifen. Zu den geplanten Vorhaben gehört nicht nur die Wiedereinführung einer umfassenden Immunität der Abgeordneten – es war Usus in der Ersten Republik, deren Aufhebung so gut wie nie zu gewähren –, sondern auch die direkte Schwächung der Unabhängigkeit der Justiz. Bisher ist die gesamte Justiz dem Zugriff der Exekutive weitgehend entzogen; der mehrheitlich durch Richter und Staatsanwälte gewählte Oberste Justizrat entscheidet über Beförderungen, Versetzungen, Disziplinarverfahren, und auch die Weisungsbefugnis des Justizministers gegenüber Staatsanwälten ist in Italien unbekannt. Die Berlusconi-Koalition hat nun ein umfassendes Reformwerk vorgelegt, das an diesem Punkt ansetzt: In Zukunft sollen die Staatsanwälte von den Richtern getrennt und dem Justizministerium untergeordnet werden. Ein wichtiges Korrektiv der italienischen Politik wäre damit ausgeschaltet. Zudem erwägt die Rechtskoalition, in Zukunft die Staatsanwälte durch die(nationalen und regionalen) Parlamente wählen zu lassen. Die von Berlusconi beklagte»Politisierung« der Justiz soll also ausgerechnet dadurch bekämpft werden, dass die Regierungsmehrheit einen umfassenden politischen Zugriff auf die Justiz erhält. ipg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 127

Die Medienpolitik Auch auf dem Feld der Medien ist Silvio Berlusconi als Inhaber des größten Medienimeriums des Landes in besonderer Weise direkt betroffen. Berlusconi dachte – trotz des gegenteiligen Versprechens einer schnellen Regelung unmittelbar nach der Machtübernahme – aber nicht etwa daran, diesen Interessenkonflikt zwischen unternehmerischer und politischer Rolle zu lösen; der Gesetzesvorschlag hierzu wandert immer noch durch die Parlamentsausschüsse. Auch wenn er verabschiedet würde, hätte Berlusconi nichts zu befürchten: Ihm wird einzig die operative Leitung seiner Unternehmen untersagt, die er schon 1994 in die Hände vertrauter Manager gelegt hat. Statt einer befriedigenden Regelung des Interessenkonflikts jedoch widmete sich die Rechtsregierung mit umso größerem Eifer der staatlichen rai . Auch in dem staatlichen Sender galt bisher ein ungeschriebenes Konsensmodell: Der Regierungsmehrheit stand die – von den beiden Parlamentspräsidenten berufene – Senderspitze, die Mehrheit im Verwaltungsrat sowie der Zugriff auf die Mehrheit der Chefredaktionen zu, doch auch die Opposition wurde mit der Kontrolle über wenigstens einen Kanal und eine Nachrichtenredaktion entschädigt. Formal hielt nach dem turnusgemäßen Ausscheiden des bisherigen Verwaltungsrates im Februar 2002 auch die Rechtskoalition an diesem Arrangement fest. Der damals ernannte Präsident der rai und zwei weitere Mitglieder des Verwaltungsrates waren dem Regierungslager zuzurechnen, zwei weitere Ratsmitglieder dagegen der Opposition. Doch schon bei der Verteilung der weiteren Chefpositionen zeigte sich, dass die Rechte zu weit geringeren Konzessionen als bisher üblich bereit ist: Sie konzedierte den Mitte-Links-Kräften einzig die Federführung bei rai 3, dem Kanal mit den geringsten Mitteln und der geringsten Einschaltquote. Als Chef der Nachrichtenredaktion bei rai 1 wurde ein ursprünglich aus dem Berlusconi-Imperium stammender Journalist berufen, als Wellenchef zwar ein rai -Mann – aber einer, der Berlusconis Forza Italia zwischenzeitlich schon als Parlamentarier vertreten hatte; als Wellenchef bei rai 2 dagegen kam ein Ex-Abgeordneter der Lega Nord zum Zuge. Von weit größerer Bedeutung war jedoch der senderinterne Umgang mit Stimmen des Dissenses. Auf einer Pressekonferenz im April 2002 forderte Berlusconi im Namen einer»ausgewogenen Information« unverhohlen die Verbannung zweier sehr prominenter Journalisten aus dem 128 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

rai -Programm, die vor und nach den Wahlen von 2001 mit kritischen Beiträgen über den Ministerpräsidenten aufgefallen waren und damit – so Berlusconi – das Fernsehen»in verbrecherischer Weise« genützt hätten. Statt gegen diesen Ukas die eigenen Angestellten in Schutz zu nehmen, meldete die rai -Spitze im September 2002 Vollzug: Die beiden Journalisten tauchten in den neuen Programmschemata nicht mehr auf. Stattdessen sorgt nun ein aus dem Berlusconi-Blatt»Il Giornale« stammender Journalist in der politischen Magazinsendung von rai 2 für Ausgewogenheit. Dass sein Programm – ebenso wie die Nachfolgeprogramme im Falle des zweiten geschassten Journalisten – miserable Einschaltquoten erzielt, schmerzt die Rechte nicht sonderlich. Erst recht dürfte sich Berlusconis Trauer in Grenzen halten: Er kann sich nicht nur über die exemplarische Ausschaltung zweier oppositioneller Stimmen in dem für die politische Information der Bürger zentralen Medium freuen, sondern auch darüber, dass seine eigenen Privatsender von den schwachen Quoten der rai direkt profitieren. Ob die Politik der praktisch vollkommenen Übernahme der rai durch die Parteigänger der Rechten auf Dauer erfolgreich sein wird, steht dennoch dahin. Schon im November 2002 brach nach nur neun Monaten eine offene Führungskrise in der rai aus: Nicht nur die beiden Repräsentanten der Opposition im Verwaltungsrat, sondern auch der der kleinen Christdemokratischen Partei im Berlusconi-Bündnis nahestehende Vertreter erklärten ihren Rücktritt, denn auch die zahlenmäßig schwachen Kräfte der gemäßigten Mitte in der Koalition sind mit der von Berlusconi verfolgten Usurpationsstrategie unzufrieden. Im März dieses Jahres wurde schließlich eine der Opposition nahestehende Journalistin zur rai Chefin berufen – im Gegenzug aber wurde sie im Verwaltungsrat mit vier Vertretern der Rechten eingemauert. Erst die weiteren Entwicklungen werden zeigen, ob damit die Berlusconi-Offensive in der rai zum Halten gekommen ist. Zum gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt allerdings verfügt Italiens Rechtskoalition neben den drei Berlusconi-Kanälen auch über die beiden ersten Kanäle der rai – und kontrolliert damit ca. neunzig Prozent der politischen tv -Information des Landes. Zudem hat die Berlusconi-Regierung dem Parlament den Entwurf eines neuen Mediengesetzes unterbreitet, das die Machtstellung des Ministerpräsidenten auf Dauer festschreiben soll. Nach dem bisher gültigen Mediengesetz hätte Berlusconi auf die Ausstrahlung eines seiner drei Sender über terrestrische Frequenzen mittelfristig verzichten müssen. Der neue Entwurf sieht nun vor, dass Berlusconi seine drei Sender behalipg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 129

ten darf. Außerdem sollen die Konzentrationsvorschriften bei den Werbeeinnahmen – dort kassiert Berlusconi schon heute allein 68 Prozent des tv -Werbekuchens – weiter aufgeweicht werden. Und schließlich soll das Verbot für tv -Unternehmer fallen, auch Tageszeitungen zu kontrollieren. Was andere»Interessenkonflikt« nennen, behandelt Berlusconi also als Interessenkonvergenz: Er benutzt seine politische Position als Regierungschef, um seine Medienmacht auszubauen – die er wiederum in seinen Auseinandersetzungen mit der Opposition, mit der Justiz, mit den Gewerkschaften offensiv einsetzt. Italien droht damit zum Sonderfall einer europäischen Demokratie zu werden, in der die kritische Wächterrolle der Medien – vorneweg des Fernsehens – faktisch suspendiert ist. Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Arbeitsmarktpolitik Nicht zuletzt auf dem Feld der Wirtschafts- und Sozialpolitik hatte Berlusconi mit dem Versprechen eines»neuen italienischen Wunders« die Wahlen 2001 gewonnen. Sein Wahlsieg sollte quasi von selbst neue Wachstumskräfte freisetzen und damit die Voraussetzung für die Realisierung der vollmundig gemachten Wahlversprechen einer allgemeinen Steuersenkung ebenso wie einer allgemeinen Aufstockung der Mindestrenten schaffen. Angesichts der durch die konjunkturelle Entwicklung äußerst engen Handlungsspielräume konnte sein Kabinett jedoch kaum Zeichen einer umfassenden Wende setzen. Im Haushalt 2003 wurde eine Steuersenkung für untere und mittlere Einkommen verabschiedet, die für das Gros der Beschäftigten nur äußerst bescheidene Vorteile mit sich bringt. Einzig Niedrigsteinkommen profitieren spürbar. Als Feld, auf dem dennoch ein Signal des Aufbruchs zu setzen war, wählte die Regierung die Arbeitsmarktreform. Die von der Rechtskoalition und dem Unternehmerverband gemeinsam verfochtene These war und ist, vor allem der zu rigide Kündigungsschutz blockiere die Schaffung neuer Arbeitsplätze. Deshalb ergriff der Arbeitsminister die Initiative, die bisherige Kündigungsschutznorm – nach der Arbeitsrichter bindend die Wiedereinstellung eines zu Unrecht Gekündigten anordnen können – zu lockern und unrechtmäßig Entlassenen nur noch eine Abfindung zuzugestehen. Bei dieser Initiative schwang die kaum verhüllte Hoffnung mit, die schon in den letzten Jahren zu verzeichnenden großen Differenzen zwi130 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

