Social Democracy Old and New: ‘While the snake is shedding its skin, it is blind’
I would like to formulate, in the clearest possible terms, the questions that are implied throughout this analysis. Is the progressive adoption of a moderate neoliberalism, or the greater priority accorded to ‘new politics’ themes, essential to the political approach of contemporary social democracy, or secondary? Are the marked shift in the sociological and cultural centre of gravity of social-democratic organizations and electorates towards the middle classes, and the redistribution of endo-organizational power in favour of the leader and ‘technocrats’, important or secondary for social-democratic identity? Or, once again, are the loosening of the link with the trade unions, and the crisis of tripartite structures of national negotiation, important or secondary for the social-democratic modus operandi? Is the inability of countries with a social-democratic tradition and structure to institute a new and durable model of regulation that takes account of globalization, the interconnection of financial markets, the expansion of the service sector, and the feminization of their labour force,1 important or not for the constitution of the social-democratic parties? The answer to all these questions is clear: these political options and developments are central!
Now, these transformations, product of a long and gradual process of evolution, predate the ‘new’ social democracy à la Blair, Schroder, or D’Alema. A number of the reforms and revisions vaunted by the new social democracy, from managerial competence or practical acceptance of the anti-interventionist macroeconomic consensus, to openness to the middle classes, were – in large part – set in train, or established, before the ‘new’ social democrats came to power in the socialist parties. The ‘third way’ proposed by Anthony Giddens is certainly presented as ‘an attempt to transcend both old-syle social democracy and neoliberalism’.2 But in which unknown, fabled country is this ‘old-style social democracy’ to be found? Where was it practised? After 1982 (failure of French Keynesianism) and 1984 (abandonment by the Greek socialists of their expansionary economic policy), which country, which government, adopted the recipes of ‘old-style social democracy’? In the last twenty years, which social-democratic party has not jettisoned its ideology and traditional policy-making? In reality, the ‘third way’, conceived as a route ‘different’ from, or ‘intermediate’ between, two actual opposed extremes, does not exist, because this ‘old-style social democracy’ does not exist or, when it does, involves only small minority currents. Contrariwise, conceived as a political and/or theoretical initiative for refounding social democracy, the ‘third way’ not only fully exists, but is prospering and becoming progressively dominant.3 In a sense, since the beginning of the 1980s European socialism in its entirety has been largely pointed, according to different rhythms and in different forms, in the ideological-programmatic direction described in part by political enthusiasts for the ‘third way’, often ex post.
In addition, the opposition between supporters of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ social democracy, whatever the content attributed to either term, crystallized within parties that were already in the process of transformation. They confronted one another in parties that were in fact becoming ‘new’ – in part regardless of the deliberate intentions of the competing elites, in part because of them and thanks to their actions. Obviously, here it is almost impossible to disentangle ‘external’ constraint and inescapable situation from conjunctural option; profoundly reluctant choice from deliberate strategic preference. But in any event, social democracy in the 1980s, in full de- and recomposition, was in the process of changing before its ‘great transformation’.
‘While the snake is shedding its skin, it is blind.’ Ernst Jünger’s naturalist image partly fits the social-democratic mutation of the last thirty years, when the transformation had yet to discover its theorization, or a clearly defined and consistently adopted ideological-programmatic expression.4 But the ‘new’ social democracy has definitely not sprung up like some jack-in-the-box. It largely predated its concept. In a sense, the ‘third way’ was already present as well, prior to its adoption by New Labour and theoretical formulation by Giddens. The new social democracy of the 1990s is the worthy, direct heir of 1980s social democracy. The continuity between them is manifest, and manifestly strong.
The major innovation made by the partisans of the new social democracy consisted in the explicit, conscious, deliberate, and – above all – aggressive assumption of this new identity. The concepts of the ‘radical centre’ or the ‘new centre’ have audaciously pushed back the ‘limits of what can be said’, transgressing inherited programmatic and ideological proprieties. They have brought a new coherence, an unimpaired visibility, an impressive clarity to the trajectory of change. The elaborations and slogans of the ‘new’ social democrats have made it possible to go straight into the new universe of social democracy, to which – in large part – it was already inclining. What had been a fragile intellectual construct, a taste for ambivalence, a lukewarm affiliation, a gentle change, was at a stroke accelerated, magnified, transformed into a forceful adherence, even into a symbolic rupture, a message of renaissance. Thus were born British New Labour, with its ‘radical centre’, the SPD of the ‘new centre’, the PDS and the ‘Olive Tree’, the ‘modernist’ and European PASOK of Costas Simitis. Towards the second half of the 1990s, with and thanks to the new generation of social-democratic elites, the moderately neoliberal turn begun in silence, the opening to the middle classes that had in fact started some time before, the progressive loosening of the link with the unions, the slow redistribution of intra-organizational power, the gradual abandonment of the language of class – all these developments were accelerated and began converging, cumulatively intensifying their effects. The image became unique, complete, and was wholeheartedly adopted. Thus, with the appearance of the ‘new’ social democracy, the question of social-democratic identity received a novel response, and enables us to pinpoint a new consciousness.
Obviously, not all social-democratic forms and fabrics are identical – far from it. Some verge on neoliberalism; others candidly yield to it; yet others are more distant from it.
As I have already stressed, the neoliberalization of options has been more inventive, eccentric, advanced, and deliberate in Great Britain than elsewhere (see Chapter 9). Labour’s whole programme was inventive (e.g. the policy of devolution, promotion of the theme of ‘community’, initiation of a debate on the sacrosanct British electoral system). In addition, the discourse of New Labour has sometimes assumed a very ‘traditionalist’ complexion, references to ‘Middle England’ – ‘the repository of English traditionalism’5 – being an exemplary expression of this. ‘Like the new right,’ Colin Hay and Mathew Watson have written, ‘the “Third Way” represents a flexible synthesis of (a generally understated) neoliberal economics and a (loudly-proclaimed) legitimating normative philosophy – in this case neocommunitarianism for Thatcher’s neoconservatism.’6 This situation is explained largely by the dominance of the opposition’s ideas (‘Social democracy had never captured the conservative nation,’ Gregory Elliott has written),7 the severe defeat of the trade unions, the absence of a competitor on Labour’s left, as well as the strong liberal tradition in Great Britain. The ideas that have historically been the strength and pride of British society – the high value placed on the individual and individual responsibility – reappear at regular intervals, and find a much more sympathetic audience there than elsewhere.8 In this light, the neoliberalization of British Labourism is not simply more conspicuous, more advanced and more audacious: it is also more profound.9 Thus, while the symbolism of the centre – ‘beyond left and right’ – was crucial in Great Britain, in France a return to the symbolism of the left, a moderate reactivation of the left/right divide, a combination of the neoliberal option with elements of a ‘soft’ neo-Keynesianism, were the distinguishing signs that marked the programmatic renewal undertaken by the PS after 1995. In Germany, spurred on by the Blairite example and the SPD’s long spell in opposition, Gerhard Schroder adopted an approach (the ‘new centre’) that at first sight seems closer to the British pattern. Nevertheless, the German case is more composite. The ‘social market economy’ remains an inescapable reference in a country where, unlike in England, there is no classical liberal tradition.10
In Scandinavia (particularly Sweden) and Austria, too, the more classically social-democratic legacy remains relatively strong even today. The SAP and the SPÖ continue to represent a version of social democracy that is more working-class and popular, although their long spell in power has contributed substantially to the dilution of their programmatic originality and a challenge to their former influence.
