THREE'S A CROWD

The world has not heard the last of the Third Way (Anthony Giddens, July 10 2003, Financial Times)

Critics say the Third Way is empty of content - an invention of spin-doctors. But exactly the opposite is true. Third Way thinking is driven by policy innovation and the need to react to social change. Its outlines are as relevant as ever: the restructuring of the state and government to make them more democratic and accountable; a shake-up in welfare systems to bring them more into line with the main risks people face today; emphasis on job creation coupled with labour market reform; a commitment to fiscal discipline; investment in public services but only where linked to reform; investment in human capital as crucial to success in the knowledge economy; the balancing of rights and responsibilities of citizens; and a multilateralist approach to globalisation and international relations.

The right's recent electoral successes were not born from a new political ideology that can rival Third Way thinking. Compassionate conservatism may have helped George W. Bush to scrape into power but it is hardly a developed political philosophy. In Europe, the right has been propelled back to government on a wave of far-right populism. The universal themes of this "populist revolt" are anxieties about immigration, multiculturalism and crime. It is anti-establishment, reflecting disquiet about orthodox democratic mechanisms, and it taps into worries about loss of national identity in the EU and more generally about the impact of globalisation. The centre right has normalised some of these populist themes and incorporated them within its own perspectives. Its successes have been largely opportunistic.

The centre left remains in a strong position. But no one should doubt that there is a good deal of rethinking to do. Progressives must respond not only to the issues brought into focus by the populist right but also to wider global changes. The world has changed enormously since the early 1990s. At that time, the global environment seemed relatively benign, with the end of the cold war and the prospect of steady long-term economic growth. After September 11, 2001, the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, mass protests against globalisation, the bursting of the stock market bubble and the subsequent corporate scandals, and with economic growth stuttering almost everywhere, things look more difficult.

The Third Way--which is fundamentally an attempt to apply conservative and free market solutions to political and social problems while maintaining, for reasons of one's own delicate sensibilities, the facade of being a "progressive"--faces two problems in the long term: the First (conservative) and the Second (basically socialist) Ways. Keep repeating the mantras of the free market and taking responsibility and building social institutions and people may come to believe in them, making them indistinguishable from conservatives. Meanwhile, those who reject them will demand that the party return to its leftist roots. In the long term people either believe in freedom and society or else in security and the State and any attempt to permanently straddle the divide is inherently unstable. The Third Way is destined to be as temporary as was its spiritual twin Rockefeller Republicanism. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 11, 2003 8:52 AM