ARTIKEL /ARTICLES The Only Game in Town? European Social Democracy and Neo-liberal Globalization WIL HOUT 1. Introduction Reflecting on the social democratic political program, British Labour politician Anthony Crosland emphasized in 1957 that»new issues« have repeatedly challenged social democracy since socialist aspirations were first formulated in the mid-nineteenth century. He argued that such is­sues»may be highly significant for welfare, freedom, and social justice, even though not assimilable into the old socialist–capitalist categories« (Crosland 1963: 353–354). The recent attention paid to the challenges of globalization among(Western) European social democrats seems to sig­nal that globalization is a»new issue« of the kind alluded to by Crosland almost 50 years ago. Importantly, a report written by former Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen(2003: 25) for the Party of Euro­pean Socialists sees globalization as an important reason to develop a European»progressive policy agenda … as part of social democracy’s raison d’être in the new century.« The challenges of globalization have resulted in a reconsideration by many social democratic thinkers and politicians of long-held ideas about politics at both the national and the international level. Contemporary social democracy, in Europe and elsewhere, is attempting to respond to the neo-liberal global agenda whose main objective appears to be the deepening of market-oriented development. This agenda is built, in im­portant respects, on the political dominance of neo-liberal globalization, the first phase of which started in the late 1970s. The objective of this article is to assess whether the social democratic response can be a feasible alternative to the political supremacy of neo­liberal prescriptions. In particular, the question is whether social democ­racy has surrendered to the neo-liberal approach to globalization, which has in many ways taken on the features of the»only game in town,« or whether social democrats are now mounting a real challenge to the agenda of neo-liberal regulatory governance. ipg 2/2006 Hout, Social Democratic Globalization 9