These differences indicate that there is not one, but several ‘third ways’. But beyond these differences, it is clear that the extraordinary diversity (ideological, programmatic, organizational/institutional, sociological) of the socialist cultures and structures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is in the process of shrinking.11 The transformation is profound, because it is not merely ideological. On the contrary, in a single dynamic it encompasses actors and structures that are ‘external’ to the social-democratic enterprise (electorate, unions), those that are ‘internal’ (cadres and membership base, leadership, organizational structure), as well as the ideological and programmatic elaborations of the social-democratic elites.
It also embraces the ‘policy style’ – that is, ‘the standard operating procedures for handling issues which arrive on the political agenda’.12 Social democracy’s overall cartography is altering (and everywhere in the same direction) – that is the essential change. Whether this is dubbed the ‘third way’ or something else is a simple matter of terminology. To identify a global change with its most articulate, bold and aggressive version – Blair’s ‘third way’ – is to restrict its scope and import.
The ‘Triple’ Coherence of an Incoherent Identity
In effect, after much groping and hesitation, social democrats have adopted a distinctly aggressive programmatic posture, particularly during the second half of the 1990s. The adoption of a moderate neoliberal discourse, supplemented in some cases by a moderately expressed post-materialist sensibility,13 as well as a more classically social-democratic discourse, has created a rather ‘social-liberal’ programmatic profile. The new social democracy is a more moderate force programmatically and ideologically than ever: moderately neoliberal, moderately non-liberal, moderately ecological and ‘post-materialist’, and sometimes moderately ‘law-and-order’. ‘Modernity’, ‘responsibility’, ‘competence’, ‘across-the-board appeals to the whole electorate’ – these have become the hallmarks of its ‘natural party of government’ strategy (see Chapter 9). By means of this strategy, the loss in social identity and left-wing identity has been immediately counterbalanced by a gain in ‘modernity’, and managerial and economic competence.
This new posture – an updated, extended and accentuated formulation of the semi-catch-all strategy of the 1950s and 1960s – represents the most striking and emphatic ideological opening to the middle classes and the enterprise culture in social-democratic history. It thus combines the most advanced ‘ideological depolarization’ with the boldest interclassist semantics in the entire history of European socialism. We should remember that this interclassist semantics finds a real – not rhetorical – support in the interclassist composition of social-democratic organizations and electorates, which is likewise historically unprecedented. Ideologically and sociologically, social democracy is a political force with a ‘trans-border’ identity; or, more traditionally, with a ‘catch-all’ identity.
Yet one way of aggregating ideas and interests is substituted for another only when the latter has disappeared. The working-class format and the catch-all format do not mix. They cannot be juxtaposed or combined. When one is centre-stage, the other is off-stage. These two formats – or strategies – are separate, and cannot be superimposed. Now, what the majority of political commentators meant by the social-democratic ‘catch-all’ strategy of the 1950s and 1960s was, in reality, neither a catch-all strategy nor a working-class strategy, nor even a ‘dual’ strategy (which is, by definition, impossible). Instead, it was a ‘semi-working-class’ and a ‘semi-catch-all’ strategy (see Chapter 3). The reality constituted by two ‘half-realities’ – products of two ‘half-strategies’ – was the social-democratic reality of the 1950s, and especially the 1960s.
In definitively abandoning its working-class strategy of yesteryear – but also its ‘semi-working-class’ and ‘semi-catch-all’ strategy of the 1960s – in favour of an aggressively and resolutely trans-border strategy, today’s social democracy has opted not simply for another strategy, but for another identity.
It is an identity that contains three ‘factors of coherence’:
(a)In presenting itself so clearly as a ‘moderate’ and ‘responsible’ force, social democracy has hit upon a pragmatic balance – or rather, a coherence – between its discourse in opposition (which traditionally tended to be left-wing) and its practice in government (traditionally right-wing).
(b)In effecting its historically most emphatic opening to the middle classes, and foregrounding an ‘interclassist’ semantics so explicitly and systematically, social democracy effectively combines – for the first time since the Second World War – the interclassist logic of its rhetoric with the interclassist logic of its electoral and organizational penetration (likewise historically unprecedented). It thus establishes a balance and coherence – a correspondence – between the trans-border programmatic/ideological profile of the new social democracy and the sociology of its organization and electorate (which is equally trans-border).
(c)At the same time, changes in the contemporary social-democratic universe have ‘resolved’ the sociological contradiction of the social democracy of the 1960s and 1970s. Social democracy no longer runs the risk of becoming a political force torn between cadres and members increasingly derived from the middle classes (which was the case in the 1960s), and an electorate that has remained popular in its basic structure. In the final analysis, the organization’s break towards the middle classes and the ‘catch-all’ format was not an evasion. Instead, it was an anticipation, the portent of a sociological groundswell to which social-democracy-in-the-electorate was to yield, with a significant time lag and on a reduced scale. This made possible a certain sociological rebalancing – and homogenization – between the different spaces (organization, electorate, associations) of the social-democratic edifice. There is no doubt that social democracy is more interclassist than ever. But this interclassism – which, by definition, is a source of contradictions, even tensions – currently penetrates all the spaces (all the ‘stages’, to recall Christine Buci-Glucksmann and Göran Therborn’s imagery) of the social-democratic edifice. Compared with the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary social democracy is socially much more diverse, but it is noticeably more homogeneous in its diversity.
So in terms of its ideological priorities, and the class structure of its organization and electorate, the new social democracy is partially ‘liberated’ from its traditional ‘bugbears’, particularly left-wing rhetoric and the working-class ‘bogy’. As of now, and for the foreseeable future (the medium term, as they say), social democracy has found a certain equilibrium: it is coherent in its social-liberal moderation; it has hit upon a balance between its programmatic-ideological profile and the social profile of its organization and electorate; it is homogeneous in its marked sociological heterogeneity. In a way, there is consistency between the men and women who are the new social democracy and the ideas that make up the new social democracy. Thus if we locate the trans-border identity (sociological, ideological) in this perspective, a hypothesis suggests itself: because it is sustained by this ‘triple’ coherence, in all probability the new social-democratic identity is not circumstantial or ephemeral.
Fundamentally, contemporary social democracy, which is consciously and deliberately constructing its identity on diversity and on the basis of diversity, is not searching for an ‘old-style’ cohesion. On the contrary, it is building its cohesion on the absence of strong attachments (ideological, sociological, cultural) and strong commitments (programmatic). The cohesion of contemporary social democracy is, in a way, ‘postmodern’: the ties that bind (ideological, cultural, sociological or programmatic) are weak. But it draws its strength from its weakness, from lowered expectations, from its minor relevance as a link. In effect, this weak link draws its strength from the fact that the only legitimate, acceptable and conceivable link is one that does not commit or tie it too much. In political parties, and particularly mass parties (organizational model of the left), great diversity and heterogeneity (ideological, programmatic, cultural, sociological) have always been ‘disruptive’ factors. But in structures like current social-democratic structures, which base their cohesion on minimal cohesion, that might not be the case. Political and ideological minimalism can make do with minimal cohesion.14
The most important factor that could cause social democracy to lose its balance is an ‘old bogy’: the working class and those consigned to the scrapheap. The latter, together with their interests and expectations, participate neither on an equal footing, nor according to the rule of the ‘just measure’, in the novel organizational and ideological-programmatic synthesis of the new social democrats. It is clear that the working class and the ideas developed in its name are no longer highly rated, either in the organization or in the dazzling shop window of social-democratic ideology. This impairs the balance – which is in any case unstable – of the new social democracy, even though recent electoral growth contributes to masking it for the time being. In the medium term this could prove to be a time bomb ticking away under the foundations of the impressive edifice of contemporary social democracy.
Obviously, we should not think that the heterogeneous, even heteroclite, elements that go to make up the programmatic and social identity of social democracy today could be combined in any manner whatsover and in all circumstances. Hybrid combinations – in Ancient Greek, hubris means ‘immoderation’, and in the modern language it means ‘insult’ – derived from the crossing of heterogeneous priorities cannot survive unaltered – or not for long, at any rate – because of the great difficulty they experience in adapting to the exigencies of government. They have proved possible in opposition; they have even exercised a certain fascination, as the initiatives of Blair and Schröder attest. They turn out to be a lot more difficult – even impossible – in government, as the recent governmental experience of the Swedish and Norwegian social democrats indicates, even though they (and especially the former) are renowned for their capacity for programmatic renovation and firm social anchorage. The disastrous electoral performance of the SAP at the 1998 elections, the bad performance of the DNA in 1997, or the poor result of socialists in the 1999 European elections, certainly do not prove anything about the future of the social-democratic governmental experiences now under way. But they suggest that scepticism is not unfounded.
No doubt social-democratic leaderships have to manage – and confront – an identity that is hard to handle. But everything indicates that they are not faced with a choice of identity. That choice has been made. The main lines of the new social-democratic physiognomy are already delineated. Alea jacta est? In all probability, yes. Naturally, were the governmental experiments now under way to fail, social democracy might again be destabilized. It could thus become less neoliberal or more neoliberal, more ‘new politics’ or less ‘new politics’, more bourgeois or less bourgeois, more left-wing or less left-wing. Everything will depend on the intra- and extra-organizational context of such a failure. But it could adopt this ‘more or less’ without really repudiating itself fundamentally, either ideologically and programmatically, or organizationally. After much trial and error, hesitation, and all sorts of incidents, social democracy has successfully negotiated a crossroads: far from being like a ferret forever on the run and escaping, its contemporary identity is finally beginning to take a ‘finished’ shape. For socialist and social-democratic high commands, the most difficult task is behind them.
A Weak Identity: Entrepreneurial Identity, Strategic Flexibility and Electoral Instability
‘Trees with deep roots are the ones that grow tall,’ Frederic Mistral wrote. Firmly rooted in the working class, the great social-democratic parties of the pre- and interwar periods were formations with a strong social, ideological and political identity; and in attenuated fashion, this remained the case in the initial postwar period. Simultaneously structures for ‘organizing the masses’ and structures ‘organized by the masses’, they possessed a remarkable capacity for mobilization and orientation of their social base. The three traditional branches of the social-democratic constellation – party, trade unions, associational network – have now been weakened (and have been for some time) through a cultural and organizational process that is analogous to the secularization of religious institutions. But they have also been profoundly transformed.
Pursued as well as imposed, diversification in the membership and electoral base of social democracy, which resulted from changes in social stratification and catch-all strategies, has dealt a heavy blow to the social and cultural cohesion of social-democratic organizations. The party-community no longer exists, just as the political – and especially social – terrain conducive to its development no longer exists. In addition, the social-democratic parties have gradually lost their aura in intellectual circles. What Perry Anderson has written of the SPD is in large measure valid for the majority of the new century’s social-democratic parties:
Social Democracy has come to power without much depth of support in intellectual opinion. The trend – first with the radicalisation to the left of the sixties, then with the opposite swing of recent years – has gone against it. By the end, the Kohl regime had few sympathisers, but Schröder cannot count on any prior groundswell in his favour.15
In effect, what the modern social-democratic edifice lacks is the stabilizing principle afforded by profound organizational, social and cultural anchorage. It lacks a strong (albeit summary), and strongly shared, ideology. It is an edifice – and an identity – constructed predominantly on the political and programmatic level. Social-democratic ‘self-identity’ is currently more political, and considerably less ideological (in the sense of subscribing to an ideological ‘grand system’), sociological or cultural. Compared with the social-democratic identity of the past, it lacks depth, social and cultural density. It is less composite, less compact, less robust.16
The biggest challenge its environment could present to any party concerns the attributes that make it what it is, and among them its class and its space (political and ideological). The stability of a party depends less on its electoral capacity than on its ability to defend its ‘identitarian’ territory. When the ‘privileged’ electorate of the party is not well protected, it is not so much the party’s electoral performance as its identity that is called into question.17 Now, once their ‘identitarian’ territory has diminished, along with their ability to defend it, the electoral capacity of contemporary socialist parties largely depends on a specifically political trade-off. With its weak social, ideological and cultural identity, social democracy today finds itself more bound up with the mechanism of competition than in the past. Its fate is more linked to the political context specific to each conjuncture. The ‘political venture’ dimension of its identity is reinforced. It becomes more significant, conspicuous, vigorous, present. Today more than ever, social democracy as a political enterprise depends on the quality of its political appeal (leadership, candidates, tactical coups, programme, governmental record, etc.); and that, obviously, is a direct function of competing appeals. However, the quality of this appeal derives from a conjunction of favourable circumstances, intra- and extra-organizational, which, by definition, is uncertain and aleatory. Its sociological and cultural protective screen having partially disintegrated, social democracy must assert and impose itself in the political and electoral arena without the whole arsenal and ‘reserves’ of yesteryear at its disposal.
