Post-crisis social democratic policy capacity in France and the United Kingdom: A lesson from the globalisation and social democracy debate

Abstract

Two decades ago many commentators suggested that economic globalisation had eroded social democratic economic policy capacity. Although this argument has largely been discredited, the global financial crisis has revived the state-market debate. As governments succumb to fiscal consolidation, a similar theory of declining state capacity now challenges social democrats. This article redresses the contemporary situation by using the economic globalisation debate from the mid-1990s to 2005 as a lens through which to comparatively analyse the current fiscal policy positions of the Parti Socialiste and the Labour Party. It draws similarities between the two situations and illustrates how contested notions of the contemporary political economy constrain social democratic fiscal policy capacity, suggesting that greater capacity exists than is currently acknowledged.

Social dialogue under the shadow of the EU: the failure of Hollande’s social conferences

“…In terms of the gerneal focus of government policy, Hollande campaigned against the Fiscal Compact and the generally neoliberal and austerity focus of Eurozone economic governance, arguing for more redistributive tax and spend policies. However, from 2014 onwards, government policy focused on liberalisation, deregulation, labour market flexibility and a reduction in state spending in order to stimulate growth (McDaniel 2014), promoting what were, for the unions, the very austerity policies he had campaigned agianst. In this respect, it could be argued that government policy changed to align with the injunctions arising form the European Semester and that the first CSR, which always concerns budgets and deficits, is the most important one, conditioning the others, as it is the only one that is backed up by the threat of hard sanctions, in the form of the excessive deficit procedure, in the case of non-compliance (Crespy and Menz 2015).…”

Policy analysis in French local government

“…It is true that both the areas of competence and the resources have increased considerably, to the extent that in 2012 local and regional services employed 1.8 million agents, or 34 per cent of total public employment in France. (MacDaniel, 2014) or the evolution of the welfare state (Simonet, 2014) but with no consideration of the territorial aspects of these subjects. Perhaps the reason for this neglect is the enduring prevalence of the historical 'hierarchisation' of French political values inferred above: 'top-down' has a tendency to concentrate on the top.…”

Policy analysis in French local government

“…A perusal of the content of the Revue Française de Science Politique in recent years shows that any emphasis on the crucial importance of local and territorial concerns in French policy studies remains a rarity. A similar analysis of the content of the journal French Politics since 2010, which could serve as a barometer of the extent to which the French territorial model is recognised internationally, gives sparse results (one single article deals with decentralisation policy under the Hollande presidency (Cole, 2014)) but without analysing the mechanisms or other specificities of the French case; there are comparative studies integrating France in general social policy (MacDaniel, 2014) or the evolution of the welfare state (Simonet, 2014) but with no consideration of the territorial aspects of these subjects.…”