Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Brexit and the Globalization Trilemma

Dani Rodrik 17th June 2016

Dani Rodrik

Dani Rodrik

I have not written much on Brexit because I do not have a strong or particularly well-informed view of it. My personal hope is that Britain will choose to remain in the EU – but that is as much because of a belief that without Britain the EU will likely become less democratic and more wrong-headed as it is because of the likely economic costs of Brexit.

Yes, I do think exit poses significant economic risk to Britain (and possibly to the world economy), though I believe there are very large margins of uncertainty around the quantitative prognostications presented by the U.K. Treasury and many British economists. But there are also serious questions posed about the nature of democracy and self-government in the EU as presently constituted.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (AEP) has now written a remarkable piece that makes the political case for Brexit. AEP makes clear that he has little in common with the jingoistic and nativist tone of the Brexit campaign. The distortions and lies promoted by the Brexiteers aside, the referendum does raise a serious question about how Britain will be governed:

“Stripped of distractions, it comes down to an elemental choice: whether to restore the full self-government of this nation, or to continue living under a higher supranational regime, ruled by a European Council that we do not elect in any meaningful sense, and that the British people can never remove, even when it persists in error.

…


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

We are deciding whether to be guided by a Commission with quasi-executive powers that operates more like the priesthood of the 13th Century papacy than a modern civil service; and whether to submit to a European Court (ECJ) that claims sweeping supremacy, with no right of appeal.

It is whether you think the nation states of Europe are the only authentic fora of democracy, be it in this country, or Sweden, or the Netherlands, or France ….”

The trouble is that the EU is more of a technocracy than a democracy (AEP calls it a nomenklatura). An obvious alternative to Brexit would be to construct a full-fledged European democracy. AEP mentions Yanis Varoufakis, a Brexit opponent, who has argued for something like “a United States of Europe with a genuine parliament holding an elected president to account.” But as AEP says,

“I do not think this is remotely possible, or would be desirable if it were, but it is not on offer anyway. Six years into the eurozone crisis there is not a flicker of fiscal union: no eurobonds, no Hamiltonian redemption fund, no pooling of debt, and no budget transfers. The banking union belies its name. Germany and the creditor states have dug in their heels.”

All of this is of course what I tried to highlight with my “political trilemma of the global economy,” reproduced below.

rodrick_graph

The trilemma suggests democracy is compatible with deep economic integration only if democracy is appropriately transnationalized as well – the solution that Varoufakis favors. AEP, by contrast, believes a democratic and accountable European super-state is neither feasible, nor even desirable.

Note that the tension that arises between democracy and globalization is not straightforwardly a consequence of the fact that the latter constrains national sovereignty. There are ways in which external constraints – as with democratic delegation – can enhance rather than limit democracy. But there are also many circumstances under which external rules do not satisfy the conditions of democratic delegation. See the discussion here.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

AEP believes that European rules clearly lie within the latter category. In addition to the European bureaucracy (and its treatment of the euro crisis), he is especially bothered by the broad authority the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has over national policies, without right to appeal. As for Britain’s opt-out: “Need I add too that Britain’s opt-out from the Charter under Protocol 30  – described as “absolutely clear” by Tony Blair on the floor of the Commons – has since been swept aside by the ECJ.”

I do not have a clear view on the substance of AEP’s argument – as to whether Britain’s self-government is sufficiently impaired by the EU, or its opt-out has been nullified by the ECJ. But it is clear that the EU rules needed to underpin a single European market have extended significantly beyond what can be supported by democratic legitimacy. Whether Britain’s opt out remains effective or not, the political trilemma is at work. In AEP’s evocative language,

“The [European] Project bleeds the lifeblood of the national institutions, but fails to replace them with anything lovable or legitimate at a European level. It draws away charisma, and destroys it. This is how democracies die.”

I first thought of the globalization trilemma when I was asked to contribute to a special millennial issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives (in 2000), where I was asked to speculate about the nature of the world economy in 100 years’ time. I presented it as the political analogue of the macroeconomic trilemma of the open-economy well known to economists (we can have at most two among monetary independence, free capital flows, currency pegs). I thought then, and still do, that it will increasingly shape the evolution of world’s political economy.

At the time, I viewed the EU as the only part of the world economy that could successfully combine hyperglobalization (“the single market”) with democracy through the creation of a European demos and polity. I expressed the same view, somewhat more cautiously, in my 2011 book The Globalization Paradox.

But I now have to admit that I was wrong in this view (or hope, perhaps). The manner in which Germany and Angela Merkel, in particular, reacted to the crisis in Greece and other indebted countries buried any chance of a democratic Europe. She might have presented the crisis as one of interdependence (“we all contributed to it, and we are all in it together”), using it as an opportunity to make a leap towards greater political union. Instead, she treated it as a morality play, pitting responsible northerners against lazy, profligate southerners, and to be dealt with by European technocrats accountable to no one serving up disastrous economic remedies.

As Brexit opponents keep reminding us, the economic costs of Britain’s departure could be indeed sizable. Reasonable people have to make up their own mind as to how those costs stack up against the damage to democratic self-government. EAP is fully aware that his choice entails taking a “calculated risk.”

My generation of Turks looked at the European Union as an example to emulate and a beacon of democracy. It saddens me greatly that it has now come to stand for a style of rule-making and governance so antithetical to democracy that even informed and reasonable observers like AEP view departure from it as the only option for repairing democracy.

This article originally appeared on the author’s blog.

Dani Rodrik
Dani Rodrik

Dani Rodrik, professor of international political economy at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government, is president of the International Economic Association and  author of Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (Princeton University Press).

You are here: Home / Politics / Brexit and the Globalization Trilemma

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube