Today, crises are everywhere. The financial and economic crisis of 2008 spiralled into a fiscal crisis, and the subsequent debt crisis has enveloped the eurozone in an outright fight for its survival. Conventional wisdom suggested that neoliberalism and its market believers would suffer most. Instead, it is the crisis of social democracy which stands out while the public realm is under huge pressure. What is going on?
One interesting way of looking at this conundrum is through the prism of cosmopolitanism – a strand of political thinking which gained considerable momentum after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In short, cosmopolitanism works from the premise that all human beings belong to a single community. In appreciating difference and otherness, it seeks new forms of integration and identity that enable respectful coexistence across borders. The aim is to overcome the dualities of the “domestic” and the “global”, primarily by promoting new democratic forms of political rule beyond the nation state.
To many observers, it became palpable that we were entering a cosmopolitan age: the spread of modern communication technologies and the massive increase in global travel meant that political issues could no longer be dealt with in isolation. From the rise of multi-national corporations to the risks of global warming, new requirements for collective action steadily accrued. Global social movements, such as Attac, and the creation of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, represented some of the many outcomes. Indeed, the objective and subjective conditions for an influential cosmopolitan identity seemed overwhelming.
The last few years, however, have cast a dark shadow over this assumption. The reaction to the global financial and economic crisis brought the most obvious manifestation of this unease: the state is back, and not always in a benign manner. Yet there are also some deeper trends and developments which affect the normative core of cosmopolitanism. Summarised by scholars in three principles – tolerance, democratic legitimacy, effectiveness – this core now looks worryingly undermined.
First, there is considerable agitation around tolerance and its limits. This is not to suggest that we are witnessing a fundamental breakdown of societal relationships between groups of different beliefs and moral values, let alone heading towards a clash of civilisation of some kind. Rather, it indicates that policymakers in western liberal democracies, spun-out by polarising debates over civil liberties, multiculturalism and human rights, have lost confidence in the degree of openness and pluralism that our societies can actually bear.
Second, the democratic legitimacy of many of our regulatory systems looks fragile and is increasingly being contested by political players of all colours. This includes the international institutions under the UN framework, largely incapable of agreeing on a more balanced governance structure; a European Union struggling for wider popular acceptance; and a number of nation-states that have become plunged into controversy over appropriate forms of representation. The basic consequence of all this seems to be that redefining or ceding “national sovereignty” has become ever so difficult, if not (temporarily) impossible.
Third, quite a few transnational arrangements – whether treaties, pacts or processes – put together during the last two decades and sold to citizens as major steps towards managing interdependencies, have simply failed to deliver or are in danger of falling behind expectations. Examples include the Kyoto Protocol, the Millennium Development Goals, and the EU Stability and Growth Pact. Those who were always sceptical about institutionalising inter-state responsibilities undoubtedly feel the wind in their sails. Integrationists, up against it, are not having an easy time in the eye of the storm.
So is there even a crisis of cosmopolitanism? Politically, it appears more of a problem for the left than the right. This has less to do with morality despite frequent attempts to portray the right as heartless and/or indifferent, in particular when it comes to questions of poverty and climate change. In truth, concerns for any form of misery are as strongly ingrained in conservative social Catholics as they are in liberal do-gooders.
No, the reason for this lies in the inability of the left to respond to its critics in the actual debates about tolerance, democratic legitimacy and effectiveness. The left is inconsistent and hesitant in relation to important cultural issues, for instance on immigration. It is often speechless about how to empower individuals and restore trust in democratic processes, both within and beyond the nation-state. And it pays far too little attention to the specific challenge of how to use the levers of governance more effectively and creatively in the pursuit of social democratic objectives.
To many on the left, this is understood as an invitation to strengthen social democracy’s communitarian roots. They rightly recognise the importance of civil society, reciprocity and localism to centre-left politics. Yet this must not happen at the expense of cosmopolitan thinking, indispensable for any outward-looking social democratic project. Transformative politics in the 21st century much depends on our ability to shape and influence large-scale processes beyond our borders. Cosmopolitanism is central to this. We must make it work sooner rather than later.
Olaf Cramme is the director of Policy Network
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