in favor of a politics of resignation that offered no more than remedial
responses to the failures of neoliberalism.^40
In Europe, most social-democratic politicians avoided the Third
Way label, and positioned themselves at a distance from Blair and
Schro ̈der.^41 Some were openly critical, like French socialist prime
minister Lionel Jospin, who struggled to keep together his “plural left”
governing coalition (“gauche plurielle”). Claiming to lead the most
leftist government in the Western world, Jospin regularly denounced
Blair as a neoliberal.^42 In practice, however, these different social-
democratic governments evolved along similar lines, close to Third
Way orientations. They modified legislations and incentives to stimu-
late employment growth without using expansionary fiscal policies,
sought to contain public expenditures, and invested in education, train-
ing, and employability programs, in a social investment perspective.^43
Did they all succumb to what Andrew Glyn called the “remorseless
pressure” of neoliberalism?^44 Or was the Third Way a genuine
center-left alternative to the conservative policies of the 1980s and
1990s?
A good way to address these questions is to look at the conception
of equality put forward by proponents of the Third Way. Ideas about
equality, after all, stand at the heart of the left–right division. If the
Third Way broke with the tradition of the left, it certainly was not
because it accepted market mechanisms or sought to limit the growth
of social spending. Indeed, social-democrats have for many decades
accepted the market – usually with less enthusiasm than Tony Blair,
though – and they have long understood that the fight for social justice
was not primarily a conflict about the level of social expenditures.^45
(^40) Mark Wickham-Jones, “From Reformism to Resignation and Remedialism?
Labour’s Trajectory through British Politics,” in Erwin C. Hargrove (ed.),
The Future of the Democratic Left in Industrial Democracies, University Park,
41 Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003, p. 36.
Giuliano Bonoli and Martin Powell, “One Third Way or Several?,” in Jane
Lewis and Rebecca Surender (eds.),Welfare State Change: Towards a Third
42 Way?, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 53–54.
Ibid., p. 54; David S. Bell, “French Socialists: Refusing the ‘Third Way’,” in
43 Hargrove (ed.),The Future of the Democratic Left, pp. 57 and 62–63.
44 Bonoli and Powell, “One Third Way or Several?,” pp. 56–61.
Glyn, “Aspirations, Constraints, and Outcomes,” p. 20.
(^45) Christoffer Green-Pedersen, Kees van Kersbergen, and Anton Hemerijck,
“Neo-liberalism, the ‘Third Way’ or What? Recent Social Democratic Welfare
Policies in Denmark and the Netherlands,”Journal of European Public Policy,
178 Left and Right in Global Politics