CSR – It is still Greek to European Banks!

Yesterday, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou narrowly won the support of the Greek parliament for his ongoing efforts to steer the country away from bankruptcy. Whether this has given him a second political life though is an open question. Greece’s financial troubles are far from over.

As a member the EU and the Eurozone the survival of Greece within these European institutions seems still anything but certain. Last week, the debate among European heads of state and Finance Ministers on further support for Greece was tough and controversial. Finally an agreement of another multi billion Euro cash injection from mostly France and Germany paved the way for keeping Greece floating for another month or so.

A thorny nettle of disagreement between the countries was the question, in how far private sector banks should be part of the solution. Germany, whose banks exposure of some €20bn is much lower than France’s was insisting on more involvement, while France opposed this approach in fear of a downgrading of their private banks by rating agencies. The compromise turned out to appeal to banks to ‘voluntarily’ become involved – but precious little is found in the news about whether banks have actually taken up this ‘invitation’.

If we watch the footage of protests and civil unrest in Greece it is conceivable that further ‘austerity’ measures (i.e. cutting public services) – let alone an outright bankruptcy – of the Greek government will pose a serious threat to the country’s democratic institutions. Much (admittedly not all) of Greece’s current troubles are following the global financial crisis. Greece is perhaps the most visible example of what many citizens in North America and Europe think: that Governments pile up huge debts to fix the irresponsible behaviour of wealthy bankers and investors while asking the common taxpayer and middle/working class people to put up with reduced public services or – as for instance in the case of UK university students – higher prices for those services.

It reflects a recent debate in the CSR literature which was initiated by Colin Crouch, a prominent sociologist and, more recently, CSR expert at Warwick University. He argues that capitalism has been able to coexist with democracy in most Western countries only because there were mechanisms to deal with two problems inherent in capitalist market economies: first, the cyclical ups and downs of the economy, which exposes particularly middle and lower income groups to economic hardship. Second, the harmonious coexistence of both systems is only possible if the inherent inequality of income distribution in capitalist systems can be addressed in a way that some income at the top end is redistributed to those at the bottom.

For decades after World War II the mechanism to address this problem was referred to as Keynesianism. Government spending during recession as well as progressive taxation and a welfare state helped addressing these two problems. This system was somewhat obliterated in the 1980s with policies most visibly linked to Reagan and Thatcher, often referred to as ‘neo-liberalism’. Crouch though argues that those changes in fact created a policy regime of ‘privatized Keynesianism’. By encouraging and extending home ownership, pension plans based on investments in capital markets and other models of making the saving middle class to small scale investors, the two inherent contradictions between capitalism and democracy were basically to turn lower income citizens in ‘mini capitalists’.

With the so-called ‘financial crisis’ in the late 2000s though this system has proven to be no longer effective. Many lower and middle income citizens in Western countries have lost their homes and pensions – or at least have suffered a severe reduction of their value. Currently, he suggests, we see this mechanism of ‘privatized Keynesianism’ weakened, if not absent, with no real alternatives in sight.

In this situation we face two stark options. The first possibility is that similar to the 1920s and early 1930s, this absence of a mediating policy regime may give rise to political extremism, anti-democratic movements or outright the re-invigoration of fascism or left wing authoritarianism. In this light, the developments in Greece, but also the ongoing rise of the political extreme right in many European countries and the United States actually get quite a daunting character. We are not quite there yet, but the signs of far reaching unrest and despair about the effects of a global, largely unregulated capitalist system are clearly there and by all accounts, are likely to rise.

The other option though, in Crouch’s argument, is that one group among the winners of global capitalism and arguably the most powerful players step into the role of addressing the two inherent tensions between capitalism and democracy. This is exactly the point where corporate social responsibility would kick in. And in fact, as we have argued elsewhere, much of what companies are doing under the label of CSR is in fact very similar to classic welfare state activities. CSR in this perspective would see private corporations as pivotal actors in addressing those two inherent tensions between capitalism and democracy.

The reaction of European banks to support the effort of saving Greece from bankruptcy so far however shows little sign of awareness of this broader context for corporate responsibility. The Greek bailout situation is probably a blatant example of a country at the brink of severe political unrest where direct involvement of the private sector might indeed prevent a country sliding into anarchy or political extremism. So far though there are no signs that any of the European banks have seriously thought about their broader role in society. Maybe it is because the business case for this kind of CSR is so hard to make...

Picture by PIAZZA del POPOLO. Reproduced under Creative Commons Licence.