This has some important consequences.
The new social democracy, with its entrepreneurial culture, is certainly more ‘open’ and flexible ideologically, but it is also less present in the laboratory of ideas that is the social terrain. It is constructed in line with a logic that allows it to ‘catch’ the moods of public opinion, rather than movements of opinion, let alone social movements. The experience of recent years indicates that the latter become important for social democracy only retrospectively (the case of the PS after the social movement of December 1995 is exemplary here, as is that of the SPD after the strong emergence in force of the ecological and pacifist movement). The inability of socialist headquarters to anticipate the emergence of social movements and new political currents (e.g. the ecological movement, ‘new politics’ parties, the new extreme right) is only the most visible symptom. In a sense, social democracy has a very good grasp of opinions that have been formed, and a very bad one of situations in which opinion is formed. (These are often crisis situations or moments when historical time accelerates and, as Pierre Bourdieu has written, opinion polls – and, we should add, social democracy’s experts – are ‘incapable of producing the slightest reasonable forecast’ about them.)18 Postwar social democracy has frequently proved very adept at recuperating new themes and new ideas, particularly when they have become a fact of public opinion, but markedly less well equipped to generate a new vision of society and the future. To a rather greater extent than the ‘old’ social democracy, the ‘new’ one is constructed in order to be close to public opinion. But it is less close to the ‘surprise actor’ that civil society often is.
Correlatively, social democracy’s autonomy vis-à-vis its environment, and its ability to control it, have decreased drastically. Social democracy is no longer constructed as a ‘strong institution’ capable of significantly influencing the ‘value systems and attitudes’ of contemporary societies, and has not been for a long time. Once, socialist and social-democratic parties were not merely machines for the conquest of power, but (as Marc Lazar put it) ‘major matrices of political identity and culture’.19 Today, they no longer perform this role. The diffusion and inculcation of social values and norms (elevation of the collective and collective action, diffusion of an egalitarian culture, etc.) no longer form part of the modern social-democratic universe. Thus, not only has ‘the old socialist idea of parties as agenda-setting vanguards’ been largely abandoned,20 but often the more modest role of ‘spur’ as well. In this respect, social democracy as a left-wing force has lost its originality. ‘Politically and economically correct’, it vacillates and wavers at the slightest movement of public opinion, which its experts are charged with scrutinizing attentively. More so than in the past, it thereby becomes dependent on the ‘short term’, the shortest short term there is: the next electoral deadline. Precisely because it is a force with a weak identity (organizational, sociological, cultural, and ideological), and precisely because it is largely constructed as an electoral machine, the new social democracy retreats – often without even doing battle – in the face of national and international economic and geopolitical constraints. Socially and ideologically weakened, followers rather than forerunners, social democrats take to observing ideological and electoral rhythms which they do not control, but which are imposed on them by electoral and ideological competition, or the international balance of forces. In the absence of strong reference points, modern social-democratic engagement lacks any sense of the longue durée.
The weakness of social-democratic identity is not only a source of disadvantages, for it is not without its compensations. ‘Cantharides contains something that acts as an antidote to its own poison’: the other side – the good side of the ‘bad’? – of ‘entrepreneurial’ social democracy is precisely its positive capacity for adaptation. If socialist and social-democratic organizations are currently less robust and less compact, they are by the same token less ponderous, more flexible and more ‘open’. When leadership autonomy is great, bureaucracy is weak, and members are submissive and/or few in number; when the importance of ideology and social class as factors in a cohesive identity is diminished, the party is more flexible, has more rapid ‘reflexes’, adapts better to the unforeseen and to new issues. Thus, the ‘negative’ aspects of the new social-democratic identity are intimately bound up with ‘positive’ compensations. Indeed, adaptability makes these organizations capable of responding more quickly to the stimuli of the social environment and electoral competition.21
From this angle, Blair’s formula of ‘permanent revisionism’ perfectly captures the new social democrats’ propensity to renew their ideological and programmatic arsenal incessantly. This is considerably aided by the structure of endo-organizational power and the loosening of the link with the trade unions, as well as by contemporary social democracy’s ‘flexible’, trans-border ideology. The ‘new’ social democracies – whether in their left- or right-wing versions, whether ‘southern’ or ‘northern’ – are structurally ‘lighter’ and, from a tactical viewpoint, more ‘flexible’ than the social democracies of the past. Their recent electoral successes are simply the reward for their extraordinary powers of adaptation and renovation. One of the characteristics of contemporary European socialism turns out to be precisely its ability to ‘lose and gain strategic flexibility [very] readily’.22
Thus, adaptation to the conceptions of the surrounding environment and, in consequence, strategic adaptability, increasingly become a distinguishing characteristic of contemporary social democracy. This was much less true of the great ‘activist organizations’ that the socialist and social-democratic parties were historically. However, this strategic flexibility is accompanied, and complemented, by strategic ‘modesty’. Social democracy is no longer up to the task of seeking to reverse the terms of the current strategic situation, either in economic affairs (witness its attitude towards globalization) or in international relations, without risking paying a significant electoral, ideological and organizational price. Precisely because it is a force with a weak identity, that is to say, without solid support, or the dense and dynamic consistency of the past; and precisely because it has definitively lost its ‘iconoclastic’ character, and the spirit of resistance and innovation that distinguishes any iconoclastic political force, social democracy today does not have the means, the will, or the strong support seriously to contest the established structures of power and influence, both national and international. It lacks the aggressive and obstinate mentality which, in a distant past, derived from the core of a popular movement (or at least part of this movement), which social democracy was supposed both to represent and to structure – and sometimes to betray. Today’s social democrats ‘tinker with the margins of the system. They potter about in its backyard.… They all share a panic fear of conflict.’23 In 1999 the resignation of Oskar Lafontaine, and the participation of ‘social-democratic’ air forces in what was a ‘centre-left’ war against Serbia, were two symbolically significant expressions of the new social democracy’s strategic ‘modesty’. Indeed, social democracy’s hands are freer than ever to play and juggle with ideas, with tactical coups, with its image and political marketing. It plays a tactical – and occasionally strategic – game of small steps, often very skilfully. But it cannot play a game of large-scale movements. It cannot play for big stakes.
