The left consistently sought, however, to advance social equality,
whereas parties of the right accepted inequality as an unavoidable
and, in truth, rather positive fact of life.
What about the Third Way? Did it remain on the left or move to the
right with respect to equality? If one takes Giddens as representative,
the Third Way certainly stood on the left. “The pursuit of equality,”
he wrote, “has to be at the core of third way politics” and “the recipe
‘take from the rich to give to the poor’ should remain a cornerstone
of centre-left policy.”^46 In other writings, Giddens referred explicitly
to Norberto Bobbio in agreeing that the question of equality was a
defining one for the left, and thus for the Third Way. He insisted, too,
on the importance of going beyond a mere equality of opportunity,
such a “meritocratic” conception being insufficient as a goal and
unsustainable in the long run, since inheritance necessarily made
opportunities unequal.^47 Some ambiguity nevertheless remained. Blair,
notably, spoke more easily of an equality of opportunity than of a
more demanding notion of equality, and Giddens himself sometimes
seemed in two minds on this count.^48
In part, these tensions could be linked to a transformation in the
prevailing conceptions of equality, whereby equality was less and less
understood as “income equality here and now,” which did not seem
feasible or desirable, and more and more as a fair “distribution of life
chances over the life course.” The prudence of Third Way politicians
in this respect was also tied to their perception of important political
and economic constraints that seemed to preclude strong egalitarian
orientations.^49 One should note, however, that the Third Way dis-
course about redistribution evolved over time, starting closer to neo-
liberalism in the 1990s and gradually moving in a more leftist and
vol. 8, no. 2, April 2001, 307–25, p. 321; Gøsta Esping-Andersen,The Three46 Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Princeton University Press, 1990, p. 21.
Anthony Giddens, “Introduction,” in Anthony Giddens (ed.),The Global Third
47 Way Debate, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2001, p. 8.
Giddens,The Third Way, pp. 38–39 and 101–105; Giddens,The Third Way
48 and Its Critics, pp. 38–39.
Stuart White, “Welfare Philosophy and the Third Way,” in Lewis and Surender
(eds.),Welfare State Change, pp. 34–35; Giddens,The Third Way and Its
Critics, pp. 85–86.
(^49) Green-Pedersen, van Kersbergen, and Hemerijck, “Neo-liberalism, the
‘Third Way’ or What?,” p. 322; White, “Welfare Philosophy and the Third
Way,” p. 43.
Twenty-first-century rapprochement 179