schen den drei großen Gewerkschaftsbünden weiter vertiefen zu können. In der Tat trat die erhoffte Wirkung ein. Alleine die cgil , der größte Bund, sprach sich kompromisslos gegen das Gesetzesvorhaben aus, während die beiden anderen Bünde, die cisl und die uil , sich verhandlungsbereit zeigten. Die Regierung nutzte diese Spaltungen, um im Juli 2002 mit dem Unternehmerverband, der cisl und der uil einen»Pakt für Italien« zu unterzeichnen, der grünes Licht für die Gesetzesänderung gab. Unbeeindruckt zeigte sich die Regierung vom Nein der cgil . Die Verhandlungen und die begleitenden, im April und im Oktober 2002 bis zum Generalstreik gehenden Auseinandersetzungen, nahm Berlusconi zum Anlass, auch auf dem Feld der Sozialpolitik einen Richtungswechsel deutlich zu machen. Statt der im letzten Jahrzehnt in Italien sehr erfolgreichen Politik der Konzertierung – sie erlaubte dem Land erst die Bewältigung der Sanierungsanstrengungen, die die Teilnahme am Euro ermöglichten – soll nunmehr nur noch eine Politik des»sozialen Dialogs« stattfinden: Die Tarifparteien werden von der Regierung gehört, die dann in alleiniger Vollmacht entscheidet – und die sich die ihr genehmen Verhandlungspartner aussucht. Auch auf diesem Feld ist die Absicht unverkennbar, mit den Gewerkschaften einem seit Jahren präsenten Gegengewicht eine weit bescheidenere Rolle als bisher einzuräumen – sowie mit der cgil den unbequemsten Bund zu isolieren. Die cgil zeigte sich von dieser Strategie unbeeindruckt und setzte bis heute ihre Kampagne gegen die Gesetzesänderung fort, mit überragender Resonanz bei ihrer Basis. Wohl auch vor diesem Hintergrund erklärte Berlusconi zum Jahresende 2002, eigentlich sei die angestrebte Modifikation des Kündigungsschutzes irrelevant und werde deshalb vorerst nicht weiterverfolgt. Über den vordergründigen Erfolg kann sich die cgil aber schon deshalb nicht freuen, weil Berlusconi zumindest eines erreicht hat: Eine geeinte Bewegung aller Gewerkschaften muss er angesichts der vergifteten Atmosphäre zwischen den drei Bünden vorerst nicht befürchten. Das Projekt einer Verfassungsreform Das Projekt der italienischen Rechtskoalition, die in Politik und Gesellschaft präsenten Gegengewichte und Kontrollinstanzen zu schwächen, hat in den letzten zwei Jahren Fortschritte gemacht; doch es beschränkt sich keineswegs auf die in Angriff genommene Schwächung einer unabipg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 131

hängigen Justiz, auf den Ausbau der Kontrolle über die Medien, auf die Marginalisierung unbequemer Gewerkschaften. Als nächsten Schritt nahm die Berlusconi-Allianz wichtige Verfassungsänderungen in Angriff. Berlusconi befindet sich in dieser Materie auf einem schwierigen Feld: Einerseits gehört seiner Koalition die regionalistisch-populistisch geprägte Lega Nord an, andererseits die postfaschistische, in einer nationalistischen Tradition stehende Alleanza Nazionale. Um Bossis Lega Nord entgegenzukommen, wurde kurz vor Jahresende 2002 schon in einer der beiden Kammern die sogenannte»Devolution« verabschiedet – eine neue Verfassungsnorm, die den Regionen weitgehende Gesetzesvollmachten auf den Feldern der Schulpolitik, der Gesundheitsversorgung und der Lokalpolizeien gibt. Dieses Gesetz wird aus zweierlei Gründen von der Opposition und von Verfassungsexperten heftig kritisiert: Erstens schafft es keine saubere Abgrenzung der Gesetzgebungskompetenzen zwischen der nationalen und der regionalen Ebene; zweitens erscheint es gerade wegen seiner Verwaschenheit – die große Interpretationsspielräume eröffnet – als erstes Signal, dass Italien sich von dem Staatsziel verabschiedet, einheitliche Lebensverhältnisse für alle Bürger auch über das große Wohlstandsgefälle zwischen Nord und Süd hinweg herzustellen. Gewissermaßen als Ausgleich – und als Trostpflaster für Alleanza Nazionale – setzte Berlusconi den Übergang zu einer Präsidialverfassung auf die Tagesordnung. Berlusconi selbst zeigte in den vergangenen Jahren, dass er selbst keinerlei festgefügte Ansichten über die in seinen Augen besten verfassungspolitischen Lösungen hat: Mal favorisierte er das britische, mal das französische, dann wieder das deutsche Modell. Es kann jedoch als sicher gelten, dass die Einführung der direkten Wahl des Staatspräsidenten durch das Volk bei gleichzeitiger Ausdehnung seiner Vollmachten sich perfekt in Berlusconis Politikstil fügt, der von der direkten, plebiszitären Ansprache seiner Anhängerschaft lebt. Ob ein solcher Umbau allerdings Italien gut bekäme, ist eine andere Frage. Sicher wäre jedoch, dass mit der Verwandlung des Staatspräsidenten in den Chef der Exekutive nach französischem Muster in Italien eine weitere Kontrollinstanz wegfiele: Bisher hat dort der Staatspräsident eine dem Parteienstreit weitgehend enthobene Wächter- und Garantenrolle. Der derzeitige Amtsinhaber Carlo Azeglio Ciampi zeigt, dass er diese Rolle ernst nimmt; so erreichte er etwa bei einigen der schon erfolgten Strafrechts- und Strafprozessordnungsänderungen Abmilderungen der noch radikaleren Absichten der Rechtskoalition – und lieferte Berlusconi 132 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi ipg 3/2003

ein weiteres Motiv, selbst auf die Übernahme dieses Amtes, natürlich nur bei gebührender Aufwertung, zu zielen. Nicht zuletzt würde dies die Möglichkeit schaffen, seine Wiederwahl – nun als direkt vom Volk bestallter Präsident statt als vom Vertrauensvotum des Parlaments abhängiger Ministerpräsident – auch formal als Plebiszit zu organisieren und dann mit neuer Machtfülle die»italienische Revolution« zu vollenden. ipg 3/2003 Braun, Das Phänomen Berlusconi 133

International Policy Analysis Unit – Internationale Politikanalyse Neue Veröffentlichungen Globalisierung und Gerechtigkeit: Michael Dauderstädt Deutschland: Schlusslicht im alten Europa? Kritische Nachfragen und alternative Angebote Michael Ehrke Rechtspopulismus in Europa: Die Meuterei der Besitzstandswahrer Frieden und Sicherheit Michael Dauderstädt Weltinnenpolitik angesichts globaler Ungleichheit – Zur(sicherheits-)politischen Ökonomie asymmetrischer Bedrohungen Michael Ehrke Der Irak-Krieg in der deutschen Öffentlichkeit Michael Lüders Nach dem Sturz der Taliban. Kein Frieden von Kabul bis Kaschmir Michael Ehrke Bosnien: Zur politischen Ökonomie erzwungenen Friedens Politikinfos Alfred Pfaller Grundlinien eines modernen Sozialstaates. Ein Kompass für Reformen Alfred Pfaller Was kann Europa tun, wenn Amerika tut, was es will? Michael Dauderstädt Die transatlantische Differenz im Kampf gegen den Terrorismus Alfred Pfaller Arbeitgeberbeiträge zur sozialen Absicherung sind dysfunktional geworden Alfred Pfaller Rechtspopulismus in Europa: Wovon nährt sich die Politik der Ressentiments? Arbeitsgruppe Europäische Integration The Iraq Challenge: How to Make a Common Foreign Policy Work for an Emerging Europe Online: www.fes.de/indexipa.html

Reasserting American Exceptionalism – Confronting the World The National Security Strategy of the Bush Administration* KENNETH B. MOSS T he national security policy of the Bush Administration has caused both anxiety and celebration about the role of the United States. When the White House released an official strategy in September 2002, some saw it as a rationale for the u.s. -led invasion of Iraq as well as a statement of a unilateral policy for American hegemony over the world. Was the strategy an argument for»empire«, an emotionally laden word with many meanings? 1 American and European critics alike worry that the strategy represents an abandonment of multilateralism and co-operative diplomacy – trademarks of the post World War II policies pursued by the u.s. to build a stable Europe and defeat the threat posed by the Soviet Union. Furthermore, architects of the strategy believe it was confirmed with the outcome of the recent conflict in Iraq. Contrasted against the u.s. history, and not just that following World War II, the strategy does not represent such an extreme departure from previous policy and American interaction with the world. There is much more continuity than change in it. Normally, continuity provides assurance to others. It assures characteristics of American behavior that are predictable and even comforting for allies. But from what date does one turn to find continuity? Much of the criticism of the Bush Administration’s policies rests on an understanding of American policies only since the Second World War. Yet present u.s. policy reflects reassertion of perspectives and stances from u.s. history before World War II, which are combined with unsurpassed military power developed during the Cold War years. u.s. policies * The opinions stated within are solely those of the author. They do not represent the official or stated position of the u.s. Government, The Department of Defense, or the National Defense University. 1. See the discussion about defining»empire« in the first chapter of Dominic Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 3 – 26. ipg 3/2003 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism 135

during the Cold War increasingly resemble an anomaly, as earlier tendencies in u.s. history reassert themselves. The world is witnessing a problematic combination of legacies from different eras, for it mixes long-running strains in u.s. history of nationalism, special mission, and unilateralism with recent military might. The more that critics of u.s. policy regard the period of 1947–1991 as the desired norm, the stranger the u.s. of the earlier 21st Century will seem to them. This combination of historical and recent factors could undermine the present strategy. There is disagreement in Washington about the size of government required to implement this national security policy and the costs to support it. For a national security strategy that relies on ideals and concepts from the 18th and 19th centuries, it has to contend with budget and national resource realities of the early 21st century. Put in political terms, the Bush Administration strategy combines an active assertion of national interests and open-ended objectives with a philosophy supporting reductions in taxes, spending, and the overall size of government. Can this disparity between ends and means be reconciled? Will the American people accept it? The Strategic Objective In spite of the apparent victory in Iraq, one misreads the Bush National Security Strategy if one concludes its goal is military dominance. Military pre-eminence is a means not an end. In his introductory letter to the 2002 strategy, President George W. Bush explains the real objective.»In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage. We seek instead to create a balance of power that favors human freedom: conditions in which all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty.« 2 Earlier, the President observes that»in the twenty-first century, only nations that share a commitment to protecting basic human rights and guaranteeing political and economic freedom will be able to unleash the potential of their people and to assure their future prosperity«. 3 2. See Bush Strategy, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002 p. iv, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf. Last accessed on April 17, 2003. 3. Ibid, p. iv. 136 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism ipg 3/2003