Moreover, this gain in tactical flexibility and electoral effectiveness, which is attributable to increased leadership autonomy and the ideological and programmatic flexibility of a less ‘integrated’ structure, is accompanied by a very substantial loss in stability, or a surplus of fragility. Electoral power that is not based on the substratum of an organization well anchored in society, and possessed of a clear and distinct ideological and programmatic identity, undeniably remains genuine power. But as my data have established, it proves inconstant, and hence fragile (see Part II). It can thus rapidly be transformed into its opposite, a veritable impotence: veritable, but probably temporary, for as a result of its greater strategic flexibility, the new social democracy tends rapidly to remedy any persistent electoral weakness, through appropriate revisions.
However, given the challenge to working-class ‘centrality’, today’s socialists have no well-targeted, well-centred, stable alternative social base. They must win over everyone, and especially the middle strata, to conserve the base required for power. Now, at present there is nothing to suggest that these strata could constitute a solid support and privileged base for left-wing parties – alongside the working class, obviously. As long as the salaried middle strata prove incapable of supporting one political formation in an electorally cohesive fashion – that is to say, massively and enduringly – in the same way as the working class once supported the left, it seems to me that the weakening of the working class, as well as its relative estrangement from left-wing parties, is a loss that cannot be compensated in terms of social democracy’s electoral stability.
In the absence of the stability imparted by working-class entrenchment, social democracy will be condemned, like the financial markets, to a constant search for the stable floor that will permit it to bounce back electorally. Its electoral competitiveness will be enormously hampered by adverse circumstances, and probably enhanced by auspicious circumstances. Social democracy has become more vulnerable and exposed. An electorally vulnerable force can suffer considerable and rapid losses, and can then make up the lost ground – sometimes just as rapidly. But what it cannot be is consistently successful over a long period.24 This is the other side – the ‘bad side’? – of the ‘entrepreneurial’ structure and culture of today’s triumphant modern social democracy. Whether or not it adopts the ‘third way’, and whatever its dreams, the new social democracy will be vulnerable, exposed to economic circumstances, the jolts of the political game, and rapid alterations in the situation.
The Politics of the Spectacle: The Marketing Left?
The overall map of the social-democratic space is in the process of changing. Yet the widespread belief that the ongoing weakening of traditional recruitment structures, the crisis of the great ideological systems, the increased personalization of electoral choice, the enhanced role of ‘experts’ and political marketing, lead to the politics of the spectacle, advertising and ‘appearances’, is rather misleading. It is an exaggeration often made by observers – and actors – on the right, but especially on the left.
Let us take the example of leadership. The personalization of electoral campaigns and the greater impact of leadership do not betoken the withering of politics – an argument in favour of spectacle-politics. Specialist studies show that ‘in reality voters listen – and respond – to what the candidates say’.25 Appraisal of leaders certainly depends on their ‘personal equation’ (actual or supposed competence, telegenic appearance), but it also depends on their ‘responsiveness’ to the electorate’s concerns.26 The ‘power of the spoken word’ rests on this capacity. An effective leader is not the one who best distils ‘soundbites’, or wields the ‘aesthetic and emotional influence of words’.27 Above all, it is the leader who is able to present a party – their own party – a policy, and especially a cleavage. ‘For the majority of voters the issues represent a choice between two “borders” … and parties achieve success by clearly signalling with which border they are identified.’28
This is still true even today, when the leaders of great left-wing and right-wing parties are orientated towards the centre, which in some countries consequently becomes the new collective obsession of the political class. Certainly, as Alain Lancelot has rightly emphasized, ‘an election is only secondarily the choice of a programme’.29 Certainly, too, a candidate’s superiority over his or her competitors contributes to significantly increasing a party’s electoral chances. But ‘brilliant victories’ like those of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, are not, as Marc Lazar has emphasized,30 possible all the time. Indeed, everything suggests that in systems of ‘party government’ the leader-candidate’s image remains a secondary element in partisan strength, even if it is markedly more important than it was in the past.31
So it is not ‘image’ in the televisual sense of the word, but image in the sense of ‘vague policy package’ referred to by Giovanni Sartori32 that determines a leader’s and party’s powers of attraction. The modern leader is not a sovereign, a sort of terrestrial deity, whose deeds command the political contest and the activities of voters. Moreover, if today’s voters are distinguished by less attachment to parties, they are better educated and informed than previously, more attentive to the issues and the unfolding of the political contest, and better able to ‘read events’. Above all, the judgements they make on parties, leaders, and issues ‘appear more structured and more coherent’33 – the index of a greater lucidity and political competence. The processes of ‘cognitive mobilization’ produce more ‘sophisticated’ voters and members.34
Thus there is not a kind of ‘black art’ about leadership or professionalized campaigns and political advertising. To persist in reducing a party’s politics to the dimension of the ‘spectacle’ is to search for the underlying key to it – that is, the party’s ability, in the new media landscape, to combine ‘content’ with ‘form’, what is expressed with its expression. And the professionalization of political communication is based above all on marketing, but also on the public spoken word – on the ‘public use of reason’, as Kant called it.35 As a consequence, the political options of a party and its leader continue to influence the affiliation and loyalty of citizens significantly, particularly in countries with a parliamentary regime where ‘collective’ actors (institutions, parties) count for more than ‘individual’ actors.36
Let us resume the argument developed above. Within today’s social democracies, a ‘managerial’ culture – I am tempted to say: a managerial pensée unique – is solidly entrenched. The leader’s autonomy has increased. Tacticism gains ground. Tactical manoeuvres with an eye to gaining or retaining power (the ‘enterprise project’ in terms of micro-economy) have a stronger endo-organizational impact. More so than in the past, politics is increasingly about nothing more than politics. ‘Politics has been reduced to the language of politics,’ writes Antonio Polito.37 This corresponds (in part) to the new reality of contemporary social democracy. For all sorts of reasons, the ‘war of appearances’ has become more important.
