New9 Social Democratic Turn to Europe David James Bailey Thesis Submitted Fo

Legitimation through Integration: Explaining the ‘New9 Social Democratic turn to Europe David James Bailey Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. Government Department, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London. 1 UMI Number: U194814 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U194814 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 T h e s e s F Abstract. The turn towards European integration by social democratic parties across the European Union has thus far been inadequately explained. Existing explanations are unable to account for the anticipation that traditional social democratic ‘market-correcting’ policies can be successfully promoted at the EU-level despite the lack of opportunities to do so. This thesis argues that the ‘new’ social democratic turn to Europe has enabled social democratic parties to retain a degree of ideological continuity despite the necessary retrenchment of social democracy, thereby contributing to the ongoing (yet increasingly problematic) legitimation of social democracy and the continued maintenance of a viable social democratic constituency. The turn to Europe has provided social democratic parties with the possibility of re-regulating ‘globalisation’ at the supranational level, thereby cohering with the traditional social democratic practice of promoting market-correcting public policy within institutions of representative democracy. However, there exist sizeable institutional obstacles to the implementation of such an agenda which prevent its realisation. Based on a theoretical discussion of the decline of ‘traditional’ social democracy, the thesis argues that the moderation of ‘traditional’ social democratic aims was necessary due to the inability to maintain an expansion of redistributive market-correcting regulations within institutions of representative democracy beyond the medium term. The ‘new’ social democratic turn to Europe enables redistributive market-correcting policies to be promoted, yet not realised, at the EU-level. Moreover, the non-realisation of a social democratic agenda at the European level can be understood in terms of the 2 institutional obstacles to policy implementation at the supranational level, thereby partly obfuscating the failure of ‘traditional’ social democracy and contributing to its ongoing legitimation. This argument is illustrated through case studies of social democratic parties in the UK, Sweden, France, Spain and Italy, and at the European level. 3 Contents Pg- Acknowledgements 1 Chapter 1 - The Paradoxical Social Democratic turn to Europe 9 1.1. A note on the definition of social democracy 11 1.2. The social democratic turn to Europe and the European- 15 level obstacles to social democratic policymaking 1.3. Existing explanations for the social democratic turn to 35 Europe 1.4. Summary 49 Chapter 2 - Towards a more adequate explanation: Legitimating 51 ‘New’ Social Democracy at the European Level 2.1. Explaining the social democratic turn to Europe 52 Chapter 3 - Explaining the Demise of ‘Traditional9 Social 74 Democracy 3.1. ‘New’ social democracy as an improvement over ‘traditional’ 76 social democracy 3.2. The demise of ‘new’ Social Democracy as an unnecessary and 83 regrettable mistake 4 3.3. The decline of ‘traditional’ social democracy as a failure of the 94 social democratic strategy itself 3.4. Conclusion and plan for the remainder of the thesis 113 Chapter 4 - Legitimating ‘New’ Social Democracy at the 119 European level: the case of the British Labour Party 4.1. The historical context: containable divisions over Europe 120 during the Labour Party’s ‘traditional’ social democratic phase, from 1945 to the mid-1970s 4.2. The crisis and failure of ‘traditional’ social democracy and 127 heightened divisions over Europe 4.3. The transformation to ‘new’ social democracy and the 139 legitimating role of the EU 4.4. The problematic and paradoxical legitimation of ‘new’ social 160 democracy at the EU-level: 1997-2004 4.5. Conclusion 173 Chapter 5 - Legitimating Social Democracy at the European 174 level across Western Europe 5.1. Sweden 174 5.2. France 194 5.3. Spain 205 5.4. Italy 218 5.5. Conclusion 228 5 Chapter 6 - Social Democracy at the EU-level 231 6.1. The limits to market-correcting policymaking at the EU-level 232 6.2. The development of a ‘counter-globalisation’ agenda at the 277 EU-level 6.3. Conclusion 302 Chapter 7 - Conclusion: ‘New’ Social Democracy’s 304 Problematic European Legitimation and the Future for Social Democracy? 