These words echo a long-standing conviction that economic and political liberties are interdependent. Americans believe that true political liberty cannot occur without the laws and forces of the free and open market. Their argument goes back at least to the 18th century, when Immanuel Kant and Adam Smith among others argued that interdependence and commerce could reduce the prospects for conflict and war. Consider how Alexander Hamilton in»The Federalist No. 6«, suggested the same view in 1787.»…[T]he spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humors which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other.« 4 Just how much the United States of 2003 is a»commercial republic« is debatable, but the strategic end-state the Bush Administration desires is a similar one»where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepare for war.« 5 The word»compete« does not mean political/ military rivalries; instead, the praise of»political and economic liberty« in the strategy indicates that such competition will occur more on the level of friendly commerce. Like the physiocrats of the 18th century Enlightenment who believed that economic policies could solve nearly all political problems, the Bush Administration believes that an international environment can emerge where prosperity and free markets govern instead of military rivalry. 6 The requirement for military dominance ultimately might not be necessary. For a strategy written in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and reinforced by concerns about the »axis of evil«, the unbounded confidence expressed about American capabilities in a troubled world is remarkable. This optimism reflects a conviction that history is a progression towards political liberty and freedom. There is clearly much of Francis Fukuyama in the present strategy inspired by his book»The End of His4. Alexander Hamilton,»The Federalist No. 6« in The Federalist , edited by Robert Scigliano(New York; Random House, 2000), p. 30. Hamilton’s own view may not have been as optimistic about the harmonizing effects of commerce, but he was writing this to persuade New York to ratify the Constitution. He knew his audience. 5. See The National Security Strategy, p. v. 6. The observation about physiocrats draws upon Felix Gilbert, To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 63. ipg 3/2003 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism 137

tory and the Last Man«; yet, this belief about history’s progress has been part of u.s. policy since the early 19th century. 7 European liberals also shared this conviction, but the effects of two world wars made it difficult for Europeans to entertain such an optimistic perspective on history. Building the European Union has reawakened such confidence, since the eu is seen as a model for international reconciliation and development. 8 American concepts of sovereignty involve more than an ability to maintain control of affairs within national boundaries. Sovereignty is emotionally interwoven with a belief in national exceptionalism and a determination to protect the U.S. from compromise or contamination from the outside world. This linear, progressive view of history is found in the President’s observation that»[w]e are also increasingly united by common values. Russia is in the midst of a hopeful transition, reaching for its democratic future and a partner in the war on terror. Chinese leaders are discovering that economic freedom is the only source of national wealth. In time, they will find that social and political freedom is the only source of national wealth. America will encourage the advancement of democracy and economic openness in both nations, because these are the best foundations for domestic stability and international order.« 9 The President could have added Iraq and the entire Middle East, based on his promotion of political and democratic reform in Iraq as an example for the whole region. Thus, a President who campaigned to avoid nation-building missions, like the Clinton Administration’s policies in the Balkans, has set his administration on the same course of»special mission« taken by historical predecessors. The Bush Administration’s strategy contains a tension in it that the historian Rush Welter found in u.s. policies 150 years ago. The strategy stresses an American obligation to the world, but it also seeks protection 7. See Rush Welter, The Mind of America: 1820 – 1860 (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1975), especially pp. 3 – 74. 8. In late 2002 the author heard a speaker from Germany, a former parliamentarian and government official, express the opinion that what the world needed for reconciliation and stability were more»little Brussels« – hopefully not modeled after those offices that discuss agriculture policy. 9. The National Security Strategy, p. v. 138 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism ipg 3/2003

of the u.s. »against untoward consequences arising from that obligation«. 10 Whether an obligation to the world or protection of the United States from the dangers of that obligation, the American preference has been to act alone. Unilateralism’s origins are very deep in the American psyche. The Bush Administration and Special Mission Commentators have emphasized the Wilsonian vein found in Bush’s strategy – its belief in a unique role for the United States, its assumptions about the universal applicability of American democracy and values, and its religious tone of moral responsibility. 11 Yet, Wilson did not create American exceptionalism and notions of special mission. When Ronald Reagan portrayed the United States as a»city upon a hill«, his words were not Wilson’s but those of Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay Colony from the early 17th century. Being on a hill suggests not only superiority but also safe distance from threats. Fear of European intervention and corruption of the American experiment made the republic’s leaders try to keep the United States independent from Europe, whether through President George Washington’s Farewell Address against foreign entanglement or the two hemispheres concept of the Monroe Doctrine. Until the very late 19th century the United States preferred to stay on the hill as an example rather than to descend and intervene overseas. The war against Spain in 1898 signaled a change. This time the u.s. , relying on arguments for human rights as well as for political and economic advantage, waged war against a declining Spain. Whether concerned about Spain’s treatment of the Cuban population or totally convinced of Spain’s role in the sinking of the uss Maine, there are similarities with the arguments made before the invasion of Iraq. The historian Walter McDougall has suggested that the u.s. had changed by 1898 because no longer was it comfortable just being an example. Others would judge the u.s. increas10. Welter, p. 46. 11. John Lewis Gaddis writes of the strategy’s goal of completing»the idealistic task Woodrow Wilson began more than eight decades ago« in»A Grand Strategy of Transformation«, Foreign Policy , November/December 2002, p. 56. Also see Edward Rhodes,»The Imperial Logic of Bush’s Liberal Agenda«, Survival , Vol 45, No. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 131 – 154. ipg 3/2003 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism 139

ingly by actions rather than example. Furthermore, with economic and new naval power, the u.s. believed it had the instruments to act. Choosing to be just an example is a strategy of the weak; helping others to progress is a strategy of the strong. 12 By the time the u.s. entered World War I certainty about the historical rightness of American power had grown. President Bush’s objectives for Iraq sound remarkably similar to Wilson’s in 1917, read beyond Wilson’s first famous sentence. The world must be safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. 13 The claim of disinterest in conquest or possession pervades throughout explanations of u.s. and coalition objectives in Iraq. The elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the removal of Saddam Hussein are integral steps in a strategy aimed at reducing instability and building an international order dependent on competition and commerce rather than war. Bush’s determination to promote democracy in Iraq mirrors Wilson’s resolve in 1913 to»teach the South American republics to elect good men«. 14 Yet, are prospects in Iraq any better than those in Latin America ninety years ago? Each President wanted to protect the United States from the threats that might follow pursuit of its moral obligation. Wilson’s answer was a multilateral framework, the League of Nations. The u.s. would yield parts of its independence and unilateral philosophy to it as an international association serving the welfare of all. Wilson realized how u.s. power now enabled it to act in ways unimaginable to Americans a generation before. A restraint had to be placed on a national ego that might use American power arbitrarily and involve the u.s. unnecessarily in certain foreign episodes. Wilson wanted to commit the United States»to a league of nations which shall see to it that nobody disturbs the peace of 12. Walter A. MacDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), pp. 120 – 121. 13. Woodrow Wilson quoted in Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1935, 1963), p. 468. 14. Wilson quoted in Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era: 1910 – 1917 (New York: Harper and Row, 1954), p. 119. 140 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism ipg 3/2003

the world without first submitting his case first to the opinion of mankind«. 15 Protection of the United States required a check on its own power. But Wilson’s views clashed with others who feared such a restraint would undermine the right of independent, unilateral action for the United States. The sovereignty of the United States could not be compromised. Wilson’s defeat was a signal to every subsequent President that he(or she) must walk a very balanced course between unilateralism and multilateralism. No President has tried to move u.s. policy completely into the multilateral arena, and, as will be discussed below, the aftermath of the Cold War has brought about conditions that have enabled them to move policy more towards the unilateral stance favored today. Sovereignty and Unilateralism in National Security Policy No greater difference between the United States and many in Europe exists than the former’s adherence to the right of unilateral military action and a European preference for multilateralism, consultation, and process. Critics of the United States wonder how to bring it back to a more multilateral route where it can be constrained and held more responsible for its actions. Answers run from traditional solutions of increased negotiation with the Americans, closer proximity to American positions in order to moderate them(the British course), and increased defense spending in order to reduce dependency on the u.s. , to stronger reactions, such as sanctions and possible legal measures against the u.s. , or even creation of coalitions or alliances to balance or contain American military power. Yet, while debating how to respond to the United States, all must understand attitudes towards sovereignty. This, too, is one of the foundations for the willingness to resort to unilateral action. The u.s. determination to reserve the right of independent action is not unique; all powers in the past have reserved and used it. What is unique are some of the factors influencing American thinking. 15. The quotations are from Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective (Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. pp. 11 – 12. The discussion draws from Ambrosius’ interpretation. ipg 3/2003 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism 141

American concepts of sovereignty involve more than an ability to maintain control of affairs within national boundaries. Sovereignty is emotionally interwoven with a belief in national exceptionalism and a determination to protect the u.s. from compromise or contamination from the outside world. Independence of action is crucial. The United States cannot afford to entrust its well-being and security to others. Thus, the Bush Administration asserted a right of independent action against Iraq and other threats.»[W]e will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists ….« 16 These views on sovereignty are reinforced by the Constitution and the separation of powers in the American system of government. The Constitution makes not only the declaration of war but also the concession of sovereignty difficult. No President can implement a treaty with a foreign government without the approval of the u.s. Senate and, in many cases, without the authorization and appropriation of money to support it by both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Constitution reflects the strong suspicion towards the outside world that authors in a weak, new republic would naturally hold. Today, United States, the world’s strongest power, must operate with a Constitution that inherently helps to keep the world at a distance. The Constitution enables the Congress to act in quite unilateral ways. It assigns control of trade policy to the Congress. During the last 25 years the Congress has used this control to legislate a wide number of sanctions with extraterritorial authority, sometimes against Presidential opposition. Through its control of the budget, the Congress can also remove funding for programs or create new ones, which may or may not have Presidential support. This means that American diplomats may have to come to foreign governments with required actions or positions that the President or Secretary of State opposed. Most parliamentary systems provide their government representatives with more authority to negotiate and then turn to governments to enter the treaty or agreement and make the necessary changes in law. It is not as easy in the American system. As observed earlier, Wilson’s defeat over the League of Nations, showed how careful any President has to be in promoting American membership in major multilateral organizations. This challenge faced 16. The National Security Strategy, p. 6. 142 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism ipg 3/2003

Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman during and after the Second World War and George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton after the end of the Cold War. After the Second World War, many Americans thought isolationism and unilateralism after 1919 had created the environment that automatically led to the next one. Yet, John Ikenberry has identified factors that moved the u.s. towards multilateralism: 1) the recognition that a strong state through multilateral institutions could get other states to accept an international system that serves its short and long-term interests, and 2) an appreciation that accepting restraints on its own power, while frustrating, may provide worthwhile gains in the longer run. 17 Wilson’s desire to restrain the ego of American power seemed as prudent as ever. The legacy of exceptionalism that is so strong in the American mind ultimately invites not only unilaterally led action but also unilateral justification, because, above all else, the U.S. must answer to its own values and ideals. After the Gulf War in 1991, President George H.W. Bush thought there was a unique moment to transform the United Nations into a body that would be part of a New World Order to discourage acts of aggression like Iraq’s attack on Kuwait. But Bush was also influenced by additional factors favoring multilateral institutions over unilateral action – the ability to share costs and to acquire international legitimacy. Unlike his son, who has pursued a strategy against Iraq that places most of the cost of the war on the American taxpayer, the father solicited monetary contributions and contributions of troops to lessen its impact on the American economy, then under some strain, and to make the war more acceptable to the Congress and the public. George H.W. Bush’s vision for the un and Bill Clinton’s exploration of a un rapid deployment force that would contain u.s. forces, ran into a Congressional wall that determined to protect its authority over warmaking and the power of the u.s. to act independently required interna17. G. John Ikenberry,»Multilateralism and u.s. Grand Strategy«, in Steward Patrick and Shephard Forman, editors, Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Ambivalent Engagement (Boulder, Colorado and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), pp. 124 – 126. ipg 3/2003 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism 143

tional authorization. 18 Besides the tragic outcome of the un operation in Somalia for u.s. forces in 1993 and subsequent arguments over the value of humanitarian or peacekeeping missions and the criteria for intervention, there were two further developments that reinforced American misgiving about the United Nations. All of these events nourished historic u.s. suspicions of the un . The second was a shift of the political center in American politics. The Congress’s insistence that only it can declare war or authorize, (except in case of attack) the use of force has been a critical reason for suspicion of the un . When Congress gave its approval to u.s. membership in the United Nations in the un Participation Act of 1945, it stated that there was nothing in the un Charter that would allow a President to use it to deploy American military forces without Congressional consent. (Congress placed a similar provision requiring adherence into the Treaty of Washington in 1949 for nato members.) Thus, President Truman’s use of the un Charter to deploy u.s. troops to Korea in late June 1950 was unconstitutional in the opinion of many American scholars; although, the Congress had little choice but to accept it. 19 Even when the Congress is passive in protecting its war powers against the President, its refusal to recognize un authority as a reason to use force has reinforced tendencies towards unilateralism. What the United Nations decides in relation to the use of force is in a peculiar sense irrelevant. It is the Congress’s vote and not the un ’s that matters on Capitol Hill. 20 A perceived American dismissal of the United Nations seems to be part of a retreat from multilateral policies that the u.s. generally followed during Cold War. The extent to which this is occurring is debatable, for the number of multilateral institutions and activities the u.s. is involved 18. Jennifer Sterling-Folker,»Between a Rock and Hard Place: Assertive Multilateralism and Post-Cold War u.s. Foreign Policy Making«, in James M. Scott, editor, After the End: Making U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War World (Durham, North Carolina and London: Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 277 – 304 and Sarah B. Sewall,»Multilateral Peace Operations«, in Patrick and Forman, editors, Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy , pp. 194 – 198. 19. Louis Fisher, Congressional War Power (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1995) pp, 82 – 87. 20.This is not to say a President would not act if the Congress did not authorize force. George H.W. Bush has said he would have done so in 1991, even without Congressional authorization, based on his power as Commander-in-Chief-of u.s. forces. After all, most of the forces were already in place – the decisive factor. 144 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism ipg 3/2003

in has significantly increased – actually by more than threefold between 1970–1997. So, it is unclear whether the increase in objections, such as those against the Kyoto Protocol or the International Criminal Court, reflects an actual increase in unilateral sentiment or specific objections against individual institutions. 21 However, two trends seem to be emerging. One is a preference for bilateral or regional frameworks over multilateral ones, and a growing official rationale for solitary or unilateral action. In trade policy, it is probably unfair to criticize the u.s. for bilateral trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, since the u.s. is merely following in the footsteps of the European Union, which has actively sought such agreements worldwide. In security policy, the trend is unsettling because it is caused not only by disenchantment with the United Nations but with another organization the u.s. hoped it could transform into a willing, effective arm on international security issues – nato . It was hardly coincidental that the u.s. turned to nato enlargement after Somalia and the weakening of its commitment to the United Nations. The United States wanted to act through regional bodies where its strategic interests and particular vision were more dominant and accepted. 22 Since nato was the most important security relationship the United States had beyond its border, it was logical for the u.s. to promote its expansion into the former Warsaw Pact. This would enlarge the u.s. led transatlantic community and insure that ongoing European efforts to strengthen defense capabilities would unfold in ways that would not undermine the alliance. But the u.s. also wanted the alliance to be willing to act in»out-of-area« missions, which especially meant the Middle East. Given the different assessments of the origins of that region’s problems, and the perceived gap in technological and military capabilities between the u.s. and most European militaries, disenchantment with nato began to appear. The September 2002 strategy of the Bush administration contains a clear warning that the alliance must transform to remain relevant. »If nato succeeds in enacting these changes, the rewards will be a partnership as central to the security and interests of its members states as was 21. Stewart Patrick,»Multilateralism and Its Discontents: The Causes and Consequences of u.s. Ambivalence«, in Patrick and Forman, editors, Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy , p. 12. 22. Sewall,»Multilateral Peace Operations«, in Patrick and Forman, Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy , pp. 201 – 202. ipg 3/2003 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism 145

the case during the Cold War.« 23 But what if it does not? Clearly, the u.s. is ready to act with spontaneous»coalitions of the willing« or on its own. The second trend is a mounting attack on large government and international commitment since the Cold War’s end. In fact, that event is a cause of this trend. The undermining of American liberalism began with the Vietnam War and the emergence during the 1970s and 1980s of a new form of conservatism that denounced liberalism’s assault on traditional values. However, the Cold War’s end also closed an era of New Deal/Fair Deal/Great Society liberalism and acceptance of an active government role in social policy. European advocates of strong social policies who draw inspiration from socialist and Catholic traditions often fail to grasp how dependent American liberalism was on the national security state. It was concern about weakened national security that helped justify many American programs on infrastructure, education, and civil rights. Without the Cold War, a rationale that enabled a political culture suspicious of government to accept»big« government had disappeared. 24 For some conservatives, criticism of big government carried over quickly and easily into attacks against multilateral bodies and organizations that were part of the Cold War era. Writing before he became the current Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, John R. Bolton described»the United States as the world most libertarian nation«, which means»antipathy towards government control and domination over the lives of citizens«. In terms of foreign policy, Bolton wrote that»the United States is consistently reluctant to saddle itself with associations with other governments, only a few of which even approach its basic contrarianism«. The latter is a reference to the European Union, which Bolton regards as an antithesis to the libertarian ideal that has guided the u.s. through much of its history. 25 This view of multilateralism as part of an assault on u.s. sovereignty and right of independent action is not an automatic justification for unilateral use of military force. In fact, it could be a case for rigid isolationism and as little contact with the world as possible. However, if one possesses unmatched military capability, is suspi23. The National Security Strategy, p. 26. 24. H.W. Brands The Strange Death of American Liberalism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 173. 25. John R. Bolton,»Unilaterism Is Not Isolationism«, in Gwyn Prins, editor, Understanding Unilateralism in American Foreign Relations (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2000), pp. 53 – 54, 59. 146 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism ipg 3/2003

cious of the philosophies of most governments, and is convinced of the unique mission of the American Republic, this argument provides additional ammunition for pursuing unilateral action. Unilateralism, Pre-Emption, and the Strategic Order The right of unilateral pre-emption against terrorists, claimed by the Bush Administration, is at the heart of much of the current dispute between the u.s. and many in the international community. 26 Of course, the u.s. would claim the attack against Iraq was not unilateral, given the political and military support of Great Britain, Spain, Australia, Poland, and others. Even while the u.s. repeatedly asserted Iraq had violated a series of un Security Council Resolutions going back to 1991, the Bush Administration’s public case rested heavily on the claim that Iraq had supported terrorists, including Al-Qaeda, and that Iraq might provide terrorists with weapons of mass destruction to attack the United States. Therefore, the u.s. case depended not only on its interpretation of resolutions passed during the first Gulf War under the authority of Chapter vii , Article 42 of the un Charter that gives the Security Council the right to determine what military measures are necessary. Claims about a possible Iraqi attack on the u.s. through terrorists invoked Article 51, which concerns the right of self-defense and states that»[n]othing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of an individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations ….« 27 Where does the right of pre-emptive attack come under Article 51? The international legal community is divided, but one can at least point to a body of legal and scholarly opinion as well as historical precedent on which the u.s. can make its case for pre-emption without un authorization. Others argue no such action is permissible without the authorization of the un Security Council. 28 26. The National Security Strategy, p. 6. 27. Article 51 as quoted in Anthony Clark Arend and Robert J. Beck, International Law and the Use of Force, Beyond the UN Charter Paradigm (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 31. 28. An excellent short discussion of this question is David M. Ackerman, International Law and the Preemptive Use of Force Against Iraq, crs Report for Congress, RS21314, March 17, 2003 at www.house.gov/htbin/crsprodget?/rs/RS21314. Last accessed on April 3, 2003. ipg 3/2003 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism 147

