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In addition to revising our view of the interwar period and the building of European democracies, this book cuts against the grain of most current theorizing in political science by explicitly discussing when and how ideas influence political behavior. Even though German and Swedish Social Democrats belonged to the same transnational political movement and faced similar political and social conditions in their respective countries before and after World War I, they responded very differently to the challenges of democratization and the Great Depression--with crucial consequences for the fates of their countries and the world at large. Explaining why these two social democratic parties acted so differently is the primary task of this book. Berman's answer is that they had very different ideas about politics and economics--what she calls their programmatic beliefs. The Swedish Social Democrats placed themselves at the forefront of the drive for democratization; a decade later they responded to the Depression with a bold new economic program and used it to build a long period of political hegemony. The German Social Democrats, on the other hand, had democracy thrust upon them and then dithered when faced with economic crisis; their haplessness cleared the way for a bolder and more skillful political actor--Adolf Hitler. This provocative book will be of interest to anyone concerned with twentieth-century European history, the transition to democracy problem, or the role of ideas in politics.
This open access book carefully explores the relationship between social democracy and its working-class electorate in Western Europe. Relying on different indicators, it demonstrates an important transformation in the class basis of social democracy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the working-class vote is strongly fragmented and social democratic parties face competition on multiple fronts for their core electorate – and not only from radical right parties. Starting from a reflection on ‘working-class parties’ and using a sophisticated class schema, the book paints a nuanced and diversified picture of the trajectory of social democracy that goes beyond a simple shift from working-class to middle-class parties. Following a detailed description, the book reviews possible explanations of workers' new voting patterns and emphasizes the crucial changes in parties' ideologies. It closes with a discussion on the role of the working class in social democracy's future electoral strategies.
The end of the twentieth century saw an unprecedented coincidence of electoral success for social democratic parties in western Europe leading to intensive discussion on the future of this new European left. The debates often centred on the notion of a 'Third way' and generated major expectations for policy change among social democratic politicians and voters. The authors collected here examine the recent social and employment policies of these progressive parties, looking for change in the guiding principles of policy and on actual policy decisions. They show how the maxims of demand management and egalitarianism have been replaced by social investment and equality of opportunity and demonstrate the full extent of convergence on policies such as employment maximization, the containment of social expenditure and a shift towards a social investment welfare state.
Presenting case studies from the UK, France, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and the transnational Party of European Socialists, this text provides a theoretically innovative explanation for the ‘new’ social democratic turn to Europe. It will be of interest to postgraduate students and academics studying/researching social democratic parties.
The German Social Democratic Party was the world’s first million-strong political party and was the main force pushing for the democratisation of Imperial Germany before the First World War. This book examines the themes around which the party organized its mainly working-class membership, and analyses the experiences and outlook of rank-and-file party members as well as the party’s press and publications. Key themes include: the Lassalle cult and leadership, nationalism and internationalism, attitudes to work, the politics of subsistence, the effects of military service, reading and the diffusion of Marx’s ideas, cultural organisations, and socialism and republicanism under the Imperial German state. Before 1914, the party successfully simultaneously addressed workers’ everyday concerns while offering the prospect of a better future.
With a combined focus on social democrats in Northern and Southern Europe, this book crucially broadens our understanding of the transformation of European social democracy from the mid-1970s to the early-1990s. In doing so, it revisits the transformation of this ideological family at the end of the Cold War, and before the launch of Third Way politics, and examines the dynamics and power relations at play among European social democratic parties in a context of nascent globalisation. The chronological, methodological and geographical approaches adopted allow for a more nuanced narrative of change for European social democracy than the hitherto dominant centric perspective. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of social democracy, the European Centre-left, political parties, ideologies and more broadly to comparative politics and European politics and history. The Introduction chapter of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license
Political history in the industrial world has indeed ended, argues this pioneering study, but the winner has been social democracy - an ideology and political movement that has been as influential as it has been misunderstood. Berman looks at the history of social democracy from its origins in the late nineteenth century to today and shows how it beat out competitors such as classical liberalism, orthodox Marxism, and its cousins, Fascism and National Socialism by solving the central challenge of modern politics - reconciling the competing needs of capitalism and democracy. Bursting on to the scene in the interwar years, the social democratic model spread across Europe after the Second World War and formed the basis of the postwar settlement. This is a study of European social democracy that rewrites the intellectual and political history of the modern era while putting contemporary debates about globalization in their proper intellectual and historical context.
5.4 Office- and policy-seeking performance of Social Democracy -- 5.5 The use of public powers through government by Social Democracy -- 6 The use of public powers: Social Democratic policy formation and policy performance -- 6.1 Introduction -- 6.2 The interdependence between state and society: intervention and care -- 6.3 The Dual Welfare State as a policy profile of Social Democracy -- 6.4 Does Social Democratic policy formation matter? -- 6.5 Towards a Social Democratic society? -- 7 Searching for a new direction: Third Ways, Europe and globalisation -- 7.1 Introduction -- 7.2 Globalisation, European integration and national welfare -- 7.3 A new Social Democratic model? From Dual Welfare State to social investment state -- 7.4 Social Democratic programmatic change: from Left to Right? -- 7.5 Maintaining power resources of Social Democracy: votes or office? -- 7.6 The policy performance of the 'new' Social Democracy -- 7.7 Global change and flexible adjustments: Social Democracy in flux -- 8 Varieties of Social Democracy: pathways to power and mission performance -- 8.1 Epitome: Social Democracy - unity and diversity and development -- 8.2 Democratisation and the development of Social Democratic power resources -- 8.3 Ideological change and its ramifications for the Social Democratic project and model -- 8.4 Gaining political powers and party control to develop the Dual Welfare State -- 8.5 From diversity to mainstreaming: Social Democracy moving into the 21st century -- Appendix -- Index.
The ascendancy of neo-liberalism in different parts of the world has put social democracy on the defensive. Its adherents lack a clear rationale for their policies. Yet a justification for social democracy is implicit in the United Nations Covenants on Human Rights, ratified by most of the worlds countries. The covenants commit all nations to guarantee that their citizens shall enjoy the traditional formal rights; but they likewise pledge governments to make those rights meaningful in the real world by providing social security and cultural recognition to every person. This new book provides a systematic defence of social democracy for our contemporary global age. The authors argue that the claims to legitimation implicit in democratic theory can be honored only by social democracy; libertarian democracies are defective in failing to protect their citizens adequately against social, economic, and environmental risks that only collective action can obviate. Ultimately, social democracy provides both a fairer and more stable social order. But can social democracy survive in a world characterized by pervasive processes of globalization? This book asserts that globalization need not undermine social democracy if it is harnessed by international associations and leavened by principles of cultural respect, toleration, and enlightenment. The structures of social democracy must, in short, be adapted to the exigencies of globalization, as has already occurred in countries with the most successful social-democratic practices.