Beyond Nordic Nostalgia: Envisaging a Social/Democratic System of Global Governance

Abstract

Ole Wæver's 1992 article, `Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe after the Cold War', seemed to articulate the widespread feeling of the end of Norden. However, this argument is flawed and mistaken. Logically and conceptually it is confusing and tendential, and the evidence to back the empirical claims is casual. An explanation in terms of political economy starts from the observation that it was not the end of the Cold War but rather the end of the Bretton Woods system that gave rise to the redefinition of the Third Way already in the early 1980s. The problems of the Nordic model stemmed from insurrections against local relations of domination at the workplace; transformations of the occupational structures and class relations; the crisis of the Bretton Woods system of regulating the global economy; and the liberalization of the exit options of capital, among other processes. Starting with the critical realist idea that emancipation is `characteristically the transition from an unwanted, unnecessary and oppressive situation to a wanted and/or needed and empowering or more flourishing situation', I argue that emancipatory, globally oriented political action is a condition for the Nordic ideals to be realized and developed further under new conditions.