In search of social democracy

In search of social democracy
Author: John Callaghan
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2017-05-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1526125099

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. The search for social democracy has not been an easy one over the last three decades. The economic crisis of the 1970s, and the consequent rise of neo-liberalism, confronted social democrats with difficult new circumstances: tax-resistant electorates, the globalisation of capital and Western deindustrialisation. In response, a new bout of ideological revisionism consumed social democratic parties. But did this revisionism simply amount to a neo-liberalisation of the Left or did it propose a recognisably social democratic agenda? Were these ideological adaptations the only feasible ones or were there other forms of modernisation that might have yielded greater strategic dividends for the Left? Why did some social democratic parties feel it necessary to take their revisionism much further than others? In search of social democracy brings together prominent scholars of social democracy to address these questions. Focusing on the social democratic heartland of Western Europe (although Australia and the United States also figure in the analysis), it gives the first detailed assessment of how the new social democratic revisionism has fared in government. The book begins by considering the underlying causes of the end of social democracy’s golden age and the magnitude of the challenges faced by social democratic parties after the 1970s. It then proceeds to examine detailed case studies of how particular social democratic parties responded to this changed political terrain. Finally, it contributes to a broader conversation about the future of social democracy by considering ways in which the political thought of ‘third way’ social democracy might be radicalised for the twenty-first century. The contributors offer a variety of perspectives – some are sceptical of social democracy’s prospects, others more sanguine; some supportive of the performance of social democratic parties in government, others bitingly critical. But they are united by the conviction that the themes addressed in this book are crucial to understanding the current politics of the industrialised world and, in particular, to determining the feasibility of more egalitarian and democratic social outcomes than have been possible so far in the era of neo-liberalism.

In Search of New Social Democracy

In Search of New Social Democracy
Author: Olle Törnquist
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2021-09-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0755639790

Why is the classical social democratic vision of development based on social justice by democratic means losing ground? Why was it so difficult to renew, even in the context of the third wave of democracy in the South? How does this matter in the North too, and how might it be reinvented? This accessible book brings to life major insights gained through written sources and interviews with a large range of activists and political protagonists in the southern cases of Indonesia, India, and the Philippines – but also in the northern social democratic stronghold of Sweden. By considering the experiences in view of the basics of Social Democracy and a broader comparative framework, Olle Törnquist arrives at globally relevant conclusions. Crucially, Törnquist also puts forward suggestions for how to achieve this reinvention social democracy. Through implementation of broad alliances in the Global South, supported by the Global North, for transformative rights and welfare reforms – universal, participatory and impartially implemented - precursors to social economic growth pacts can thus be effected.

Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917)

Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917)
Author: Eric Blanc
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2021-06-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004449930

This groundbreaking comparative study rediscovers the socialists of Russia’s borderlands, upending conventional interpretations of working-class politics and the Russian Revolution. Researched in eight languages, Revolutionary Social Democracy challenges long-held assumptions by scholars and activists about the dynamics of revolutionary change.

Social Democracy and the Crisis of Equality

Social Democracy and the Crisis of Equality
Author: Carol Johnson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019-02-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9811362998

This book analyses social democratic parties’ attempts to tackle inequality in increasingly challenging times. It provides a distinctive contribution to the literature on the so-called ‘crisis’ of social democracy by exploring the role of equality policy in this crisis. While the main focus is on analysing Australian Labor governments, examples are also given from a wide range of parties internationally. The book traces how a traditional focus on class has expanded to include other forms of inequality, including issues of gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality and explores both the intersections and potential tensions that result. Meanwhile there are new challenges for equality policy arising from a changing geo-economics (the rise of Asia), the legacies of neoliberalism and the impact of technological disruption.

Capitalism and Social Democracy

Capitalism and Social Democracy
Author: Adam Przeworski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1986-12-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521336567

Not to repeat past mistakes: the sudden resurgence of a sympathetic interest in social democracy is a response to the urgent need to draw lessons from the history of the socialist movement. After several decades of analyses worthy of an ostrich, some rudimentary facts are being finally admitted. Social democracy has been the prevalent manner of organization of workers under democratic capitalism. Reformist parties have enjoyed the support of workers.

