The French Parti socialiste (2010-16): from office to crisis

This chapter examines the French Socialist Party (Parti socialiste, PS), which is one of the least successful of the major European social democratic parties. It focuses on the period between the 2008 global financial crisis until the end of François Hollande's presidency in 2017. The crisis of the PS is twofold: first, a political crisis that is revealed by the divisive nature of the Party's internal courants (factions). Whereas the factions initially contributed to the PS's internal democracy, over the past two decades they have significantly affected the PS's cohesiveness and ability to effectively develop and implement necessary policies. And second, an economic crisis that is exemplified by the PS's inability to adapt to its external and internal environments, such as the neoliberal imperatives of the EU, unprecedented high unemployment, and increasing insecurity.

Foreword

The decline of the centre-left over the past years is one of the most alarming trends in Western politics. During the latter part of the 20th century such parties either ran the government or led the loyal Opposition in virtually every Western democracy. Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), once the most powerful party of the left in continental Europe, currently polls in high 20s or 30s. The French Socialist Party was eviscerated in the 2017 elections, as was the Dutch Labour Party. Even the vaunted Scandinavian social democratic parties are struggling, reduced to vote shares in the 30 per cent range. The British Labour Party and the US Democrats have been protected from challengers by their country’s first-past-the-post electoral systems, but the former has recently taken a sharp turn to the hard-left under Jeremy Corbyn, while the latter, although still competitive at the national level, is a minority party at the state and local levels, where a hard-right Republican Party dominates the scene....

Australian social democracy: capitalist constraints and the challenges of equality

This chapter looks at the attempts of the Australian Rudd and Gillard governments to tackle some of the issues that social democracy has faced in regard to managing capitalist economies and mitigating diverse forms of inequality. The experience of the Rudd and Gillard governments illustrates that such longer-term problems and dilemmas about how to manage a capitalist economy are not abstract ones. Indeed, they were one of the factors that contributed to the leadership instability that plagued Labor during the Rudd and Gillard years. Admittedly, other factors that contributed to that leadership included party rules that made it relatively easy to remove a Labor prime minister, sometimes legitimate concerns about both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard's performance, by negative poll results and the relentless campaigning of an often hostile media.

The Swedish Social Democrats and the ‘new Swedish model’: playing a losing game

This chapter focuses on the Swedish Social Democrats. After the 2006 Swedish elections, the Social Democratic Party (SAP), the ‘natural party of government’ during the construction and heyday of the famous ‘Swedish model’ in the second half of the 20th century, entered opposition for eight long years. Initially at least, some might have taken this to represent just a regular short-term slump in electoral politics. However, it could also be seen as the beginning of a long decline. The party is playing a losing game and the only way in which it can reverse its fortunes is by calling the very foundations of the ‘new Swedish model’, now ironically perhaps associated with the Conservative administration of Fredrik Reinfeldt, into question.

Social democracy and the populist challenge

This chapter explores how European social democracy is threatened to be undermined and overrun by radical left-wing competitors and right-wing populist opponents. The pan-European rise of right-wing populism has had far-reaching consequences. First of all, the political and public agenda has shifted from a socioeconomic perspective to a cultural perspective. Right-wing populism is ‘culturalising’ all political issues, and is characterised by a nativist focus on putting its ‘own people first’. Second, right-wing populism portrays and demonises social democracy as forming the elite ‘which betrays ordinary people’. It also depicts social democratic parties as being simply parties for migrants. By doing so, right-wing populists deliberately seek to distance traditional social democratic voters from social democratic parties. Third, the rise of right-wing populism is increasing opportunities for right-wing or Conservative governments.

The ‘soft target’ of Labour in New Zealand

This chapter focuses on the social democratic left in New Zealand. Prior to the 2008 election, a three-term Labour-led government under Prime Minister Helen Clark followed a Blairite ‘Third Way’ model. It moderated some of the policies of the more radical neoliberal years (1984–96), but the fundamentals of neoliberal reform, such as financial openness, central bank independence, and fiscal responsibility, were kept in place. Clark's Labour-led government did not satisfy all social democratic aspirations, but its dominance in the 2000s showed that it was the first to master the art of political management under the mixed-member proportional representation system in place since 1996. Defeat came in 2008, however, in an election held shortly after the global financial crisis, and John Key's National Party-led government took over the reins.

The dilemmas of social democracy

This concluding chapter details the dilemmas of social democracy. There is a strong strain throughout the social democracy literature that highlights the range of dilemmas facing the movement. These include Przeworski and Sprague's (1986) seminal work on the dilemma of electoral support. In the wider sweep of the history of socialism, there was a long-standing dilemma about how to reconcile with Marxism, and how to respond to the social changes and emergence of identity politics in the 1960s. Perhaps the most recent set of dilemmas is the synthesis of the ‘Third Way’. The chapter then suggests that a renewal of the centre-left might well rely on a more sustained effort to address the following issues: re-balancing principles and pragmatism; responding to the changing electoral sociology; meeting the populist challenge; responding to structural changes in the party system, and new forms of participation; and redesigning its political economy.

The end of revisionism?

This chapter argues that the starkest of the institutional problems facing social democracy now is a growing inability to win elections. Added to this was the challenge of a long-term decline in the industrial wing of social democracy. Historically, social democracy has been the politics of the labour movement, and a key component of this movement has always been trade unions and their members. While that relationship was not always as close as it was in the British or Swedish cases, trade unionism was almost always the ‘other half’ of social democracy. However, the 1980s were a time of loss for this ‘other side’ of social democracy. Trade unions were becoming increasingly feminised, more focused in the public sector and drawing in increasing numbers of middle-class public service members.

Germany: little hope in times of crisis

This chapter addresses social democracy in Germany. For many years, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) has performed poorly at the German parliamentary (Bundestag) elections, and crucially, has been unable to puncture the dominance of the CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union). The SPD is facing a range of problems, on numerous fronts. Programmatically, the SPD lacks a vision for society that is sufficiently coherent and forward-looking to attract voters. Moreover, the SPD's credibility has declined over the last two decades largely due to a combination of its failure to implement campaign promises and the difficulties it has experienced while seeking to address its tarnished legacy of office in the periods after 1998 and 2009.

Exit left: the case of Australian state Labor

This chapter evaluates the case of Australian state (Labor) governments. It outlines four distinctive state Labor governments in Australia in the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. In all cases, Labor held office for a relatively sustained period of time, before eventually losing. These state Labor governments offered a distinctive approach to governance that reshaped and renewed the trajectory of social democracy, especially in the face of neoliberal economic settings. Yet, in almost all these cases, these Labor governments were ejected from office. However, in contrast to some of the other cases in this volume, Labor has regained power in many of the state jurisdictions. So, while the Labor model of ‘strategic government’ might have passed, there might be further lessons here about how Labor can regain power.