Has Globalisation Killed Social Democracy?

It has been fashionable to portray social democracy as ®nished. It is widely held that social democracy depended for the e€ectiveness of its economic and welfare policies on the temporary mid-century hegemony of the nation state. Now, however, only some form of economic liberalism is compatible with the new global economy dominated by international market forces. The nation state can no longer govern processes that are supra-national, chief of which are the world ®nancial markets. The only remaining issue, if it is true, is whether it is possible to have economic liberalism with a human face, or just rampant and ruthless laissez faire. This is the rational core of the current debate about the Third Way, once one discounts the media hype. In a world of growing inequality within and between nations, the issues that social democracy attempted to address are still there. The questions are whether there is a viable politics to articulate them and whether there are e€ective means to deal with them. Resolving these questions depends on the two others addressed in this article. Whether globalisation exists in the way that is frequently claimed, as the dominance of national economies by uncontrollable world market forces? Whether social democratic politics can rede®ne itself, outside of the institutions that prevailed in post-1945 Europe, and preserve the welfare state?