Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In a challenging article in openDemocracy drawing on her exceptional international and comparative work, Saskia Sassen takes a look at Gordon Brown’s reforms from the point of view of globalisation. She argues that with globalisation “the executive branch becomes more ‘international’ while the legislature becomes more ‘domestic’”. That is, part of the hollowing out of traditional democratic politics by corporate and international power has come about not because of a cross-the-board weakening of the state by globalisation but because it has structurally advantaged one part – the executive, often negotiating in secret or at a technical level – to the disadvantage of the other – the legislature.
Two points come to mind immediately. I interviewed Maria Cattaui when she was head of the International Chamber of Commerce. She emphasised that in order to benefit from globalisation, which she strongly believed in, societies needed strong government. I asked if she meant water cannon. No, and she leapt up and crossed her office to get down various reports, telling me to look at the increase in government spending in Canada: education, health, infrastructure, law, training, a – what I would call – social democratic state is needed, she argued, to gain from globalisation, which calls for more government not less. So the first point that moderates Sassen’s thesis is that domestic legislation is today, thanks in part to globalisation, much more important.
Second, if this was what Brown was doing, why didn’t he say so? I agree about the radical potential of his reforms, with the emphasis very much on the potential, meaning they could go the other way. But if he was taking on globalisation, no one in the House of Commons that day was aware of it (see my post). I hardly think it is right to conclude already that Brown has “show the way” to reversing the democratic deficit which, as Sassen describes so well and originally, globalisation is driving, thanks to his eliminating what is so far a pretty redundant set of antique prerogative powers (see Geoffrey Bindman). It is important not to project our desires onto what the Prime Minister is doing and then claim the achievement of what we ourselves may want to see.