In this respect, Stuart Hall is right when he asserts of the ‘style’ of the Labour government in Great Britain: ‘this is not a superficial “style” … but something that goes to the heart of the Blair project’.38 Social democracy no longer has at its disposal the organizational, sociological, cultural, and ideological arsenal of the past, which was defensive but also offensive. It is less well anchored in the social fabric. In this sense – and in this sense only – it is ‘superficial’. The current socialist and social-democratic space has indeed lost its profundity. To employ a terminology alien to political punditry, we might say that the surface structure of contemporary social democracy is strengthened at the expense of its deep structure; or, better, that the deep structure is becoming more and more surface.
Even so, Hall is wrong to think that New Labour is trying to govern ‘by spin, through the management of appearances alone’.39 One does not win elections – and above all, one does not govern – ‘through the management of appearances alone’. The new social democracy has ideas. And it seeks to ‘sell’ them like any good firm, utilizing the best available methods of political marketing. This is something that is not in and of itself reprehensible; it is also something that is not in and of itself effective.
The new social democrats employ the new methods of doing politics systematically. Let me put it clearly and crudely: they do it well, and they do well. But to reduce the ideas of the new social democracy – the ‘marketing-left’, as Claude Demelenne has it – to the ‘spectacle’ and the ‘professionalization of communication’ is to ignore the profundity of its change in identity.40 If contemporary social democracy is ‘superficial’, it is so for much more important reasons. Moreover, to consider the use of new communication technologies and the professionalization of election campaigns as a ‘crisis’ or a ‘debasement’ seems to me to be out of step, virtually archaic. We do not know whether it is possible to restore the passion, excitement and collective ethos of the ‘old’ party organization. But were it to prove possible, it would not occur in defiance of the technological, institutional and sociohistorical gravity of advanced modernity.
Certainly, by virtue of wanting to win over everyone and the whole of society to conserve the requisite power base, it is a ‘modest’ socialism, promoter of a species of political and ideological ‘minimalism’, that presents itself to voters. This creates the illusion of ‘a gravity-defying victory of style over substance’, as Boris Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph.41 But ideological attenuation, as well as the growing importance of television, of the leadership, and ‘spin doctors’, does not signify that triumphs of staging and ‘special effects’ are taking control. To believe that is to ignore not only the composite character of contemporary social democracy, but also the ‘sophisticated’ nature of electorates in advanced modernity. The ‘entrepreneurial’ culture in the new social democracy has been substantially strengthened. But it is not the only culture in town.
In the societies of advanced modernity, ‘propaganda via the image’ tends to replace ‘propaganda via print’ (Ostrogorski), and the ‘theatricalization’ of politics has been professionalized. But the need to ‘stage’ oneself, in some fashion or other (and the fashion certainly counts), is a practice ‘of extraordinary antiquity’.42 No political appeal or ‘leadership appeal’ can do without it. Was it not Alcibiades who severed his dog’s ‘beautiful’ tail to attract the Athenians’ attention? But who today remembers Alcibiades for his ‘dog’s tail’? Social democracy has not changed because of the ‘spin doctors’, and its alteration is not reducible to them. That is why this alteration is historically significant.
Social Democracies, Southern European Socialism, and the Term ‘Social Democracy’
In countries without a profound social-democratic tradition, like France, Italy or Greece, the ‘modernization’ of the socialist parties, or even communist parties – I am thinking of the PCI in the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s – became synonymous with their social-democratization for a period; and this is still partly true today. Resort to the notion of ‘modernization’ was a kind of convenient cliche to explain the ‘lag’ of these parties, and outline the path they should follow in future. ‘According to an intellectual mode,’ Angelo Bolaffi wrote in 1983, ‘which has so to speak a naive and linear image of modernization, everything in political phenomenology that diverged from the social-democratic model was liquidated as politically and culturally backward or as the resurgence of irrationalism.’43
To regard social democracy as a way of structuring the left that is superior to any other, as ‘a substantive summum bonum’,44 is to discount other political configurations which are equally based on the working class, and have flourished thanks to it. It is to erase from the political and social map national historical paths of undeniable political effectiveness (e.g. in Italy or France). The merit of this argument is not affected by the fact that, having once inveighed against anything that presented itself as social-democratic, entire wings of the French or Italian left have since discovered the advantages of the social-democratic path and modus operandi.
Let us take the example of bi- and tripartite national bargaining, and the phenomenon known as ‘social corporatism’. The system of institutionalized and centralized collective bargaining (whether at national or branch level) has often been regarded as the expression of ‘modernity’ or ‘maturity’ in industrial relations.
The inability of the united left in France in the 1980s, or of the Greek and Portuguese socialists once in power (certainly in an unpropitious conjuncture), to lay the foundations of a French, Greek or Portuguese ‘social-democratic compromise’ is eloquent. For countries without a unified and centralized trade-unionism and without a deep social-democratic tradition, like France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, or Greece, enduring and sustained institutionalization of social conflict is either difficult or impossible. The same is true, for different reasons, of Great Britain. This does not mean that the PS, PASOK, PSOE, PSP or, in another register, British Labour are a variety of ‘failed’ social democracy, an ‘ontological flaw’, a ‘mistake’ within a family – the social-democratic family – that is implicitly, or even explicitly, regarded as ‘normal’. These parties are not abnormal; they are not ‘atypical’. No political Darwinism obliges the non-classically social-democratic socialist parties to adapt to the exigencies of the social-democratic model (whose specificity is itself being diluted today) – assuming, obviously, that we do not reduce social democracy solely to ‘reformism’ and ‘moderation’, but attribute to it a more ‘intensive’ political, social and institutional content.
In reality, political parties are in some sense condemned to ‘store their previous states in their memory’, and despite their demonstrable capacity for evolution, they cannot readily, at will, transcend – and escape – their distinguishing qualities and characteristics. Each party is the bearer of its own tradition, and these traditions, sometimes strongly institutionalized, are ‘embedded in the parties’ identities and self-conceptions’.45 The weight of the past, the national historical, economic and social determinants that presided over the birth and original development of the working-class movement (political and trade-union), the structure and strength of that movement, social stratification, the power and culture of the ‘adversary’, the national electoral market – these substantially condition the current evolution of the European left, as well as the forms taken by social conflict. To expect otherwise is to get entrapped in a ‘social-democratico-centric’ conception of social and political conflict. The trade-union and political left of each country ‘speaks’ the specific language of its basic structure and institutions, and – for better or worse – can speak only that language.