Given international controversy surrounding the legitimacy of the operation against Iraq, it is ironic that the United States helped define some of the criteria used by critics. In 1837, angered by efforts of u.s. expansionists who were trying to promote insurrection against the British in Canada, British troops seized and burned the ship Caroline in the Niagara River from which the Americans were sending supplies. After five years of heated charges from both sides, Secretary of State Daniel Webster conceded the British action had some justification. Webster set forth criteria for pre-emptive attacks that have been part of international law ever since. Such acts are justifiable in cases»in which the necessity of that self-defense is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation«. In short, there would be no time for diplomatic action or negotiation. The other criteria emphasized proportionality in response – namely that when authorized by a government – in this case Great Britain – that the action»did nothing unreasonable or excessive; since the act, justified by the necessity of self-defense, must be limited by that necessity, and kept clearly within it.« 29 Was the invasion of Iraq, begun on March 19, 2003, a pre-emptive attack? If the u.s. -led coalition is unable to find clear evidence of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, controversy will no doubt increase, for this was a central part of Washington’s argument. The criteria of»instant« or»overwhelming« evidence was not immediately apparent, and whether or not there was more time for diplomacy was a matter of dispute between the u.s. coalition and its opponents. In a recent article on discussions about pre-emption as a measure in policy during the 1990s Robert S. Litwak draws important distinctions.» Pre-emption pertains narrowly to military action when actual wmd use by an adversary is imminent.« However, Litwak adds, there is also the concept of preventive measures that can include a number of steps, including the use of force»to forestall the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction«. 30 Although Iraq certainly had chemical and biological capabilities, as its actions and un inspections showed in the 1990s, many doubt it possessed nuclear weapons. Thus, the Iraq operation seems to have been a combination of pre-emption and prevention, but there is no consensus among experts about the»imminent« nature of Iraq’s threat, and the 29. See Ackerman, International Law and Preemptive Use of Force, p. 2. 30. Robert S. Litwak,»The New Calculus of Pre-emption«, Survival , Winter 2002 – 2003, Vol. 44, No. 4, p. 54. 148 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism ipg 3/2003

controversy may never be fully resolved, as threats are also matters of perception. Solely within the context of u.s. history there are a number of precedents that could provide a rationale for the Bush Administration’s action against Iraq. A Republican President from a century ago, who is one of President Bush’s favorites, Theodore Roosevelt, provided a precedent, at least for action within the Western Hemisphere, when he announced that »[c]hronic wrongdoing or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and …[in adherence to the Monroe Doctrine] may force the United States, however reluctantly … to the exercise of an international police power.« 31 Roosevelt was speaking before there was any international body that could sanction the use of force, but he had presented an argument for preemption to preserve stability – in this case to stop foreign intervention in the Western Hemisphere – that resembles current arguments for preemption to protect stability and peace against threats of wmd . Closer, though, to the rationale for moving against Iraq was the reemergence during the 1980s of an argument that justified the use of force to correct»unjust« conditions and to build»just societies«. This was part of the case for intervention in Grenada and in Nicaragua by the administration of President Ronald Reagan and in Panama by George H.W. Bush. 32 All were largely unilateral actions. It is an argument that harkens back to those for intervention in Cuba against Spain in 1898 and, of course, for Wilson’s claims concerning Mexico and eventually the entire world. Unlike a century ago, the perspective that seeking a just society is sometimes a more justifiable goal than the preservation of peace has become an argument the u.s. can make to illustrate the limitations of the un Charter. When President Reagan ordered air attacks against Libya in 1986, he provided a graphic precedent for Iraq – namely assertion of the right of pre-emptive self-defense.»In light of this reprehensible act of violence [the bombing of a disco in Berlin in which two Americans were killed] and clear evidence that Libya is planning future attacks, the United States has chosen to exercise its right of self-defense. It is our hope that[ u.s. ] 31. James Holmes,»Police Power: Theodore Roosevelt, American Diplomacy, and World Order«, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs , Winter/Spring 2003, Vol. 27. No. 1, p. 126. 32. Arend and Beck, International Law and the Use of Force , pp. 41 – 42. ipg 3/2003 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism 149

action will preempt and discourage Libyan attacks on innocent civilians in the future.« 33 The air strikes against Libya were both preventive and pre-emptive, and the argument made to dissuade the Libyans from taking similar action in the future was analogous to that for Iraq. The u.s. even tried to»decapitate« the Libyan leadership. Also, President Reagan had ordered this action unilaterally under his authority as commander-in-chief of u.s. forces, consulting neither with the un nor, for that matter, much with Congress. From the above examples one could mistakenly believe that unilateral measures during recent years are condoned and encouraged only by Republicans. In Europe, this author has repeatedly heard that if Bill Clinton were still President, or if Al Gore had won in 2000, u.s. policy toward Iraq would be significantly different. The United States would be respectful of multilateral authority and not be so determined to shun the processes and authority of the United Nations. The financial costs of the strategy will be immense. This is wishful thinking, as is evident by just a brief consideration of the willingness of the Clinton Administration to act without un authorization in Kosovo and against Serbia in 1999 or a year earlier when the u.s. launched a missile strike against a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan thought to be making precursors for chemical weapons. The Clinton Administration regarded the latter as both a counter-proliferation and counter-terrorist measure. In 1994 Clinton was seriously considering using u.s. force as a measure against North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program. The likely high human costs of a war on the Korean Peninsula dissuaded him from doing so. 34 Ultimately, the Clinton Administration was nearly as willing to assert the right of unilateral action as the current administration. Struggling to establish a doctrine to justify intervention in humanitarian crises, Clinton’s advisers did explore potential changes in interpretations of the un Charter that would enable such missions under un auspices. How33. President Reagan quoted in Arend and Beck, International Law and the Use of Force , p. 43. 34. For Korea and the Sudan see Litwak,»The New Calculus of Pre-emption«, pp. 64 – 66. 150 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism ipg 3/2003

ever, as his own administration’s national security strategy for 1999 stated, this President reserved the right of unilateral action, even beyond the framework of pre-emption:»We act in concert with the international community whenever possible, but do not hesitate to act unilaterally when necessary …. Having decided(in the context of humanitarian and other interests [emphasis in the original]) that use of military forces is appropriate, the decision on how they will be employed is based on two guidelines. First, our forces will have a clear mission and the means to achieve their objectives decisively. Second, as much as possible, we will seek the support and participation of our allies, friends, and relevant international institutions. When our vital interests are at stake, we are prepared to act alone.« 35 Whether portrayed as the»indispensable nation«(Madeline Albright’s characterization of the role of the United States) or the nation that can move history along its course of progress, the view of the Bush Administration, many Presidents have persistently reserved the right of independent action to protect not only vital interests but to try to shape a world order that will benefit all. The legacy of exceptionalism that is so strong in the American mind ultimately invites not only unilaterally led action but also unilateral justification, because, above all else, the u.s. must answer to its own values and ideals. This is a disturbing stance for much of the rest of the world, and it is a self-appointed mission that requires the u.s. to weigh the possible negative consequences before pursuing. Very likely, though, the military outcome of the conflict in Iraq will have confirmed for its supporters the wisdom and justice of u.s. policy against the objections of others, even in light of the unrest that followed in Iraq. Is a national security strategy combining a long, historic sense of special mission and unilateral instincts with modern military power of the early 21st century both obtainable and sustainable? Considered from other views of history, which are not as linear or certain about outcome, the answer is doubtful. Even though the Bush strategy recognizes the power of commerce, culture, and democratic values and institutions in drawing the outside world towards the United States, the final means to assure this movement is the unmatched superiority of American military 35. A National Security Strategy for a New Century(Washington, d.c. , December 1999), pp. 19 – 20. http://www.fas.org/man/docs/nssr-1299.pdf. Last accessed on April 25, 2003. ipg 3/2003 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism 151

power. The United States must let no nation or combination of nations develop capabilities to match it. There is an inherent tension, even contradiction, in this strategy. Permeated throughout it is a conviction about the universal appeal and message of American system and values, but the strategy has to acknowledge the fact that there are those who will not accept them. Against those the United States has to decide whether it will direct the power of the sword rather than that of the pen. The strategy’s emphasis on a balance of power that promotes freedom depends on an assumption that China and Russia are moving towards acceptance of democracy, thereby creating a balance where growing commonality of political values and commercial interdependence will alleviate concerns about U.S. military pre-eminence. Going all the way back to Thucydides and his explanation of the cause of the Peloponnesian wars, there is a near certainty that unchecked power, especially if it is military, will eventually lead to endeavors to balance, contain, or defeat it. 36 The strategy’s emphasis on a balance of power that promotes freedom depends on an assumption that China and Russia are moving towards acceptance of democracy, thereby creating a balance where growing commonality of political values and commercial interdependence will alleviate concerns about u.s. military pre-eminence. But will the world be willing to accept the role of the United States as a policeman that acts on its own conclusions as to what is acceptable or not? It requires remarkable optimism to believe this. The disagreement between the United States and some of its traditional allies in Europe, as well as with China and Russia, should suggest the degree of unease about the course being pursued by the u.s. Such a strategy and assertion of American military power will deepen and widen a rift in transatlantic relations that has been growing since the end of the Cold War. More European governments finally are willing to spend more on defense and not because of American prodding but rather because of doubt about u.s. intentions. Could allies become adversaries? It is not 36. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War , translated by Rex Warner(London: Penguin Books), p. 49. The famous quote in this translation reads,»What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.« 152 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism ipg 3/2003

