“Managing the Impossible?” Comparing How Countries Address the Dahrendorf Quandary

Abstract

This paper examines the policy approaches and measures that developed market economies countries have adopted to “manage” what has become known as the Dahrendorf Quandary, a profound challenge facing globalizing economies: over time, staying economically competitive requires either adopting measures detrimental to the cohesion of society or restricting civil liberties and political participation. Examining a range of countries over time, it is found that their policy choices and subsequent performance are too varied to support the inevitable, almost mechanical, incompatibility the Quandary implies. While balancing the relationship between economic globalization, social cohesion, and democracy continues to be a major challenge for developed market economies, results show they are not helpless in what Dahrendorf feared to be a Herculean task of “squaring the circle” among incompatible trends. In other words, while the tensions the Quandary posits apply, they nonetheless need not lead to similar or negative outcomes.

Keywords:

• comparative political economy
• liberal democracy
• economic globalization
• social cohesion
• civil society

Links to Data

CPDS Dataset https://www.cpds-data.org/

European Values Study https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu/

GSS https://gss.norc.org/

Institutional Profiles Database http://www.cepii.fr/institutions/EN/ipd.asp

KOF Globalization Index https://kof.ethz.ch/en/forecasts-and-indicators/indicators/kof-globalisation-index.html

National Opinion Research Center. General Social Survey Data Explorer, gssdataexplorer.norc.org

Quality of Government https://qog.pol.gu.se/data

VDEM https://www.v-dem.net/en/

World Bank https://data.worldbank.org/indicator

Notes

1. We explored the Quandary alongside a similar formulation known as the Rodrik Trilemma (Rodrik 2011). It posits an impossibility theorem between democracy, national sovereignty, and global economic integration: any two can be combined, but never all three simultaneously and in full.

2. https://data.worldbank.org

3. https://data.imf.org

4. The 2001 survey cannot be used for two reasons: in this incipient round, not all indicators needed for the analysis here were surveyed; and very few countries were included compared to 2006 onwards.

5. The answer categories are presented in Appendix B.

6. The answer categories are presented in Appendix B.

7. While the IPD survey began in 2001, some of the indicators directly relevant to our operationalization only began to be used in 2006. 2001 also saw a very reduced sample of countries, while there was a steady increase in country coverage from 2006 to 2009. Therefore, we will focus on the 2006–2009 period and plot how countries have changed their policies between 2006 and 2009.

8. A case in point is the nexus of “education–employment perspectives–labor market” and country performance, following Ansell and Gingrich (2018). It is the European south that fares less well in this regard, with a greater mismatch between the output of higher education graduates and adequate opportunities to enter the labor market. When it comes to family policies, differences are less clear (see also Schwander 2018); however, regional differences appear more clearly with regard to social dialogue, given the different patterns of collective bargaining between Europe’s northern and southern countries (Manow et al. 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helmut K. Anheier

Helmut K. Anheier (PhD Yale) is Professor of Sociology and Academic Co-Director of the Dahrendorf Forum at the Hertie School in Berlin. He also is a member of the faculty of the Luskin School of Public Affairs, and Visiting Professor at LSE Ideas. He has published widely in the social sciences with an emphasis in civil society, organization, and governance, and received several national and international awards for his academic achievements. Previously, he was President of the Hertie School, and Professor at the Max-Weber-Institute of Sociology at Heidelberg University, where he directed the Center for Social Investment and Innovation. Before embarking on an academic career, he served the United Nations as a social affairs officer.

Alexandru Filip

Alexandru Filip is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Mainz. He obtained his PhD at the University of Bremen in 2017, and has previously worked as a research associate at Jacobs University Bremen and as a Postdoctoral Fellow for the Dahrendorf Forum at the Hertie School Berlin.