Next Left: where next for social democracy?

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Next Left where next for social democracy?
The new policy agenda
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Patrick Diamond Policy Network and
University of Oxford
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• Social democracy faces testing times in Europe
  and elsewhere
• Worst European election result since 1979
• Social democracy defeated in Scandinavia
• Centre-left collapse in Eastern and Central
  Europe
• Historic defeats in Britain and Germany lowest
  vote share since 1918
• No centre-left recovery despite banking crisis,
  global recession, rising unemployment - now the
  social model is under threat

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• The pessimism about the centre-lefts prospects
  can be
• overdone
• Politics of despair 2000s wasted decade in which
  social democracy acquiesced to neo-liberalism
• Politics of nostalgia 1945-70 golden age for
  social democracy in which new welfare settlement
  was forged
• Exaggerates success of neo-liberalism over last
  twenty years, and overestimates success of
  post-war social democracy
• Should build on, not reject, third way Neue
  Mitte while adjusting to
• challenges of the present

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• Third way model of social democracy
• Dynamic knowledge-based economy
• Strong civil society and public services
• Modern government focused on partnership and
  decentralisation
• Foreign policy through international co-operation
• 1990s period of relative calm and optimism in
  domestic and global
• affairs

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• What is social democracy?
• Set of practices focused on redistribution,
  market regulation and social welfare
• A persuasion not a fixed doctrine
• Political approach built on security, fairness
  and co-operation
• Social democracy has initiated institutional
  reform and reinvention in the past

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• The challenges of the present
• Twin crises banking and budgetary shocks
• Politics of austerity and fairness
• Rise in scepticism about climate change
• Demography and population ageing
• Quality of life, work/life balance, well-being,
  family
• European integration and enlargement

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• Is there a new idea for the left?
• To conserve and protect the existing welfare
  state (Judt)
• To promote greater economic equality (Wilkinson
  and Pickett)
• To revive Keynesianism in the wake of the crisis
  (Desai)
• To identify new sources of sustainability after
  capitalism (Nahles)
• Does this match up to the scale of the human
  crisis the world faces?

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• A new politics and a new relationship between the
  state and
• citizens
• The right want the crisis to undermine the state
  left must change its role and direction
• The state will increasingly need to share
  responsibility with citizens co-production,
  cost-sharing, lifestyle management,
  conditionality
• Less focus on the state as provider
• Politics itself will need to acknowledge
  intractable dilemmas and trade-offs
• Revival of global institutions and global civil
  society

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• Concluding remarks
• Social democracy isnt dead
• Need to re-examine common principles that define
  it
• About particular approach to politics, as much as
  new instruments and governing programmes
• New wave of social democracy drawing on rich
  inheritance of ideologies, ideas and institutions

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