were mostly defensive. Whether in opposition or in government, parties
of the left basically felt compelled to fall in line with the imperatives
of a neoliberal world. Controlling inflation became a priority, higher
levels of unemployment were accepted, and the welfare state was
preserved rather than expanded. Policy options remained, and dif-
ferences between the left and the right persisted – in labor market,
family, or education policies, for instance – but progressives, who had
always considered that history was on their side, were no longer guided
by a clear vision of a socialist or social-democratic future.^19 Governing
affluent democracies came to appear as a lackluster exercise in man-
aging as fairly as possible a situation of “permanent austerity.”^20 In
the South, strong neoliberal pressures and serious internal difficulties
also pushed leftist governments toward prudent, adaptive policies.^21
At the end of the 1990s, however, most parties of the left had begun
to change, to define their own, more positive synthesis of social-
democracy and neoliberalism, under the umbrella of the “Third Way.”
A telling expression of this evolution came from the Indian state of
West Bengal, when the world’s longest-running democratically elected
communist government, led by Marxist Buddhadeb Bhattacharya,
had to admit that there were benefits to foreign investments. Bhatta-
charya summarized the transformation of his party, re-elected for a
seventh consecutive term in 2006, in stark terms: “It’s either reform
or perish.”^22
A similar shift took place in world politics, with the combined rise
of new social actors and new policy orientations. The growth of
global social movements was particularly spectacular. In 1973, the
(^19) Eley,Forging Democracy, p. 482; Andrew Glyn, “Aspirations, Constraints,
and Outcomes,” in Andrew Glyn (ed.),Social Democracy in Neoliberal
Times: The Left and Economic Policy since 1980, Oxford University Press,
20 2001, p. 19.
Paul Pierson, “Coping with Permanent Austerity: Welfare State Restructuring
in Affluent Democracies,” in Paul Pierson (ed.),The New Politics of the
21 Welfare State, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 411–13.
Richard Sandbrook, Marc Edelman, Patrick Heller, and Judith Teichman,
Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects,
22 Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 7.
Erich Inciyan, “Libe ́ralisme et capitalisme n’effarouchent plus le gouvernement
communiste du Bengale Occidental,”Le Monde, June 26, 2004, p. 4; United
Kingdom, Department for International Development, “Reform or Perish, says
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya,” June 10, 2004 (www.dfidindia.org/news/coverage/
2004/2004_6_10nk.htm).
Twenty-first-century rapprochement 171