probable, but it is likely that the u.s. -European relationship will increasingly be characterized by distrust and a desire to limit American power however possible. 37 The character of the transatlantic relationship, which in hindsight sometimes seems more harmonious than it probably was, is forever changed. The Weak Domestic Foundations Even though the Bush Administration strategy is steeped in some of the political and intellectual legacies of u.s. history, those moorings may not be as sound as some believe. Strategies are by nature visionary documents. The vision of the Bush Administration’s strategy is a long-aspired goal of the United States that in the early 21st century will require immense national resources to accomplish – especially if the United States tries to pursue this vision of democratic progress and international harmony, reinforced by superior military power, on its own. The financial costs of the strategy will be immense. The Bush Administration wants to increase defense spending by$20 billion annually until 2010, raising the annual total to about$500 billion. However, that does not include other supplemental costs just in military spending that may arise, depending on what course and measures the United States uses in the future. Furthermore, there are going to be questions about the willingness of the Bush Administration to expand the u.s. military if it seeks to increase and then sustain military predominance. Is Iraq a solitary example of the use of military strength, or is it a precursor of a strategy to be used against others? Will such a strategy require more people in uniform, or will the Administration make the case that advances in technology make it unnecessary to increase force size? Regardless of the timing and outcome of the operation in Iraq, it generates questions as to whether or not the United States has enough people in uniform to support its strategy. Finally, one must add the costs of peace. How much will it cost to stabilize Iraq and develop an environment where serious political change and democratic reform could occur and survive? Since the campaign against Saddam Hussein is part of a larger »grand design« for the whole Middle East, is there even a notional sense 37. See Charles A. Kupchan, The End of the American Era, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2002) for an extensive development of this type of argument. ipg 3/2003 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism 153

of the costs that may be required for aid and other programs through the entire region? There is a disturbing aura of»guns and butter« in the present strategy – a phrase borrowed from Lyndon Baines Johnson and his policies during the 1960s. The broad sweep of the present national security strategy when placed alongside the revenue polices for tax cuts suggest that the United States will face limits in pursuing such a strategic vision. That is a stance that will not only affect decisions made about the size and structure of the u.s. military; it will greatly influence the scale and duration of any u.s. commitment supporting this strategy. European advocates of strong social policies who draw inspiration from socialist and Catholic traditions often fail to grasp how dependent American liberalism was on the national security state. It was concern about weakened national security that helped justify many American programs on infrastructure, education, and civil rights. Without the Cold War, a rationale that enabled a political culture suspicious of government to accept»big« government had disappeared. Finally, will the American public be willing to accept a national security policy that increases»big« government in terms of the costs and sustainment of the American military but is accompanied by policies that limit resources for domestic programs? The answer of the Cold War era was to provide both. This was part of the»bipartisan« understanding in American politics that some yearn for when they look back at the earlier years of the Cold War, and that bargain did help win support for both foreign and domestic programs. Of course, another serious terrorist attack in the United States would have a significant effect on national resolve. The future political landscape of the United States will be shaped greatly by graphic and conflicting views over the allocation of resources between domestic programs and national security. Even with the exhilaration that supporters of the present strategy feel after the military victory in Iraq, it will be difficult to keep public attention away from issues at home. Americans lived»in the shadow of the garrison state« during the Cold War, but, in spite of the serious security threats of that era, it never became one. 38 Faced with threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, dangers which are less centrally controlled, it is hard to imagine the American public will allow the United States to go beyond the level 154 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism ipg 3/2003

of sacrifice imposed during the Cold War. The pursuit of a national security policy grounded so firmly in the concepts of American exceptionalism, special mission, and the right of independent action may ultimately be limited by equally strong national values about civil rights and liberties and resolute expectations that government is responsible for human dignity of each citizen. Finding the balance, as always, in the u.s. will be turbulent and not easy, but that is what democracy requires. More on US world politics in international politics and society ̈ Symposium»Pax Americana or ›Civilized‹ World Order?«(1/2003) ̈ Stephan Böckenförde: Militärische Gewalt als Mittel künftiger amerikanischer Außenpolitik(4/2001) ̈ Ernst-Otto Czempiel: Die Versuchung der usa (2/1997) 38. The quote is taken from a book title and its thesis; see Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: American Anti-Statism and the Conduct of the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). ipg 3/2003 Moss, Reasserting American Exceptionalism 155

Westliche Werte und historische Erfahrungen diesseits und jenseits des Atlantiks CHRISTOPH ZÖPEL S eit Beginn der weltweiten politischen Diskussion um eine militärische Intervention im Irak erleben wir eine vielfältige Debatte über das transatlantische Verhältnis. Sowohl im kommunikativen Zusammenhang der Politik als auch dem der Wissenschaft erfordern die argumentativen Positionen Maßstäbe: Das sollten sein, und sind auch zumeist, Werte und historische Erfahrung. Dieses Postulat erscheint abstrakt, so es explizit erhoben wird, dabei wird es konkret zumeist implizit gefüllt, wenn es in der Debatte über das transatlantische Verhältnis um die gemeinsamen»Westlichen Werte« und um die unterschiedliche Betroffenheit von Amerikanern und Deutschen durch Krieg geht. Für die gefühlsbezogenen Einstellungen zwischen voneinander abgegrenzten Gemeinschaften, also vor allem auch von Staatsvölkern, spielt das Größenverhältnis eine entscheidende Rolle. Große verachten Kleine, Kleine stoßen die Großen zurück. Im deutsch-niederländischen Verhältnis lässt sich dieses Grundmuster exemplarisch ausmachen, im zotigen Witz der karnevalistischen Büttenrede, im Fankrieg am Rande von Fußballspielen, wie ernsthafterweise bei der Aufarbeitung von Krieg und Kriegsverbrechen. Es dürfte lebensweltlicher Gefühlsbanalität entsprechen, dass die Aussöhnung in Westeuropa zwischen Frankreich und Deutschland gelingen musste, bevor sie auch zwischen den Niederlanden und Deutschland möglich war, und dass in Osteuropa Polens Versöhnung der Versöhnung Tschechiens mit Deutschland vorausgeht. Was für Deutschland und die Niederlande gilt, lässt sich auf die usa und Deutschland übertragen. Neid, Abwehr, Hilflosigkeit gegenüber der Siegermacht; Herablassung, Unkenntnis, Protektoratisierung gegenüber der europäischen Mittel(Ohn-)macht, das sind kommunikative Konkretisierungen dieser lebensweltlichen Befindlichkeiten. Solche Befindlichkeiten bleiben normalerweise folgenlos, aber werden fehlbewertet, wenn sie aus ihrer Banalität gehoben werden. Vor den Folgen falscher Analyse und falscher Wertungen zu warnen, ist eine Absicht ideologischer Überhöhung des Antiamerikanismus und 156 Zöpel, Westliche Werte und historische Erfahrungen ipg 3/2003

seiner damit verbundenen argumentativen Abwehr. Der Schrecken des Holocaust, dieses größten kollektiven politischen Verbrechens der neuzeitlichen europäischen Geschichte, ist den deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen seit Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs immanent. Dies ist der Hintergrund von Argumentationen, die exemplarisch Dan Diner formuliert. Antiamerikanismus wird von ihm als eine neue Form des Antisemitismus ausgemacht. Diese Zuspitzung einer historischen Erfahrung, des Holocaust und der Beteiligung der usa an seiner Beendigung, blendet aber andere historische Erfahrungen nach 1945 aus. Für die wissenschaftliche und demokratische Auseinandersetzung mit den deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen geht es also darum, einen Diskurs zu führen, der ohne Angst vor der eigenen deutschen Geschichte, ohne vorauseilenden Gehorsam vor der Supermacht, ohne missverstandene Dankbarkeit für die Beendigung faschistischen Terrors durch die usa auskommt. Ein solcher Diskurs muss gemeinsame Werte und divergierende historische Erfahrungen – mit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, mit der Implosion des Kommunismus und mit dem Terrorismus vor und nach dem 11. September fokussieren. Darüber hinaus muss er die grundsätzliche Frage der Beziehungen zwischen Demokratien in der internationalen Politik sowie die Wirtschaftsbeziehungen im Rahmen des liberalisierten globalen Kapital- und Güterhandels thematisieren. Die gemeinsamen Werte und der Filter unterschiedlicher historischer Erfahrungen Auf jeglicher kommunikativen Ebene steht im Zentrum der Auseinandersetzung um die gemeinsamen»Westlichen Werte« der Wert der Freiheit. Bedroht ist Freiheit durch Krieg, bedroht ist sie durch den Staat, bedroht ist sie aus der Gesellschaft, bedroht auch durch Ungleichheit und durch Ungerechtigkeit. Auf diese Bedrohungen gibt es Antworten, die eine Vielfalt dann nachgeordneter Werte implizieren: Friede statt Krieg, Demokratie statt ererbter Herrschaft, rechtsstaatliches Gewaltmonopol gegen private Willkür, Universalität der Menschenrechte gegen auf soziale Gemeinschaften bezogene Differenzierungen, sozialer Ausgleich gegen ökonomische Diskriminierung. Diese prinzipiellen Wertalternativen sind die Grundlage von Meinungsunterschieden zwischen Einzelnen, Gruppen und Staaten in konkreten geschichtlichen Situationen, die aber selbst wiederum die Konsequenz vorausgegangener historischer Entipg 3/2003 Zöpel, Westliche Werte und historische Erfahrungen 157

