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

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