Social Democracy �ber Alles

Abstract

Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus. By David Held. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004. 216 pp., $57.95 cloth (ISBN: 0-7456-3352-8), $19.95 paper (ISBN: 0-7456-3353-6). Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus is David Held's most comprehensive manifesto yet for “global cosmopolitan social democracy.” In it, Held outlines a system that embeds universal human security guarantees and the globalized market system—both characterized with commendable nuance—into a liberal global social compact. Global Covenant is breathtaking in its visionary sweep and relentless in its commitment to a refined Atlanticist multilateralism that would create an overlapping “multicentrism” of democratic institutions—even of citizenship and sovereignty. (Ideally, sovereignty becomes “liberal international sovereignty.”) Kant's conception of humanity as being united in “overlapping communities of fate” pervades the book and energizes Held's vision for “multilayered, multilevel governance.” Obviously, Global Covenant will not persuade skeptics who believe that social democracy could only flower in the Western-dominated twentieth century (Desai 2005) or that it “merely polishes capitalism's roughest edges” (Bond 2005:89). Nor will the book engage realists who renounce the power and practical value of ideals in international relations. Nor will its ambitious scope satisfy admirers of pure and narrow disciplinary scholarship. As a manifesto, Global Covenant is unconcerned with alternatives. Comparative assessments of Held's vision vis-a-vis Asian regionalism, for example, or to less formal global governance based on public–private cooperation and mutual transparency (Reinicke 1998; Florini 2003) will not be found here. Yet, even though it clearly is a manifesto, Global Covenant is carefully documented. It does, however, rely heavily on the usual scholarly suspects: economists Dani Rodrik and Joseph Stiglitz, philosopher Jurgen Habermas, and political scientists …