Conclusion

The question raised in the foregoing essays is whether and how the parties of the "democratic left," variously defined, may successfully compete in majoritarian democracy. We are not looking at minority parties that combine successfully in parliamentary coalition governments, as in the Low Countries and Scandinavia, with the possible exception of Russia, where the party system is still in its early stages of development. Our concern is with parties that aspire to be governments. A harder question lurks beneath the first query. Is there a trade-off between a posture of pragmatic left-of-center politics and the left politics of social democracy? This hard question is most evident in Britain, France, and Germany, the homes of strong left parties.

Britain, France, and Germany

New Labour in Britain preaches a Third Way between pure models of capitalism and socialism. It has abandoned the strong state model of Old Labour and adopted a "neoliberalism," which seeks to combine regulated free markets with public goods provided by government, but with greater attention than in the past to equality of opportunity rather than universal welfare. Government policies and programs must follow a pragmatic politics in which middle-class and working-class voters and representative interest groups are balanced in policies. Critics, usually from the left, regard this posture as unprincipled mishmash without clear purpose. But the intent is clear: help capitalism to work efficiently and deal with the externalities and social deprivations that capitalism ignores. To the degree that the Conservative party is fiercely capitalist, insisting as Mrs. Thatcher put it, that there is no such thing as "society," then New Labour has a firm place in politics. New Labour's greatest problems, for the moment, are not political but administrative, that is, injecting renewed life into a moribund health service and underperforming school systems. This requires money, but it also requires organizational innovations that New Labour has yet to invent. It would be ironic if New Labour lost political ground because it was not "new" enough.

French socialists are prisoners of a historical Marxist left wing. Its leaders, in control of government from 1997 to early 2002, copied New Labour with somewhat pragmatic, centrist policies, but made no effort to persuade the bulk of socialists in the rank and file that the center-left was a fruitful path for the future. They copied President Mitterrand in this respect. But this is a harder task than in Britain because the old Labour party burned itself out with ineffective programs of nationalization and there was no Marxist ideology to deter moving on to more practical policies. The French left still carries the torch of social revolution.

The French electoral system promotes multiparty factions and is not congenial to majoritarian politics, as in Britain. It appears that the PS will now have to look to its constituencies on the left after losing the 2002 presidential election and such factions might do well in parliamentary elections. But the search for a balance of new and old left is elusive.

The SPD has officially abandoned its Marxist legacy several times and created effective center-left governments. But the situation it faces is much like that of the French PS. It has developed a communications strategy for a center-left pragmatic party, with a progressive Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, who has sought to portray himself as a Tony Blair figure of personal popularity, something that Lionel Jospin in France could not do. But the party has not been prepared officially to embrace a Third Way of "neoliberal" politics and policy. The ideal of a "social justice" state is still strong throughout the party; for example, social security is seen as a basic right in a world of flexible labor markets. The party failed in an attempt in the Alliance for Employment to unite unions and employers behind such an understanding. The party is caught between its commitment to social justice and the need to win elections as a party of alliances. For example, the party in government seeks...