Social Democracy in the Global Periphery

Social Democracy in the Global Periphery
Author: Richard Sandbrook
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2007-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139460919

Social Democracy in the Global Periphery focuses on social-democratic regimes in the developing world that have, to varying degrees, reconciled the needs of achieving growth through globalized markets with extensions of political, social and economic rights. The authors show that opportunities exist to achieve significant social progress, despite a global economic order that favours core industrial countries. Their findings derive from a comparative analysis of four exemplary cases: Kerala (India), Costa Rica, Mauritius and Chile (since 1990). Though unusual, the social and political conditions from which these developing-world social democracies arose are not unique; indeed, pragmatic and proactive social-democratic movements helped create these favourable conditions. The four exemplars have preserved or even improved their social achievements since neoliberalism emerged hegemonic in the 1980s. This demonstrates that certain social-democratic policies and practices - guided by a democratic developmental state - can enhance a national economy's global competitiveness.

Social Democracy in the Making

Social Democracy in the Making
Author: Gary Dorrien
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 595
Release: 2019-04-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300244991

An expansive and ambitious intellectual history of democratic socialism from one of the world’s leading intellectual historians and social ethicists The fallout from twenty years of neoliberal economic globalism has sparked a surge of interest in the old idea of democratic socialism—a democracy in which the people control the economy and government, no group dominates any other, and every citizen is free, equal, and included. With a focus on the intertwined legacies of Christian socialism and Social Democratic politics in Britain and Germany, this book traces the story of democratic socialism from its birth in the nineteenth century through the mid-1960s. Examining the tenets on which the movement was founded and how it adapted to different cultural, religious, and economic contexts from its beginnings through the social and political traumas of the twentieth century, Gary Dorrien reminds us that Christian socialism paved the way for all liberation theologies that make the struggles of oppressed peoples the subject of redemption. He argues for a decentralized economic democracy and anti-imperial internationalism.

The Nordic Model of Social Democracy

The Nordic Model of Social Democracy
Author: N. Brandal
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2013-02-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137013273

Social Democracy has long been prominent in Nordic politics through the dominant parties and ideological hegemony of the centre-left. This book explores the growth of social democracy and the policy dilemmas that social democrats face today. It breaks new ground by relating recent literature on social democracy in Europe to Scandinavia.

German Social Democracy, 1905-1917

German Social Democracy, 1905-1917
Author: Carl E. Schorske
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 1955
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674351257

No political parties of present-day Germany are separated by a wider gulf than the two parties of labor, one democratic and reformist, the other totalitarian and socialist-revolutionary. Social Democrats and Communists today face each other as bitter political enemies across the front lines of the Cold War; yet they share a common origin in the Social Democratic Party of Imperial Germany. How did they come to go separate ways? By what process did the old party break apart? How did the prewar party prepare the ground for the dissolution of the labor movement in World War I, and for the subsequent extension of Leninism into Germany? To answer these questions is the purpose of Carl Schorske's study.

In the Name of Social Democracy

In the Name of Social Democracy
Author: Gerassimos Moschonas
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2016-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1784787973

Following the locust years of the neo-liberal revolution, social democracy was the great victor at the fin-de-siècle elections. Today, parties descended from the Second International hold office throughout the European Union, while the Right appears widely disorientated by the dramatic “modernisation” of a political tradition dating back to the nineteenth century. The focal point of Gerassimos Moschonas’s study is the emergent “new social democracy” of the twenty-first century. As Moschonas demonstrates, change has been a constant of social-democratic history: the core dominant reformist tendency of working-class politic notwithstanding, capitalism has transformed social democracy more than it has succeeded in transforming capitalism. Now, in the “great transformation” of recent years, a process of “de-social-democratization” has been set in train, affecting every aspect of the social-democratic phenomenon, from ideology and programs to organization and electorates. Analytically incisive and empirically meticulous, In the Name of Social Democracy will establish itself as the standard reference work on the logic and dynamics of a major mutation in European politics.