Third Way
Third Way advocates generally support public-private partnerships, a commitment to fiscal conservatism,[11] combining equality of opportunity with personal responsibility, improving human and social capital, and protection of the environment.
[14] The Bill Clinton administration, influenced by the works of the controversial political scientist Charles Murray,[15] was less friendly to the welfare state than Tony Blair.
The term was picked up again in the 1950s by German ordoliberal economists such as Wilhelm Röpke, resulting in the development of the concept of the social market economy.
In historical context, such proposals were better described as liberalised centrally-planned economy rather than the socially-sensitive capitalism that Third Way policies tend to have been identified with in the West.
This was part of the wider trend of Eurocommunism in the communist movement and provided a theoretical basis for Berlinguer's pursuit of the Historic Compromise with the Christian Democrats.
In addition, it supplies a broad range of policy proposals aimed at what Giddens calls the "progressive centre-left" in British politics.
The Third Way has been defined as such: [S]omething different and distinct from liberal capitalism with its unswerving belief in the merits of the free market and democratic socialism with its demand management and obsession with the state.
However, he argues that traditional socialist ideology, specifically referring to state socialism involving economic management and planning, is flawed.
[32] Under the centre-left Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1983 to 1996, the Bob Hawke and Paul Keating governments pursued many economic policies associated with economic rationalism such as floating the Australian Dollar in 1983, reductions in trade tariffs, taxation reforms, changing from centralised wage-fixing to enterprise bargaining, restrictions on trade union activities including on strike action and pattern bargaining, the privatisation of government-run services and enterprises such as Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank and wholesale deregulation of the banking system.
They stated that "[Bill] Shorten's Labor is the only party of government focused on the need to modernise the economy to deal with the major challenge of our time: human induced climate change".
Former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's first speech to parliament in 1998 stated: Competitive markets are massive and generally efficient generators of economic wealth.
Other politicians include Simone Tebet, José Serra, and to a lesser extent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Ciro Gomes.
[47] Examples of French Third Way politicians include current President Emmanuel Macron, and to a lesser extent François Hollande, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Manuel Valls.
[49] During Schröder's time in office, economic growth slowed to only 0.2% in 2002 and Gross Domestic Product shrank in 2003, while German unemployment was over the 10% mark.
[51] Incumbent German chancellor Olaf Scholz (2021–present) has not explicitly stated support for Third way policies, but is widely seen as part of the moderate wing of within the SPD.
[52] During his tenure as minister of finance in the Fourth Merkel cabinet (2018–2021), Scholz prioritized not taking on new government debt and limiting public spending.
[55] Renzi himself has previously claimed to be a supporter of Blair's ideology of the Third Way, regarding an objective to synthesise liberal economics and left-wing social policies.
[56][57] Under Renzi's secretariat, the Democratic Party took a strong stance in favour of constitutional reform and of a new electoral law on the road toward a two-party system.
[68] He officially launched Italia Viva[69] to continue the liberal and Third Way tradition[70][71][72] within a pro-Europeanism framework,[73] especially as represented by the French President Emmanuel Macron's La République En Marche!.
[74][75] In 1939, Harold Macmillan wrote a book entitled The Middle Way, advocating a compromise between capitalism and socialism which was a precursor to the contemporary notion of the Third Way.
But it is a third way because it moves decisively beyond an Old Left preoccupied by state control, high taxation and producer interests; and a New Right treating public investment, and often the very notions of "society" and collective endeavour, as evils to be undone.
[31]In 2002, Anthony Giddens listed problems facing the New Labour government, naming spin as the biggest failure because its damage to the party's image was difficult to rebound from.
Giddens saw Labour's ability to marginalise the Conservative Party as a success as well its economic policy, welfare reform and certain aspects of education.
Giddens criticised what he called Labour's "half-way houses", including the National Health Service and environmental and constitutional reform.
[84] In 2008, Charles Clarke, a former United Kingdom Home Secretary and the first senior Blairite to attack Prime Minister Gordon Brown openly and in print, stated: "We should discard the techniques of 'triangulation' and 'dividing lines' with the Conservatives, which lead to the not entirely unjustified charge that we simply follow proposals from the Conservatives or the right-wing media, to minimise differences and remove lines of attack against us".
[97] Along with Blair, Prodi, Gerhard Schröder and other leading Third Way adherents, Clinton organised conferences to promote the Third Way philosophy in 1997 at Chequers in England.
[17][18][19] Other leaders who have adopted elements of the Third Way style of governance include: By the 2010s, social democratic parties that accepted Third Way politics such as triangulation and the neoliberal[33][34] shift in policies such as austerity, deregulation, free trade, privatisation and welfare reforms such as workfare experienced a drastic decline[144] as the Third Way had largely fallen out of favour in a phenomenon known as Pasokification.
[147] Third Way economic policies began to be challenged following the Great Recession, and the rise of right-wing populism has put the ideology into question.
According to them, a form of competitive socialism that rejects dictatorship and authoritarian allocation in favor of democracy could work and prove superior to the market economy.
[157] Although close to New Labour and a key figure in the development of the Third Way, sociologist Anthony Giddens dissociated himself from many of the interpretations of the Third Way made in the sphere of day-to-day politics.