scheidungen sind. Auf dieser Basis lassen sich auch aktuelle Meinungsunterschiede zwischen der amerikanischen und der deutschen Regierung erklären, und auch die unterschiedliche Zustimmung, die die entsprechenden politischen Positionen bei den Staatsvölkern finden. Bis heute gültige Fundamente zwischenstaatlicher Beziehungen – ihr völkerrechtlicher Rahmen – sind die Konsequenz des Dreißigjährigen Krieges. Das staatliche Monopol auf Gewaltanwendung nach Innen und Außen wurde vereinbart gegenüber auch mit kriegerischen Mitteln betriebener religiöser Expansion. In Verbindung mit dem absolutistischen Staat hatte das in Europa eingehegte Kriege zur Folge. Zum Leben unter dem Absolutismus und seinen Rekrutierungen für die zwischenstaatlichen Kriege gab es als Alternative die Auswanderung aus Europa nach Nordamerika. Der Anspruch, dass – vor allem christliche – Religion auch in der Politik Bedeutung haben darf, gehörte zu den Motiven. Europas geistige Antwort auf die Unfreiheit und die Friedlosigkeit des Absolutismus aber war, exemplarisch von Kant formuliert, die Idee demokratischer Staaten, die föderativ auch Frieden sichern. Dabei beförderte das absolutistische Gewaltmonopol die Gleichheit der Untertanen. Die europäischen Auswanderer stießen in Nordamerika auf Ureinwohner, denen sie diese Gleichheit nicht zubilligten. Damit war die Möglichkeit der Aneignung als herrenlos definierten Bodens eröffnet und ließ einen radikal überhöhten Begründungsnexus von Freiheit und Privateigentum entstehen. Gewöhnung an rassische Diskriminierung und ökonomischer Verwendungsdruck zogen die Versklavung importierter Menschen nach sich. In Europa induzierte die immanente soziale Gefährdung merkantiler Wirtschaftsambitionen den sozialstaatlichen Ausgleich, exemplarisch mit Bismarcks Sozialreformen. Macht ist durch Macht einzuhegen, durch eine Föderation von Staaten, die im Inneren die Machtteilung geregelt haben. Eine unipolare Weltordnung ist nicht demokratisch, sie widerspricht den»Westlichen Werten«. Schon vor dem ersten Weltkrieg waren prägende Strukturunterschiede zwischen den nordamerikanischen und den europäischen Gesellschaften entstanden. Beider geistige Grundlage war die Aufklärung, aber zwischen Kants ewigem Frieden und Lockes Rechtfertigung des Privateigentums gibt es bedeutende Unterschiede. Zwischen amerikanischer 158 Zöpel, Westliche Werte und historische Erfahrungen ipg 3/2003

Demokratie und europäischer Verfassungsvielfalt einschließlich der konstitutionell werdenden Monarchien kann auch für das 19. Jahrhundert nicht schwarz-weiß gezeichnet werden. Im Ersten Weltkrieg standen sich die usa und Deutschland im europäischen Kontext als Gegner gegenüber. Diese globale Vernetzung würde sich nicht wieder lösen lassen. Vorher hatte die romantische Verbindung ethnischer Ziele mit dem Recht der Völker gegenüber ihren Herren die Idee demokratischer Gleichheit zugunsten nationaler Abgrenzung zurückgedrängt. Dies war eine der Ursachen für die Enthegung des Krieges, die erneute Betroffenheit der Zivilbevölkerung – bei Ausweitung der militärisch nutzbaren technologischen Möglichkeiten industrialisierter Gesellschaften. Zwischen den Weltkriegen waren die Erfolge europäischer Demokratie unstabil, im Unterschied zu den usa mit ihrer erfolgreichen Wendung zum»New Deal«. In Europa unterlag Demokratie schließlich dem Totalitarismus des Rassendenkens im vor allem deutschen Faschismus und dem Totalitarismus der Gleichheit im vor allem sowjetischen Kommunismus. Der Angriff Japans, des ersten nicht europäisch geprägten Akteurs globaler Politik, und die Kriegserklärung Deutschlands zogen die usa in den Zweiten Weltkrieg und damit endgültig aus der von den europäischen Auswanderern erträumten Isolierung vor Unfreiheit und kriegerischer Gewalt im alten Europa. Drei Erfahrungen der neueren Geschichte Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs Die globale Expansion des deutsch-italienisch-japanischen Faschismus, der den Weltkrieg als Expansionsstrategie gewählt hatte, war nur durch militärischen Sieg zu beenden. Den Sieg teilten sich zwei Mächte: Die usa und die Sowjetunion. Es gehört zu den historischen Wahrheiten, dass Auschwitz durch die Rote Armee befreit wurde. Sieg wie Niederlage kosteten 55 Millionen Menschenleben insgesamt. Die Zahl der Kriegsopfer umfasst 260.000 us -Amerikaner; 21 Millionen Sowjetbürger, darunter sieben Millionen Zivilisten; fünf Millionen Deutsche, darunter 500.000 Zivilisten; 4,5 Millionen Polen, darunter 4,2 Millionen Zivilisten; 810.000 Franzosen, darunter 470.000 Zivilisten; 210.000 Niederländer, darunter 200.000 Zivilisten; über fünf Millionen Juden wurden Opfer des Holocaust. Betroffen waren also Soldaten wie Zivilisten, diese ipg 3/2003 Zöpel, Westliche Werte und historische Erfahrungen 159

durch Vernichtungslager, Ausrottung, Atombomben, Flächenbombardements, als subjektiv Schuldige und als ohnmächtige Gegner der Politik ihrer Volksgemeinschaften. Die Folgen des gemeinsamen Sieges der usa und der Sowjetunion waren für die direkt Betroffenen unterschiedlich. Für fünfzig Millionen Westdeutsche in der späteren Bundesrepublik hatte die amerikanische Besatzung Demokratie, einen freiheitlichen Rechtsstaat und Wohlstand zur Folge, für achtzehn Millionen Ostdeutsche in der späteren ddr ein totalitäres Herrschaftssystem; für neun Millionen Bewohner deutscher Gebiete östlich von Oder und Neisse die Vertreibung aus an jetzt kommunistische Staaten abgetretene Gebiete, für etwa eine Million dort verbliebene Deutsche eine doppelte Diskriminierung, ethnisch begründet durch die neuen Staatsvölker, ideologisch-totalitär durch die Kommunisten. Das Ende des Kommunismus Wie immer die je aktuelle Politik der Regierungen von brd und ddr geprägt war, Deutschlands Teilung bewirkte ganz besonders die Suche nach einer nicht-kriegerischen Lösung des Ost-West-Konflikts. Neben den Wirkungen des Gleichgewichts atomarer Abschreckung bahnte sich der Gedanke der Konfliktlösung durch Zusammenarbeit seinen Weg. Dieser Gedanke und seine Methode entfalteten mit der Konferenz für Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa ihre Wirkung. Sie gewannen Kraft aus dem Anspruch auf die Realisierung der universellen Menschenrechte. Überforderung der Sowjetunion und ihrer Verbündeten im Wettrüsten mit den usa und der nato , negative Auswirkungen der Meinungsunterdrückung auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in aufsteigenden Wissensgesellschaften, die Kraft von Freiheitsansprüchen – das führte zur Implosion des Kommunismus, zur Vereinigung Deutschlands, zur Öffnung, Demokratisierung, Verrechtsstaatlichung des östlichen Europas einschließlich der jetzt ehemaligen Sowjetunion. Dem Trauma der Tragödien von 1945 folgten die Verheißungen von 1989. Europa und die Supermacht Die Verheißung fand ihre Charta 1990 in Paris. Aber sie war nicht überall wirksam, von vornherein nicht außerhalb Europas und Nordamerikas: genannt seien der erste Irak-Krieg und das Wegschauen bei anderen Krie160 Zöpel, Westliche Werte und historische Erfahrungen ipg 3/2003

gen. Doch auch Europa blieb nicht lange verschont und schon in Bosnien konnten die kriegerischen Gräuel serbischer und anderer Soldatesken nur durch die militärische Überlegenheit der usa beendet werden. Das geschah dann exemplarisch im Kosovo. Eine Militärstrategie, die eigene Opfer vermied, war erfolgreich. Für die usa und ihre Verbündeten war faktisch der Militärschlag zu einem politischen Instrument geworden, dessen Kosten nicht ungleich höher sind als die anderer Instrumente. Kosten entstanden bei den Opfern, auch wenn sie von den usa gering gehalten werden wollten. Kosovo, Mazedonien und Albanien erlebten 1999 die größte Vertreibung in Europa nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Europa, Millionen zivile Kriegstote im historischen Gedächtnis, suchte nach Wegen rechtsstaatlicher ziviler Terrorbekämpfung im Rahmen der Völkerrechtsgemeinschaft. Die usa , die Supermacht mit diesen Möglichkeiten und Erfahrungen, wurde dann am 11. September 2001 von einem Terroranschlag aus dem nicht-europäisch-nordamerikanischen Kulturkreis auf symbolische Ziele in New York und Washington mit ca. dreitausend Toten getroffen. Die direkte amerikanische und die anteilnehmende europäische Betroffenheit galten zunächst den Opfern und ihren Angehörigen. Sobald diese Betroffenheit jedoch politisch handlungsorientiert wurde, ging sie auseinander. Die Regierung der Vereinigten Staaten suchte notwendig wie richtig nach Abwehrmöglichkeiten gegen den Terrorismus, dann auch nach Vergeltung und Prävention aus der Position der von todbringender aggressiver Zerstörung im zivilen Bereich erstmals betroffenen Supermacht. Europa, Millionen zivile Kriegstote im historischen Gedächtnis, suchte nach Wegen rechtsstaatlicher ziviler Terrorbekämpfung im Rahmen der Völkerrechtsgemeinschaft. Nur dort, wo handlungsfähige Völkerrechtssubjekte nicht existieren, wie in Afghanistan, gab und gibt es die breite europäische Bereitschaft zur militärischen Intervention, die die Beteiligung am Aufbau rechtsstaatlicher Institutionen, die Realisierung von Menschen-, insbesondere Frauenrechten, den Versuch zur Entwicklung von Demokratie zur Folge haben konnten. Allerdings, in Afghanistan ist weder zureichend geklärt und noch gar nicht entschieden, was die Auswirkungen hoch überlegener Militärschläge auf die sozialpsychologische, gesellschaftliche und politische, gar demokratische Entwicklung sind. ipg 3/2003 Zöpel, Westliche Werte und historische Erfahrungen 161

