Is the Brazilian Social-Democratic Model Replicable Outside of Latin America - Essay Example

IS THE BRAZILIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC MODEL REPLICABLE OUTSIDE LATIN AMERICA? There are a lot of political ideologies that are followed in the world and one of them is social democracy. Some define social democratic model as a movement that supports a slow yet peaceful shift from capitalism to socialism by democratic channel, while others define this as a model of welfare state that supports both capitalist and socialist ideologies. Social democracy is a centre-left political ideology that is a part of evolutionary reformist socialism. This model basically promotes the elimination of economic class inequalities between various classes by making various legal and economic reforms. As a theory social democracy offers the account of the complex relationship among legitimacy, efficiency and stability (Meyer & Hinchman 2007). Social democratic history goes way back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Majority of the socialists embraced the name of social democrats in order to differentiate themselves from the socialists who are against the idea of democracy. In today’s world scholars think that social democracy is not different from other forms of political ideologies. There are various viewpoints regarding this ideology. Some scholars do not consider this form as a distinctive one; instead they say that it is an unstable mixture of Marxism and liberalism. In other words social democrats do not have their own mottos. On the other hand, the people who support this idea of democracy say that this is a perfect model to implement specific policies and maintain certain principles. These certain principles are to create equality and solidarity among the upper and the lower class. Hence, according to these views social democrats basically support the idea of welfare state. Both these views do have a little weightage but both of them do not realize the full potential of social democracy. In the nineteenth century liberalism was at its peak. Liberals believes in the idea of progress and so said that market could deliver the greatest goods to the greatest number. They also believed that governments’ interference in the lives of individuals should be limited. By the end of the nineteenth century liberalism gradually died out because it bought with it inequalities in many areas. Values and social theory are two parts of the ideology that social democracy carries. The values basically signify what should be our social development and social life should be made of. And social theory provides us with the mechanism through which we can control both social development and social life. Freedom, equality and brotherhood were the slogan in the French revolution which gave social democracy its main values. All these can be combined together to form democracy as real democracy creates all of these in a society. In social democracy, work and the right to work are seen as a vital part of people’s life which helps them in the development of not only their professional but also personal and social life. In this theory the main factor of production is the labour as because of labour all other factors of production like raw materials, land, capital and technology are utilized. This in return brings about a boost in economic growth. This also means that it is due to the working conditions that we can determine how the society looks and how well is the economy doing. In today’s world social democrats are favouring the capitalistic market economy which goes hand in hand with a strong government. Human rights and environmental issues have become major goals of many social democratic parties instead of the old-style goal of making a socialist government. Generally, social democrats support a number of agendas that ensure their support for human rights. They strongly support the wide system of social security in order to protect people from poverty and save them from loss of income if they are ill or unemployed. This system is mostly followed in European countries. Wide range of social laws like protection against firing, minimum wage rate and working environment are implemented. The government aims at providing proper education, health care, child care et cetera to people through government funding. Higher income groups give much higher taxes for all these implementations. Inequality in the distribution of income, opportunity and power has not completely disappeared but the concerns that motivated social democracy- poverty, inequality and exploitation- are now confined to a small proportion of the population (Hamilton & Birmingham 2006). In social democracy the concept of freedom, equality and solidarity runs side by side. Freedom has two perspectives in social democracy; one is person’s own freedom and the other is the freedom in the society he works in. This model thinks that freedom in society is mostly determined by the economic position one holds. If we talk about equality some think that both of them are mutually exclusive but in social democratic model both of them are considered to be depended on each other. This means that in an unequal society people with more wealth or higher statuses have more freedom then the lower class people with weak economic backgrounds. In equality, everybody have the same rights, they all are members of the society and so are affected by the changes in the society. Last but not the least solidarity is also a factor of social democracy but not as important as the other two. It is a concept of mutual dependence. The rich countries also depend on the development of the poor countries. The fortunate and the less fortunate both are inter dependent upon each other. In Latin America many countries are following the social democratic model and are also doing a good job with it for example in Brazil, Uruguay and Chile this model is proving to be doing a really good work. The neoliberalism in the region of Latin America has given rise to high level of social inequality. Despite this social democracy can be successful in Latin America especially in the three countries mentioned above because all these three countries have stable political systems and united democratic governments. These social democratic regimes are made up of competitive, multiparty democracies and this is what differentiates this system from other populist regimes. In the past these social democrats were a part of reformist left and