Richard Sandbrook and his colleagues have written an excellent book on social democracy in the “global periphery.” The book's ultimate goal is to show that entry into global markets does not doom developing countries to either underdevelopment or social inequity. Indeed, the authors argue that too many scholars on both the Left and Right assume that “equitable development” is an oxymoron—that successful capitalist growth requires putting things like social security, equity, and full democratization off to some distant future. In order to show that this is not the case, they analyze the evolution, functioning, and accomplishments of four social democratic regimes in the global periphery—those of Kerala, Costa Rica, Mauritius, and Chile.

Before commenting on the analysis, it is important to stress how unusual is the very premise of Social Democracy in the Global Periphery. Most analyses of social democracy focus exclusively on Europe, viewing the phenomenon either implicitly or explicitly as one confined to (and a privilege of) the advanced industrial world. But, of course, this is absurd, since European social democratic movements and parties grew out of the struggles associated with development, and were a response to the great social upheavals and inequities generated by the early stages of capitalism. Therefore, it is only logical that we should find a demand for social democracy in parts of the global periphery today.

It is also important to mention that the book conveys an unusual but extremely helpful understanding of social democracy, one that insists upon its fundamental connection to capitalism. This interconnectedness exists most obviously because the goal of the former is to mitigate the consequences and reshape the workings of the latter. However, the relationship extends beyond this. As the author argues, social democracy requires some level of capitalist development to even exist (to paraphrase Barrington Moore, “no capitalism, no social democracy”), but once in power, a key task of social democratic regimes is to keep the capitalist party going. And the instrument social democracy uses to achieve this goal is “developmental” states, defined as “relatively coherent and effective state[s] with some autonomy from dominant classes.” Developmental states are able to “negotiate equitable social pacts, guide market forces … administer social programs” (p. 31) and foster “employment-creating economic growth” (p. 49) while remaining committed to the deepening and broadening of democracy. (This combination of features serves to differentiate them from their “authoritarian developmentalist” and populist counterparts.)

It is also important to note the stress that the authors place on the pragmatic or reformist nature of social democratic regimes. In their view, social democracy's aim is not to destroy capitalism, however peacefully or democratically; rather, its goal is to promote growth while ensuring that its benefits are distributed equitably and in a manner that improves the health and well-being of society as a whole.

After laying out the book's goals and defining social democracy in the first chapters, Sandbrook and his colleagues then proceed to an in-depth examination of Kerala, Costa Rica, Mauritius, and Chile. These chapters are concise and easy to read, and will therefore be especially helpful to those not already familiar with these unusual cases. The goal is twofold: to illuminate these regimes' successes in combining growth and equity and to trace out how they were able to do so. The authors do not want us to see these cases as so unusual as to be irreplaceable; they continually urge us not to view social democracy in the global periphery as the consequence of rare and unalterable structural conditions. If it were, then the lessons that could be learned from the study of Kerala, Costa Rica, Mauritius, and Chile would be somewhat limited. Instead, they argue that these cases are best understood as “exceptionalisms of a general type” (p. 177).

Here is where one wishes the book had gone even further. In general, when eschewing structural explanations, the literature on European social democracy focuses on parties and/or unions in its explanations of why some countries and not others develop social democratic regimes. Although this book does at times talk about parties, the analysis of parties (much less other aspects of workers' movements) is pretty limited. This reflects the reality of these cases, that is, that one significant difference between the European and contemporary developing world cases is that well-organized social democratic parties and unions were much more prominent in the former than they are in the latter. However, if the “traditional” carriers of the social democratic project are not capable of playing the same role in the contemporary cases as they did in the historical ones, then which actors can or should take the lead in moving developing countries in a social democratic direction? Civil society is sometimes mentioned by the authors in this context, but this seems a rather vague and unlikely substitute for truly organized and explicitly political actors. Precisely because Sandbrook and his colleagues do such a good job of analyzing the nature and workings of social democracy in the global periphery, one wishes that they had more to say about precisely how (and which) actors will be able to help bring it about.

Another question raised by the book concerns the connection between social democracy and political stability. With the exception of Chile (which is recognized by the authors as not fitting quite so neatly into the social democratic category), the cases have been very stable politically. Yet despite some discussion of how, once in power, social democratic regimes aim to broaden and deepen democracy, it remains unclear precisely in which direction the causal arrows go. In addition to requiring some level of capitalist development for its emergence, do social democratic regimes also require a certain degree of political stability? Or is it that social democracy generates political stability once in power? It is, of course, always difficult to disentangle causality, and perhaps, as in so many cases, the causal arrows here go both ways. Nonetheless, one is left wanting to know more. Perhaps this is just a reflection of the success of Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: A good book is one that raises almost as many interesting questions as it answers.