Die Beziehungen zwischen Demokratien in der internationalen Politik Das bleibende ideengeschichtliche Fundament von Friedenspolitik in Europa, Kants Schrift zum ewigen Frieden aus dem Jahre 1795, knüpft entstehungsgeschichtlich wie inhaltlich eine Verbindung zwischen Demokratie und Frieden. Der»erste Definitionsartikel zum ewigen Frieden« lautet:»Die bürgerliche Verfassung in jedem Staate soll republikanisch sein.« Der»zweite Definitionsartikel zum ewigen Frieden« postuliert dann:»Das Völkerrecht soll auf einem Föderalismus freier Staaten gegründet sein.« In Betrachtung der Widerstände durch ein Völkerrecht, das Krieg legitimiert, hält Kant die Vorstellung eines Völkerstaates, die »positive Idee einer Weltrepublik«, für utopisch. Für möglich hält er nur, dass»das Surrogat eines den Krieg abwehrenden bestehenden und sich immer ausbreitenden Bundes den Strom der rechtsscheuenden feindseligen Neigungen(zum Krieg) aufhalten kann, doch mit beständiger Gefahr ihres Ausbruchs«. Kant selbst zeigt damit auf, dass hinsichtlich der Realisierung seiner Idee ein deterministischer Fortschrittsglaube unangemessen ist, wie ja auch die Militärintervention der usa im Irak-Krieg gezeigt hat. Bei Kant sind aber Bewertungsmaßstäbe der entscheidenden transatlantischen Differenzen in der Irak-Debatte zu finden: gemeinsame Gefahreneindämmung durch Handeln eines Bundes, also der uno , versus völkerrechtliche Kriegslegitimation sowie friedenssichernder nato -»Bund« versus Koalition der(Kriegs)Willigen. Bei diesen Differenzen aber handelt es sich, dem unbezweifelbaren Selbstverständnis der usa wie der Bundesrepublik Deutschland entsprechend, um Differenzen zwischen republikanischen, demokratischen Staaten – denen es, aus der historischen Perspektive vielfältig deutlich, nicht gelingen will, die Implikationen republikanisch-demokratischer Verfasstheit auf die Praxis der internationalen Beziehungen zu übertragen. Die Kategorien des nationalen Interesses – so eher in Deutschland – oder der Patriotischen Haltung – so eher in den usa – überlagern, ja diskreditieren den innerstaatlichen wie den zwischenstaatlichen demokratischen Willensbildungsprozess in Fragen der Außenpolitik und damit auch in Fragen von Krieg und Frieden. Im Sommer 2002 sollte der Hinweis auf den Wahlkampf Schröders Position in der Sache unglaubwürdig machen. Das gilt bis heute. Die Frage aus dem Kreis von wissenschaftlichen Experten für die deutschamerikanischen Beziehungen, wieso er jetzt grundlos, da ja die Wahlen 162 Zöpel, Westliche Werte und historische Erfahrungen ipg 3/2003

vorüber seien, seine Position aufrecht halte, steigert diese Form der Verächtlichung demokratischer Prozesse, wenn internationale Politik involviert ist. Der komplexe und nicht unproblematische Zusammenhang zwischen Massendemokratie, Populismus, neuen Wahlkampfmethoden, neuen Kommunikationstechnologien und der Instrumentalisierung von Meinungsbefragungen einerseits, sowie der demokratischen Legitimation durch Wahlen andererseits, ist bekannt. Angesichts des Wissens um die prinzipielle Alternativlosigkeit wird an der legitimatorischen Funktion von Wahlen jedoch festgehalten. Und so sind wahlbeeinflussende achtzig Prozent Zustimmung für Schröders Haltung gegen eine Militärintervention nicht die fragwürdigste politisch-substanzielle Implikation des Zusammenhangs von Kommunikation und Legitimation. Prinzipiell ist Außenpolitik aus dem tabuisierenden und immunisierenden Elfenbeinturm der Überparteilichkeit zu holen, bzw. zu entlassen. Mit besten Gründen gehört Außenpolitik in die Wahlauseinandersetzungen. In den usa stehe das Land im Krieg hinter dem Präsidenten, das ist das andere, demokratische Willensbildung einschränkende Argumentationsmuster, entweder als tatsächliches Argument auch kritisch eingestellter Personen oder als Erklärung für deren Argumente. Die Rechtfertigung dieses Arguments ist zweifach fragwürdig. Gerade wenn die Politik der Regierung nicht akzeptiert wird, rechtfertigt das Leben der eingesetzten Soldaten nicht diese patriotische Solidarität. Wenn aber dank fortgeschrittener Militärtechnologie und entsprechender Strategie Verluste an Menschenleben minimiert werden können, führt Kriegssemantik in wirklichkeitsfremde Gefühlslagen, die aus früheren historischen Erfahrungen mitgebracht sind. Für die transatlantischen Beziehungen als Beziehungen zwischen Demokratien folgt aus diesen Überlegungen: Prinzipiell ist Außenpolitik aus dem tabuisierenden und immunisierenden Elfenbeinturm der Überparteilichkeit zu holen, bzw. zu entlassen. Mit besten Gründen gehört Außenpolitik in die Wahlauseinandersetzungen. Mit besten Gründen auch sollten konkrete unterschiedliche Positionen grenzüberschreitend diskutiert werden. So werden amerikanische und deutsche Diplomaten und die von ihnen vertretene Außenpolitik obsolet, die anderen Staaten Demokratie empfehlen und deren Prozesse mit der Attitüde des Prokonipg 3/2003 Zöpel, Westliche Werte und historische Erfahrungen 163

suls oder Besserwissers beurteilen, im Inneren aber die Auseinandersetzung um Außenpolitik für degoutant halten. Praktisch haben dazu der amerikanische Ex-Präsident Carter und die deutsche Oppositionsführerin Merkel Gutes geleistet. Carter argumentiert gegen Präsident Bush – weltweit, Merkel gegen Bundeskanzler Schröder – auch in Washington. Beides trägt zu demokratischer Willensbildung bei – auch mit Rückwirkung auf das Wahlvolk, wenn, wie Angela Merkel, eine aktive herausgehobene Politikerin sich so verhält. Und vielleicht auch mit Rückwirkung auf die Willensbildungsprozesse der wissenschaftlichen»Community« der Amerika- bzw. Deutschlandexperten, die ihre Analysen und Empfehlungen gerade in der hier behandelten Auseinandersetzung auf ihr vorkantianisches Verständnis von internationaler Politik gestützt hatten. Transatlantische Wirtschaftsbeziehungen – mikroökonomisch und makroökonomisch Die europäische Ideengeschichte politisch-demokratischen Denkens hat Konzepte für die Gestaltung globalen Friedens entwickelt; ob sie realisiert werden, ist eine Frage der Bereitschaft zum politischen Handeln. Das Interesse an Frieden kann mit ökonomischem Interesse konfligieren. Immer hatten Kriege auch wirtschaftliche Gründe. Die ökonomischen Beziehungen zwischen den usa und Deutschland sind heute ein wesentlicher Teil des globalen Güter-, Leistungs- und Kapitalhandels. Deutschlands exportorientierte Wirtschaft wird erheblich von den Exporten in die usa beeinflusst. Doch diese Sicht ist nur ein Ausschnitt aus der Realität globaler ökonomischer Interdependenzen zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts. Und diese Realität ist paradox: Was mikroökonomisch aus der Sicht deutscher exportorientierter Unternehmen gewinnbringend ist, ist makroökonomisch eher fragwürdig für die globale Wirtschaftsentwicklung. Hauptproblem des globalen Kapitalverkehrs ist das große Handelsbilanzdefizit der usa . Es beträgt derzeit ca. 400 Milliarden us -Dollar. Um es zu finanzieren haben die usa einen immensen Bedarf an Kapitalimporten. Und so sind die Exportüberschüsse vor allem Deutschlands und Japans und die Importüberschüsse der usa die sich wechselseitig stützenden Ursachen eines gravierenden globalen Ungleichgewichts. Die mikroökonomischen Folgen des Kapitalsogs in die usa für Deutschland sind offen164 Zöpel, Westliche Werte und historische Erfahrungen ipg 3/2003

kundig. Der Abfluss deutschen Kapitals beeinträchtigt die binnenländische Investitionsneigung. Lebensweltliche Anti-Emotionen zwischen Staaten können paradoxe Folgen haben: Amerikanische Stammtischparolen gegen Pommes Frites und Volkswagen sind unwissentlich die richtige Einsicht in eine Notwendigkeit zur Verringerung globaler Störungen. Machiavelli via Kant Kants Konzept des ewigen Friedens soll»den Strom der rechtsscheuenden feindseligen Neigungen(zum Krieg) aufhalten, doch mit beständiger Gefahr ihres Ausbruchs«. Der Idealist Kant war Realist, das sei allen vorgehalten, die die Irrelevanz wertorientierter internationaler Politik zugunsten einer realistischen Konzeption betonen. Und es gibt keinen Zweifel, die Realisten haben im Irak-Konflikt Recht behalten. Verbiegen des Völkerrechts und Feindseligkeit gegenüber dem Islam, einer nicht europäisch-nordamerikanischen Kultur, haben die von Kant vorhergesehene beständige Gefahr eines Krieges wieder einmal Realität werden lassen. Der Permanenz der Kriegesgefahr liegt das machiavellistische Politikverständnis zugrunde, dass allein Macht zur Realisierung von politischen Zielen führe, und Machterhalt damit prioritär sei. Dass aber auch dieses machtorientierte Verständnis internationaler Politik Frieden erhalten kann, zeigt der Realist Kant auf: Macht ist durch Macht einzuhegen, durch eine Föderation von Staaten, die im Inneren die Machtteilung geregelt haben. Ein Festhalten am prinzipiellen Anderssein der Außenpolitik gegenüber der Innenpolitik auch in Demokratien steht der Demokratie der Außenpolitik und damit wahrscheinlich dem Frieden entgegen. Demokratische Globalpolitik ist a priori möglich. Sie bedarf der wechselseitigen Machtkontrolle, der Gewaltenteilung zwischen Staaten und globalen Regionen, eben einer multipolaren Weltordnung. Was a priori möglich ist, muss in der Wirklichkeit politisch gewollt werden. Politisches Wollen aber ist der Beurteilung durch Werte unterworfen. Diese politische Bewertung, gemessen an den Werten, die zu Beginn expliziert wurden, lautet: Eine unipolare Weltordnung ist nicht demokratisch, sie widerspricht den»Westlichen Werten«. ipg 3/2003 Zöpel, Westliche Werte und historische Erfahrungen 165