were strongly allied with labour unions. But in order to compete for votes these socialists had to bow in front of the ideological moderation and had to accept the market economy. These social democratic governments do stress upon the importance of economic growth and social inclusion. The social democratic model depends upon both structural and institutional conditions because it influences both economic and political features that arise from any social democratic development that comes up. In Europe for example social democracy was strongly influenced by the structural idea of capitalist industrialization and focused upon the wage labourers in urban areas that had distinctions between different classes. On the other hand on the institutional perspective got directly linked with the struggle for democratic political rights due to the struggles that were carried out against low wages, citizenship rights and working conditions. Hence, all of this gave rise to large number of labour unions and labour based socialist parties which made European party system and political competition in the twentieth century. The structural and institutional settings in Latin America are no doubt different from the ones that generated social democracy in Western Europe. There are various structural differences that come between these two. In Latin America, industrialization started very late as compared to Europe and was mostly dependent on others. Due to this Latin America was unable to develop the manufacturing area as successful and economically vigorous as that of Europe where social democracy was at its peak. The service sector in the Latin America boomed instead and the social democracy did not enter this area as a political link to industrialization. Another structural condition is the uneven characters of the labour force in Latin America. More than half of the labour force here works in the service sector and less than the quarter is the industrial labour. Hence, all these conditions put forward a lot of challenges for the development of social democracy in Latin America. The concept of social democracy was actually discovered in Europe itself and now there are a lot of countries all around the world that are following this ideology. Almost all of European countries have social democratic parties some of which are in power while others are still struggling to take their part in the government. In countries like Spain, France and Sweden are supporting social democracy very enthusiastically as compared to other political models. Despite being popular in these countries social democratic parties are gradually losing in others like Italy and Danish social democrats. Much of the central Europe is getting out of this system. In some of these countries social democrats are not in government as well as parliament. Norway which was once ruled by social democrats has a labour government now. In countries like Holland, Belgium, Germany, and Bulgaria social democrats only are members of coalitions and have little part in the governments. According to an article as recently as 2000 no fewer than eleven out of the then fifteen European Union member states had social democratic or centre-left prime ministers. Today there are only four (“Does European Social Democracy have Future?”. Web. 2008) The core of social democratic politics is to attain balance between social policy, capital and labour in the society but in the last couple of decades these social democratic parties have started to support market oriented policies, deregulation and privatisation. Due to this social democratic parties have lost their credibility because free markets and self-responsibility have become their stance hence, giving them a confused political distinctiveness. This has led to the decrease in their popularity and votes that has in return led to loss of political power. The recent economic crisis in the world has shown that there is need for the state to intervene in the market and bring about a steadying effect on the social welfare systems. European Social democrats need to work hard in order to bring the social democracy back to its former glory in Europe. Pressing this concern in an article the writer says ‘The fundamental changes that took place after the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the cold war, especially the speeded-up and intensified forms of globalisation, have posed serious challenges to all social-democratic parties in Europe’ (“A new Democracy for Europe”. Web. 15th January 2010) Almost a century ago Sweden and some of the other countries in northern Europe were among the poorest in Europe. There was a vast migration from Sweden to North America in order to get a better life. But later on Sweden transformed into a welfare state after a lot of struggle. Today Sweden has one of the most successful political economies in Europe. Sweden has achieved this through social democracy. Now Sweden along with its other neighbouring countries supports a high living standard and equity among its citizens. Now citizens of Sweden enjoy equitable distribution of income and longest life expectancies. It was after Second World War that these countries realised their plight and moved on to become welfare states. They achieved this by common provision for all citizens without considering their income and status through taxation and national insurance systems. In order to fully eliminate the class differences in its community it followed the idea of demand management economic policies. Its main objective was to make sure that the country supports full employment. This strategy actually was followed to maintain the stability in the economy. Now Sweden is one of the world’s most active and equitable societies. By following this social democratic model Sweden has become world’s most advanced countries. The social democratic parties in United States of America have been less successful then the social democratic parties in Europe or Latin America. In American history there have been many social democratic parties. The most popular parties were the socialist party of America and the socialist labour party of America. Later on socialist party of America got divided into three parts, the democratic socialists of America, the social democrats USA, and the socialist party USA. The neo liberal theory is contradicted by the success of the social democratic model in the Europe. The neo liberal theory is contradicted by the success of social democratic model in Europe. According