7.1. Summary of the main argument 3 04 7.2. Addressing possible objections 310 7.3. Implications of the findings 314 7.4. A very brief note on normative implications and future 319 directions Appendix 1 - Interview Material 322 Bibliography 325 6 Acknowledgements I owe a deep debt of gratitude to a number of people who have helped me to complete this thesis. My supervisors, Simon Hix and Eiko Thielemann, have always provided me with expert advice, ensured that I always kept an eye on the final direction that my research should be taking, and given me enough space to find my own intellectual, methodological and theoretical perspective. Their careful reading of the drafts and chapters of my thesis have been invaluable, in particular in spotting holes in my argument and rigorously forcing me to either defend, remove or fill the hole in question. In the early stages of the thesis Eiko Thielemann provided me with both extremely useful advice on how to actually go about doing a PhD, and the right amount of steering to make sure I could work out for myself what that meant without getting completely lost in the process. During the later stages of writing the thesis Simon Hix consistently and constructively identified weaknesses in my argument, the correction of which, I feel, have contributed towards a far stronger thesis than would have otherwise been the case. I am also grateful for a series of conversations with a fellow PhD student, Sara Motta, who introduced me to a number of new ideas that I would otherwise not have considered. I also wish to acknowledge the extremely detailed and constructive comments of my PhD examiners, Colin Hay and Philippe Marliere, both of whom, based on a very close reading of the text, provided me with positive feedback and very useful advice on improving the viability of the argument made herein, for which I am extremely grateful. I am also grateful to the Party of European Socialists for granting me access to their 7 archives, providing me with the opportunity to work in and observe their office in Brussels, and to the MEPs who took part in my interviews during my field research in late 2002. For reading and critically commenting in depth on a number of draft chapters, and for providing me with an opportunity to defend my thesis, I would like to thank Abby Innes. I thank Alan Beattie, Sebastian Balfour, Bob Hancke and the students who attended GV502 European Politics and Policy, for reading some of the drafts of the thesis and providing me with useful comments. I also acknowledge ESRC award R42200034145. I am completely indebted to my mother for always providing me with the support needed to complete the thesis. Finally, I want to thank Saori Shibata, without whom I would never have found the optimism, motivation and focus needed to write this thesis. 8 Chapter 1 - The Paradoxical Social Democratic turn to Europe During the 1980s and 1990s, west European social democratic parties became increasingly positive about the political opportunities that exist within the institutions of the European Union (Holmes and Lightfoot, 2002; Hooghe, Marks and Wilson, 2002; Sassoon, 1996; Marliere, 2001). In particular, the European Union has come to be portrayed within social democratic circles as a means to influence socio-economic processes that are increasingly (perceived as) difficult to influence through the institutions of the nation-state, through the promotion of market-correcting public policy at the supranational level (see, for instance, Douglas, 2002; Hirst, 1999; Hay, 2002a). At the same time, however, a strong current within contemporary academic and political opinion argues that attempts to implement substantive market-correcting policy at the European level are destined to failure due to the obstacles to integrating several pre-existing political systems into one single one (Streeck, 1996, 2001; Scharpf, 1999; Leibfried and Pierson, 2000). These obstacles therefore make the attempt by social democratic actors to re-acquire political influence through political action at the supranational level seem paradoxical. Indeed, as Notermans points out with regard to economic and monetary union: Given that it would seem to institutionalise a form of economic policymaking foreign to traditional social democratic concepts, and that it at times has been met with rather 9 pronounced scepticism on the part of the electorate and party membership, the solid social democratic support in favour of monetary integration may indeed seem puzzling (Notermans, 2001: 5). It is in the light of this paradox that the present thesis seeks to explain the turn to pro-Europeanism witnessed in social democratic parties across the European Union. The thesis is therefore also implicitly concerned with answering the question of whether (as hoped by many within the social democratic movement) the process of European integration represents a viable institutional opportunity within which social democratic parties can successfully promote a reinvigorated social democratic agenda following the declining fortunes of such an agenda at the national level.

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