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Next Left: where next for social democracy?

The new policy agenda

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Patrick Diamond

Policy Network and University of Oxford

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Social democracy faces testing times in Europe and elsewhere:

• Worst European election result since 1979

• Social democracy defeated in Scandinavia

• Centre-left collapse in Eastern and Central Europe

• Historic defeats in Britain and Germany: lowest vote share since 1918

No centre-left recovery despite banking crisis, global recession, rising unemployment - now the social model is under threat

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The pessimism about the centre-left’s prospects can beoverdone:

• Politics of despair: 2000s wasted decade in which social democracy acquiesced to neo-liberalism

• Politics of nostalgia: 1945-70 ‘golden age’ for social democracy in which new welfare settlement was forged

• Exaggerates success of neo-liberalism over last twenty years, and overestimates success of post-war social democracy

Should build on, not reject, third way ‘Neue Mitte’ while adjusting tochallenges of the present

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Third way model of social democracy:

• Dynamic knowledge-based economy

• Strong civil society and public services

• Modern government focused on partnership and decentralisation

• Foreign policy through international co-operation

1990s period of relative calm and optimism in domestic and globalaffairs

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What is social democracy?

• Set of practices focused on redistribution, market regulation and social welfare

• A persuasion not a fixed doctrine

• Political approach built on security, fairness and co-operation

• Social democracy has initiated institutional reform and reinvention in the past

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The challenges of the present:

• Twin crises: banking and budgetary shocks

• Politics of austerity and fairness

• Rise in scepticism about climate change

• Demography and population ageing

• Quality of life, work/life balance, well-being, family

• European integration and enlargement

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Next Left Conference, Barcelona

Next Left Conference, Barcelona

Is there a new idea for the left?

• To conserve and protect the existing welfare state (Judt)

• To promote greater economic equality (Wilkinson and Pickett)

• To revive Keynesianism in the wake of the crisis (Desai)

• To identify new sources of sustainability after capitalism (Nahles)

Does this match up to the scale of the human crisis the world faces?

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A new politics and a new relationship between the state andcitizens:

• The right want the crisis to undermine the state; left must change its role and direction

• The state will increasingly need to share responsibility with citizens [co-production, cost-sharing, lifestyle management, conditionality]

• Less focus on the state as provider

• Politics itself will need to acknowledge intractable dilemmas and trade-offs

• Revival of global institutions and global civil society

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Concluding remarks:

• Social democracy isn’t dead

• Need to re-examine common principles that define it

• About particular approach to politics, as much as new instruments and governing programmes

• New wave of social democracy: drawing on rich inheritance of ideologies, ideas and institutions

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