Third Way

Historically, the term third way has been used in a multitude of ways to refer to a variety of forms of governance—from Nordic social democracy to fascism. In its most recent incarnation, it was deployed first by then Director of the London School of Economics, Anthony Giddens, in a string of influential publications from 1998 to 2002 to refer to an alternative to both neoliberalism and social democracy in an era of globalization. It has been associated most clearly with the New Labour administration of Tony Blair in Great Britain, but also, if less directly, with a number of Center-Left administrations, notably those of Bill Clinton's New Democrats in the United States and Gerhard Schröder's Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany. The term is taken to variously refer to a new and distinctive policy program, to a new political economy, to a new conception of social justice, and, by many of its critics, to a Center-Left capitulation to neoliberal globalization.

Anthony Giddens is relatively specific as to the policy content of the third way, distinguishing it unequivocally from both neoliberalism to the Right and a “traditional” conception of social democracy to the Left. But herein lies the first potential confusion. Though clearly framed in the first instance to chime with the mood of modernization associated with the birth of New Labour in Great Britain, the aspirations for the third way have grown over time. So too has its intended audience. It is now presented as a guide to good governance, appropriate to conditions of globalization and complex economic and social interdependence for developed and developing economies alike, as Giddens noted in 2002. Yet arguably it continues to betray its origins in domestic British political discourse. For instance, the conception of social democracy, from which it distances itself, is scarcely recognizable to students of the latter's distinctive (and arguably defining) Nordic/Scandinavian form. Indeed, the conception of social democracy to which Giddens's third way is a response in fact owes far more to Great Britain's peculiar experiments with corporatism in the 1960s and 1970s than it does to the continental European tradition of social democracy—a tradition to which the British Labour party and movement never really belonged. Indeed, the rather ambiguous nature of the relationship between the third way and social democracy is merely compounded by periodic references to the third way as a “modernized” social democracy fit for the new [Page 966]prevailing social, political, and economic landscape of contemporary capitalism. This sits uneasily alongside the idea of the third way as “beyond Left and Right,” that is, beyond social democracy and neoliberalism.

Yet whether conceived as an alternative to, or an updating of, the social democratic tradition, the central and defining features of the third way are set out very clearly by Giddens:

• 1.
  A commitment to the seemingly paradoxical notion of the radical center and, with it, to the idea that a modernizing Center-Left administration can draw radical zeal from Left and Right simultaneously
• 2.
  An emphasis on the “new democratic state” and with it a commitment to a more open and dialogic conception of international politics (and, rather naively, as it was to turn out, to “states without enemies”), to raising environmental consciousness and, domestically, to a far more transparent, direct, and open form of participatory government that empowers the citizen
• 3.
  An associated emphasis upon a more active and engaged civil society that has taken greater responsibility for its own governance through a proliferation of more community-based initiatives and an expanded role for the third sector
• 4.
  A commitment to the sustenance by public policy of the “democratic family” and with it an associated emphasis upon support for coparenting, gender equality, and life-long parental contracts
• 5.
  An emphasis upon the “new mixed economy” and an acceptance (from neoliberal variants of public choice theory) of the need for public-private partnerships, private finance initiatives, and the incentivization of consumer-friendly public service provision
• 6.
  A commitment to “equality as inclusion” and with it a far greater emphasis upon providing appropriate opportunities for citizens to improve themselves (for instance, investing in their own human capital) rather than the pursuit of equality of outcome
• 7.
  An associated commitment to the notion of “positive welfare” and of “no rights without responsibilities”
• 8.
  A commitment to the development of the “social investment state” and to the use of public resources to build the national stock of human capital, thereby contributing to competitiveness and good economic performance
• 9.
  An emphasis upon the development of a genuinely “cosmopolitan nation” celebrating cultural diversity and pluralism
• 10.
  A commitment to extending such cosmopolitan values into the international areas through a democratization of the institutions of global governance

This is undoubtedly an original and distinctive combination of programmatic commitments and one that clearly draws inspiration from both Left and Right. However, what is perhaps odd is that having set out to chastise traditional social democracy, the third way seems to embrace a series of policy goals that arguably have been most successfully pursued in social democratic regimes. Notable here is the third way's commitment to raising environmental consciousness (and standards), to the democratic family, to coparenting, to greater gender equality, and to a social investment state. These have been mainstays of continental European social democracy throughout much of the postwar period; arguably traditional social democratic regimes continue to enjoy far greater success in fulfilling their commitment to these goals than those states whose leaders have come to embrace the third way.

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