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| Europe |
| Does European Social Democracy have a Future? |
| 2008-09-15 |
| From Dissent The demise of European social democracy has come suddenly and perhaps unexpectedly. As Roger Liddle from Policy Network, the New Labour think tank that organized the Hertfordshire conference, has pointed out, as recently as 2000 no fewer than eleven out of the then fifteen European Union member states had social democratic or center-left prime ministers. Today there are only four. Electoral setbacks for social democrats in Europe cannot be dismissed as the temporary result of fickle and volatile voters who will return to the fold in due course. The truth is that social democrats are now very much on the ideological defensive. This does not mean, however, that the axis of political advantage has tilted inexorably rightward in any dramatic way. On the contrary, what should concern social democrats is the unexpected emergence of what looks like a serious threat from new forces to their left. In Germany Die Linke, or the Left Party, as it is known in English, has become the third-largest political party in the country after the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. It is the result of a strategic alliance between the old Communists from East Germany and breakaways from the left wing of the Social Democrats, under the charismatic leadership of Oskar Lafontaine, the former finance minister. Der Linke polled around 15 percent in the spring regional elections and has become a pivotal force in cities like Berlin and Hamburg and regions such as Hesse. A similar left surge at the expense of social democrats has occurred in Denmark. In the 2007 general election the Left Socialists secured 13 percent of the total Danish vote. The electoral shift to a left beyond social democracy has been even more dramatic in the Netherlands. In the last general election in 2006, the Left Socialists won a sixth of the vote, not far behind the Dutch Labour Party, which lost a quarter of its core support and finished with only just over 20 percent. Women, immigrants, and gays may have won hard fights for legal rights, but their position is also growing more insecure in Europe from those, mainly Muslim, arrivals but also embattled male manual workers, who are less tolerant about pluralism and divergent moral values and more hostile to difference. The fear and experience of crime and terrorism is also more likely to hit the least advantaged than the better off. All these changes are hitting social democrats more profoundly than any other political grouping in Europe because they reduce the perceived effectiveness of the kind of progressive policies with which they are normally identified. It hits efforts to maintain or create any sense of social or political unity across internal divisions and it also weakens center-left appeals to internationalist solidarity around shared values. This is why social democrats have to focus their attention on religion and culture and not just on their traditional concerns with work and income equality in order to ensure their contemporary relevance. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #3 No, next question. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2008-09-15 19:41 |
| #2 Does suicide have a future? |
| Posted by: ed 2008-09-15 18:43 |
| #1 The electoral shift to a left beyond social democracy Women, immigrants, and gays may have won hard fights for legal rights, but their position is also growing more insecure in Europe from those, mainly Muslim, arrivals but also embattled male manual workers, who are less tolerant about pluralism and divergent moral values and more hostile to difference. The fear and experience of crime and terrorism is also more likely to hit the least advantaged than the better off. ----- how does it go, you can have 2 out of 3........... |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2008-09-15 11:32 |