That said, what we discover when we leave the universe of the better-delineated social democracy of the 1950s and 1960s, and examine the ongoing mutation of this political force, is not a universe of ‘pure’ difference between it and the socialisms of southern Europe. An interplay of convergences – mutual or unilateral, depending on the domain – releases us from describing the relationship in terms of substantially different models or ‘binary oppositions’.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the distance that traditionally separated the southern socialist parties from those of a social-democratic type, and which (according to some) made southern European socialism a ‘deviant’ case in the European socialist/social-democratic universe, narrowed significantly. In fact, despite a marked convergence, the most striking gap is evident in terms of the relationship with the trade unions and tripartite central bargaining;46 and it is precisely on the level of competitive status, doctrine and programmes that we can detect the most spectacular convergence. As for the sociology of the electorate and membership, convergence is only moderate. Although comparison is more difficult on those counts, the contrasts between the relevant forces remain significant.
If the – relative – fading of the lines of difference licenses the thesis of a partial ‘social-democratization’ of the southern European socialist parties, this ‘social-democratization’ is considerably more conspicuous in the light of the ongoing mutation of European social democracy than that of the social-democratic paradigm of the 1950s and 1960s. In reality, the southern socialisms are converging only with the new social democracy in statu nascendi, which is itself in the process of ‘de-social-democratization’. The narrowing of the distance is the direct product of a dual dynamic of convergence, which is complementary and mutual.
Hence the trend is towards convergence. On both sides this is the effect of a pragmatic, defensive adaptation to the new economic, social and cultural situation of advanced capitalism, rather than an offensive option for the institution of a new social-democratic model. The convergence flows from the dilution of the relatively strong ‘models’ that structured the postwar socialist family. It is in large part the product of the ‘banalization’ of the left in Europe (e.g. the end of the very striking specificity of the Scandinavian model, whose prototype was the SAP; the Austrian model; the British model – Labour is becoming a party like all the others, while it remains a party different from the rest; and, given the context of our analysis, the Greek ‘national-popular’ model of the 1970s and 1980s; or, in another register, the PCI).
Certainly, the social-democratic continent is not a single entity. But nor, a fortiori, is the socialist continent in its entirety. And despite the convergence of policies, the plural character of European socialism is asserted – and confirmed – every day. Yet convergence is the prevalent trend. This leads the content of the concept ‘social democracy’ either to vanish, or to be defined in unduly extensive fashion. It thereby loses much of its distinctive capacity.
With the calling into question of ‘old’ models and the old coherence, the meaning of the term ‘social democracy’ shifts. In its practical usage it increasingly becomes – in a sense, it once more becomes – a generic term, designating the set of parties of ‘moderate’ socialism, whether social-democratic or not. What is more, the sharp delegitimation of the word ‘socialism’, following the collapse of the regimes of ‘real socialism’, tends in the same direction. It is scarcely surprising, then, if the term ‘social democracy’ has largely lost its often pejorative edge, particularly in southern Europe – countries with a strong communist tradition – but also beyond, in the intellectual or popular milieux of the European left. For terminological convenience, in this book I myself have often switched from the narrow to the generic usage of the term, and vice versa, without warning the reader in advance. This generic usage is currently – albeit incorrectly – the most common, prevailing over all others. The present reduction in the distance that morphologically separates social democracy from southern socialism – or, more accurately, the social democracies from the southern socialisms – obviously favours the generic use of the term. But reduction does not signify total abolition of the borders that separate different types of constitution and action on the socialist/social-democratic left. The generic acceptation of the term ‘social democracy’ is based on different principles from the narrow sense. Current developments are weakening the impact of the social-democratic model (and the national social-democratic models), and significantly restricting the scope of this narrow sense. But for all that, they do not render it pointless.
Notes
1.Élie Cohen, ‘La gauche et l’économie dans les expériences de pouvoir’, in Marc Lazar, ed., La Gauche en Europe depuis 1945, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1996, pp. 657–8.
2.Anthony Giddens, The Third Way, Polity Press, Cambridge 1998, p. 26.
3.We must distinguish between theoretical reflection on the renewal of contemporary social democracy and the ‘real’ third way of Tony Blair. Giddens’s book is significantly influenced by the British context. Its themes and proposals are nevertheless of more general value.
4.Quoted in Monique Chemiller-Gendreau, Anicet Le Pors, Marcel Rigoux and Gilbert Wasserman, ‘Gauche: pendant la mue le serpent est aveugle’, Le Monde, 15 July 1993.
5.Stuart Hall, ‘The Great Moving Nowhere Show’, Marxism Today, November/December 1998, p. 13.
6.Colin Hay and Mathew Watson, ‘Neither Here Nor There? New Labour’s Third Way Adventism’, in Lothar Funk, ed., The Economics and Politics of the Third Way, LIT, Hamburg 1999, p. 174.
7.Gregory Elliott, Labourism and the English Genius, Verso, London 1993, p. 93.
8.Albert O. Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction, Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA and London 1991, pp. 131–2
9.According to Hirschman (ibid., p. 132): ‘the more recent rhetorical assault against the Welfare State in the West has not been nearly as vigorous and sustained in Continental Western Europe as in England and the United States. None of this implies that in countries with a strong liberal tradition it is impossible to establish a comprehensive set of social welfare policies. But it is here that their introduction appears to require the concurrence of exceptional circumstances, such as the pressures created by depression or war, as well as special feats of social, political and ideological engineering. Moreover, once introduced, Welfare State provisions will again come under attack at the first opportunity.’
10.Jacques-Pierre Gougeon, ‘Une nouvelle étape pour la social-démocratie allemande’, La Revue Socialiste, no. 1, 1999, pp. 98, 103. Under the influence of the party and unions, his partner and rival Oskar Lafontaine, but also the swing of the ideological pendulum, Schröder’s approach was subsequently ‘corrected’ in a left-wing direction. And everything indicates that it is in the process of being recorrected in a more neoliberal direction (Lafontaine’s resignation contributing substantially) without, for all that, being abandoned.
11.See Pascal Perrineau, in Gerard Grunberg, Vers un socialisme européen?, Hachette, Paris 1997, p. 120.
12.Jeremy John Richardson, quoted in David Arter, ‘Sweden: A Mild Case of “Electoral Instability Syndrome”?’, in David Broughton and Mark Donovan, eds, Changing Party Systems in Western Europe, Pinter, London and New York 1999, p. 169.
13.This was more pronounced in Scandinavia, Germany and the Netherlands, less so in Austria, and rather weak in Great Britain, Belgium or Greece.
14.We might add that the strengthening and – paradoxically – the weakening of the leadership is something that makes the management of centrifugal tendencies in the different social-democratic spaces (organization, electorate, associational network) easier. In organizations with minimal cohesion leadership is a factor of stability and weak leadership is a factor of flexibility.
