Glocalization and the Simultaneous Rise and Fall of Democracy at the Century’s End

How has the intensification of globalization over the last few decades affected democracy at the national level? If one answers this important question by considering the circumstances in Europe’s oldest democracies, then it appears that globalization is adversely affecting democratic governance. In general, two issues plague European democracy. The first is that, even before the onset of the current financial crises, globalization has been undermining the social model upon which European democracy rests. Emerging in the post-war era, this social model helped to consolidate democracy in Western Europe by successfully integrating the working class into mainstream society. This social integration was achieved politically by broadening participation in important decision-making processes (e.g. electoral politics and tripartite bargaining), and by equating democratic citizenship with a set of social rights that ensured decent living standards (e.g. universal health care and state pensions). In short, the European social model represented a historic compromise in which advocates of liberalism dropped their commitment to the laissez-faire market, and advocates of socialism dropped their commitment to the command economy (Hobsbawm, 1996: 268–286). What emerged was a system of hybrid institutions — such as the mixed economy, the regulated market, the welfare state, and corporatism — which were neither wholly capitalist nor wholly socialist. For decades, this model oversaw social stability, widespread prosperity, and democratic accountability in Western Europe, and later became a template for emerging democracies in Southern and Eastern Europe.