to neo liberalism the distributive policies of these states should have failed miserably and destroyed the economy of these countries. Instead of this all the countries that followed this path prospered dramatically. They have also made sure that their people lead a life that’s dignified and full of prosperity. United States followed the model of neo liberalism even though their economy suffered and they witnessed high level of poverty. On the other hand if we look at the European welfare states they have made sure that they give all the social and economic security to its people. The best example of this here is of the Netherlands. For many years now the revolutionary socialist organizations all over the world say that people who so consciously call themselves socialists are also drawn towards social democratic and communist parties due to their strong attraction. In the recent times the communist regimes in Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and to some extent China have let go of communism and this in return has given more importance to social democracy in these areas. The social democratic parties are re-established which are mostly western style. In fact, the social democracy is more or less same as that of liberalism. Social democracy has common set of working assumptions and practices which include parliamentarism or electoralism, gradualism and statism. All of this has been varied according to countries and time. The basic difference between social democratic parties and liberal capitalist parties is that social democracy was earlier related to socialism, by their close relationship with official unions and their tolerance towards the left wings who are more rigid socialists. This feature is one of the main reasons left wing socialists tend to work with social democratic parties and also supports them in time of elections. The people of Europe turned to social democracy because it was the most obvious port in which to shelter from the neo-capitalist storm (Gamble & Wright 2000). There are also people who criticize the social democracy. Basically their point is that the rights of individuals suffer due to the concept of greater good. Individuals cannot make their own decisions according to their own will instead they have to obey the rules which are made for whole community. Like for example schools that are run by state, health care, child care and many others. Some even say that state has taken the role of parents and this kind of society should be describes as client society as state runs almost everything for them. As social democracy encourages large market deficits and hence are criticized by both the conservatives and liberals. According to them it interferes with market mechanisms. Social democracy also discourages investors to invest in the country due to the high taxation rates they have implemented. Hence, the economy goes really down. Socialists also criticize social democrats for following the capitalist system which leads them to be indistinguishable from other liberals. So instead of following their own system they start following the capitalist theory. Like in England they started implementing capitalist reforms like tax cuts, privatisation and backing out of welfare state instead of extending it. There is common misconception that social democracy and democratic socialists are almost the same. In order to distinguish between these two we can assume that social democracy is moving left from capitalism and democratic socialism as moving right from Marxism. So, in other words the party which gets mainly the middle class votes and is a leftist state with a market economy is a social democratic party. A democratic socialist party mainly get its vote from working class and intellectuals and they have a more radical approach as compared o social democracy. In some cases this is not applicable like in the case of British labour party; its charter describes it as a democratic socialist party but the two leaders that came up from this party, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, identify themselves as social democrats. There are a lot of other political theories like neo liberalism, communism, liberalism and capitalism that exists side by side social democracy. Most of the followers of these theories do criticize social democracy widely. Nowadays, neoliberalism is gaining popularity and almost every country is intentionally or unintentionally following this theory. The effect of this theory is that the richer grows richer and the poor get poorer. Liberalism is basically a approach to stop social conflicts. The meaning of neo is that we are approaching new kind of liberalism. In reality it is giving rise to more and more social conflicts as wealth is not distributed equally among different classes. This in return creates a social disparity among the people. The main aim of social democracy, as mentioned in the earlier paragraphs, is to create equality, solidarity and freedom among the society. According to Sheri Berman social democracy is the most distinctive ideology and should also be recognise as the twentieth century’s most successful one (Berman 2006). Social democratic model is actually very much applicable outside Latin America as it was first originated in Europe itself so this model is more successful and applicable in Europe. Europeans have actually followed social democracy and have succeeded in implementing this as well. A lot of countries in Europe have really achieved a society that has social equality in every form; in education, health, child care and many more. A poor gets the same privileges as the rich, hence, a pure society is formed. Bibliography Berman, Sheri. The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Meyer, Thomas, and Lewis P. Hinchman. The Theory of Social Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007. Hamilton, Clive, and John Birmingham. What's Left? the Death of Social Democracy. Melbourne: Black Inc, 2006.  Hogl, Eva. A new social democracy for Europe. Social Europe journal, 15 January 2010 Taylor, Robert. Does European social democracy have a future? Dissent, 2008. Ringen, Stein. What Democracy Is for: On Freedom and Moral Government. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Martell, Luke. Social Democracy: Global and National Perspectives. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Gamble, Andrew, and Anthony Wright. The New Social Democracy. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.  Read More