15.Perry Anderson, ‘The German Question’, London Review of Books, 7 January 1999, p. 15.
16.It is symptomatic of this evolution that the elitist dimension of the social-democratic configuration – the structure of leaders and elected officials surrounded by professionals and experts, a kind of modern variant of the oligarchy dear to Michels – is reinforced at the expense of its ‘societal’ dimension. This trend is clearly reflected in political debate by an ‘individualization’ of political conflict, in the sense that the individual politician and intra-elite debate occupy an increasing role in it. On these aspects of public debate, see the very interesting conclusions of Lauri Katvonen and Axel Rappe, ‘Social Structure and Campaign Style: Finland 1954–1987’, Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, 1991, pp. 241–59.
17.Angelo Panebianco, Political Parties, Organization and Power, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988, pp. 211, 218.
18.Pierre Bourdieu, Questions de sociologie, Minuit, Paris 1984, pp. 231–3.
19.Marc Lazar, in Alain Bergounioux and Lazar, La Social-démocratie dans l’Union européenne, Les Notes de la Fondation Jean-Jaurès, Paris 1997, pp. 16–19.
20.Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, I.B. Tauris, London 1996, p. 673.
21.Let us take the example of ‘southern Europe socialism’. Engaging ‘belatedly’, having lived (with the exception of the French and Italian parties) under dictatorial regimes, and benefiting considerably from their position of opposition, the socialist parties of Spain, Greece and, to a lesser extent, Portugal have established themselves not only as the principal formations on the left, but also as one of the two principal formations in their respective countries, with a governmental vocation. And this at a time (second half of the 1970s and the 1980s) when northern social democrats, affected by an often ‘traumatic’ governmental experience, seemed to be ideologically and electorally exhausted. In effect, the parties of southern Europe, with few links to a political subculture, a more interclassist character, and a very strong and autonomous leadership, have exhibited a greater strategic flexibility – and less programmatic coherence – than most of the more classically social-democratic parties. This largely explains their ability in the 1990s to preserve their main electoral gains of the 1980s, despite a natural weakening attendant upon the corrosive effect of being in power. But after a certain initial immobilism the social-democratic parties of northern Europe have likewise demonstrated their strategic flexibility – this is clearly signalled by their ambitious programmatic renovation and their return to power in the course of the 1990s.
22.Jonas Pontusson, review of Herbert Kitschelt, The Transformation of European Social Democracy, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 28, no. 3, 1995, p. 472.
23.Claude Demelenne, ‘Pour une gauche debout’, Politique, nos 9–10, 1996, p. 76.
24.Something the results of the 1999 European elections proved in spectacular fashion.
25.Peter R. Schrott and David J. Lanque, ‘How to Win a Televised Debate: Candidate Strategies and Voter Response in Germany, 1972–87’, British Journal of Political Science, no. 22, July 1992, p. 467.
26.On these two components of the leader’s image, see, inter alia, Marianne Stewart and Harold Clarke, ‘The (Un)Importance of Party Leaders: Leader Images and Party Choice in the 1987 British Election’, The Journal of Politics, vol. 54, no. 2, May 1992, pp. 447–67.
27.Robert Michels, Political Parties, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, Jarrold, London 1915, p. 75.
28.Ola Listhaug, Elaine Macdonald Stuart and George Rabinowitz, ‘Ideology and Party Support in Comparative Perspective’, European Journal of Political Research, no. 25, 1994, pp. 112, 144. This explains the weakness of centre parties, as well as the weakness of the ‘ideology of the centre’, assuming such an ideology exists (ibid., p. 144). On the importance of divisions as determinants of electoral choice, see also Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair, Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990.
29.Alain Lancelot, ed., 1981: les élections de l’alternance, Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris 1986, p. 21.
30.Lazar, in Bergounioux and Lazar, La Social-démocratie dans l’Union européenne, p. 16.
31.By contrast, in systems where the president of the republic represents the keystone of the institutions, and the presidential election is the centrepiece of the system, largely structuring political life, the leader a party has at its disposal is – or can be – a ‘critical’ factor in the balance of forces.
32.Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1976, p. 329.
33.Nonna Mayer and Pascal Perrineau, Les Comportements politiques, Armand Colin, Paris 1992, p. 64.
34.Ronald Inglehart, La Transition culturelle, Economica, Paris 1993, pp. 419, 431.
35.Jean-Marc Ferry, ‘Pour une justice politique dans l’État social’, in L’action politique aujourd’hui, Éditions de l’Association freudienne internationale, Paris 1994, p. 71.
36.In this respect, the case of Germany is exemplary. See Max Kaase, ‘Is there Personalization in Politics? Candidates and Voting Behavior’, International Political Science Review, vol. 15, no. 3, 1994, pp. 211–30. For the presidential systems, see the very comprehensive analysis of Thanassis Diamantopoulos, Electoral Systems, Patakis, Athens, 2001 (in Greek).
37.Quoted in Eric Hobsbawm, ‘The Death of Neo-Liberalism’, Marxism Today, November/December 1998, p. 6.
38.Hall, ‘The Great Moving Nowhere Show’, p. 13.
39.Ibid.
40.Demelenne, ‘Pour une gauche debout’, p. 76. Demelenne, a very perceptive representative of this line of thought, writes: ‘Underneath a few gadgets, most of the stars of the new left are hollow, desperately hollow’ (ibid.).
41.Quoted in the International Herald Tribune, 3 February 1999.
42.At the beginning of the century, when, for the Independent Labour Party, ‘the spoken word in the open air still remain[ed] its main weapon … orators [were] trained in special courses where they practice[d] exposition and controversy’ (Moisei Ostrogorski, La Démocratie et les partis politiques, Fayard, Paris 1993, p. 312).
43.Angelo Bolaffi, ‘Au centre, les socialistes allemands’, Politique aujourd’hui, no. 3, December 1983–January 1984, p. 65.
44.Colin Crouch, ‘The Fate of Articulated Industrial Relations Systems: A Stock-Taking after the “Neo-liberal” Decade’, in Marino Regini, ed., The Future of Labour Movements, Sage, London 1992, p. 167.
45.Sheri Berman, The Social Democratic Moment: Ideas and Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and London 1998, pp. 211–12.
46.The relationship to the trade-union movement remains a sizeable difference between certain of the parties of southern Europe and ‘typical’ social democracies. But it constitutes a less important difference than it did in the past. If the role of the union connection is fading, the difference that is ‘constructed’ starting from, and in relation to, this connection necessarily becomes less significant.