Related Papers
Social Democracy in Europe
2004 •
Pascal Delwit
Socialist and Social Democratic parties leave few political observers and citizens indifferent. For several years, a certain number of actors on the political scene have presented it as a political family in crisis, lacking in imagination and dynamism, incapable of renewal and doomed to fade into insignificance. Others, on the contrary, describe it as a grouping with a promising, even brilliant future. This book does not set out to confirm either of those two visions. Its aim is to analyse in-depth the transformations which are affecting, at the current time, the different aspects of Social Democracy: new organisational models, changes in political and electoral performance, changing relations with the trade unions and civil society associations, reactions to the emergence of new political rivais and new values, new ideological trends and political programmes, etc. For the first time, the analysis does not concern exclusively Western Europe, but also deals with the Social Democratic parties of the consolidated democracies and the organisations that claim to be part of democratic socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, and highlights the specific characteristics and points in common. At the dawn of the 21st century, it is therefore the challenges and the different responses to those challenges that are analysed by several of the leading European specialists in Social Democratic parties in Europe. "
Social Democracy Caught in the European Trap
2015 •
Fabien Escalona, Vieira Mathieu
Political science literature has extensively described social democracy’s ‘two metamorphoses’. First there was the establishment of social democratic parties as major government parties in the ‘Keynesian State’ period and then their ‘de-social-democratisation’ after the 1970s, while the renovation promoted by Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder was associated with electoral success at the end of the 1990s. The propulsive power of this new social democratic identity was then rapidly exhausted. Until the last days before the 2014 European elections, opinion polls carried out in EU member countries allowed the social democrats to hope that they could pass the 200-seat threshold in the 751-seat European Parliament (EP) and make good the setback they had suffered five years earlier. Indeed, in 2009 only a quarter of the MEPs belonged to the EP’s S&D group, which was at an historically low level. We will first show that social democracy managed to stabilise its weight in the EP only while continuing to decline in percentage of votes. This result should be seen in the context of the historic trajectory of a political family of parties that we extensively studied in The Palgrave Handbook of Social Democracy.2We will next address the present state of this family of parties in the middle of capitalism’s structural crisis and the dilemmas it faces in the very peculiar regime of the European Union. The social democrats, because of their own history, have tied themselves up in a bundle of constraints — which are creating their present difficulties. For this reason, they will probably not be of much help in putting an end to the austerity that is devastating the European continent. This will be the last point covered by this article.
in Delwit P., Kulahci E., Van de Waelle C. (ed.), The Europarties, Organisation and Influence. Electronic version, Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2004: 113-134.
The Party of European Socialists: The Difficult “Construction” of a European Player (2004)pdf.pdf
Gerassimos Moschonas
Review Essay: Nothing but Doom and Gloom in the House of Social Democracy? An Upbeat Assessment of European Social Democracy's Future
2004 •
Stefan Berger
Renewal (London)
Renovating European Social Democracy
2007 •
Ben Clift
The ‘end’ of social democracy has been pronounced repeatedly, with varying degrees of conviction in recent decades (Dahrendorf 1990; Giddens 1994; Gray 1996, 1998). Meanwhile, in 2007, both the French and Italian left have entered (yet another) phase of introspection, ideological redefinition and aggiornamiento. In both cases, the path of social democratisation is seen (by at least one major faction) as virtually synonymous with modernity and ‘renewal’. This attests to the capacity for ideological innovation, and renovation, within social democracy. How could so many erudite scholars pronouncing the death of social democracy so assertively over the last two decades ago have been so mistaken? The answer lies in how social democracy is conceived, and some hidden assumptions within these commentaries on the fortunes of the left in the late twentieth and early 21st Century. There is a tendency to identify social democracy firstly with a particular set of institutional ‘means’ (such as corporatism or nationalisation) and secondly with the policy paradigms within which those means were couched (such as ‘planning’ or ‘Keynesianism’). The fortunes of social democracy are evaluated in terms of particular means through which, across the twentieth century in different national contexts, the political aspirations of social democracy have been channelled. This leads to detailed analysis of particular national configurations of institutions, policies and paradigms. These means-oriented approaches have generated much invaluable insight into the nature of social democracy and its historical, political and programmatic development. However, the lessons to draw from this means based analysis of social democracy are not those which first leap off the page.
Routledge Advances in European Politics
Rethinking European Social Democracy and Socialism The History of the Centre-Left in Northern and Southern Europe in the Late 20th Century
2022 •
Alan Granadino
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.
Cevipol Working Paper
«“This is the final fall”. An electoral history of European Social Democracy (1870-2019)»
2021 •
Pascal Delwit
In spite of the fact that a considerable number of words have been written on European Social Democracy, some angles have yet to be considered. One can witness conflicting interpretations on the current state of European Social Democracy. For some, the resilience of European socialism is a reality. For others, it is in obvious decline, and, if one follows the lifespan pointed out by Pedersen to its logical conclusion, the end is nigh. The purpose of this paper is to weigh up these differing views regarding the fate of European Social Democracy and to understand the electoral dynamics underpinning the movement over a period of 150 years. Based on an analysis of 692 elections hold in 32 European States between 1870 and 2019, four major stages in the electoral history of Social Democracy are isolated : a) a gradual emergence at the end of the 19th century and a first flight at the start of the 20th, b) the establishment of the parties in the European political landscape at the close of WWI and an electoral peak more or less reached from the 1930’s in established democracies, c) a stabilisation of this performance over half a century and d) a downturn which started in the 1980’s, leading to a very marked decline in the 2010’s. The European family of socialists suffered a catastrophic decline between 2010 and 2019. The electoral history of European Social Democracy is put into perspective with that of the whole socio-economic left, which makes it possible to point out not only the marked fall in the contemporary period but also the loss of influence of Social Democracy within the left spectrum.
Introduction, in European Social Democracy During the Global Economic Crisis: Renovation or Resignation ?
2014 •
Vieira Mathieu, Jean-Michel De Waele
The European Turn and "Social Europe". Northern European Social Democracy 1950-1985
Kristian Steinnes
Renewal
Social Democracy after the Crisis in Europe and the Crisis of Social Democracy
2014 •
Luke Martell
There is a crisis of social democracy in terms of the prevalence of its ideas, policies and institutions. There is also a crisis in Europe, which is economic, political and social. This article discusses where social democracy could be going in the context of these crises. It argues that social democracy could rediscover some of its historical tenets and approaches in response to the problems in Europe. At the same time it can rethink its approach on issues such as work and migration, seeking the redistribution of work and encouraging immigration for its economic and social benefits. These would have knock-on effects for climate change and mobilising the young for social democracy. On the bases of the crisis in Europe and the crisis of social democracy, social democrats can both rediscover and rethink where they are going.
