Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: The Future of Social Democracy

The future of social democracy is unclear. Some parties are lurching to the left whereas others are taking a side in Europe’s culture war.

  • The Return of European Social Democracy

    Olaf Scholz
    German Social Democratic Party leader Olaf Scholz attends a conference in Berlin, June 25 (PES)

    Olaf Scholz has given German social democracy a new lease on life. For the first time in sixteen years, his Social Democratic Party (SPD) — Germany’s oldest — has defeated the center-right Union of Christian Democrats. Support for the SPD went up from 20.5 to 26 percent in the election on Sunday. Still below its pre-reunification heights, when it would routinely win up to 40 percent, but enough to make Scholz the most likely next chancellor.

    His counterparts in Portugal and Spain have been equally successful. António Costa was reelected with 36 percent support in 2019. Pedro Sánchez won two elections that year. Both govern with the support of the far left. Four of the five Nordic countries are led by social democrats. The fifth, Norway, soon will be, after Labor won the election two weeks ago.

    It wasn’t so long ago that commentators ruminated on the “death of European social democracy,” myself included. Now it’s back in swing in the north, south and center. What changed? (more…)

  • Labour’s Problems Go Deeper Than Starmer

    Keir Starmer
    British Labour Party leader Keir Starmer campaigns with Tracy Brabin, mayoral candidate for West Yorkshire, in Pontefract, England, May 5 (Labour)

    Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters are out in force arguing his successor, Keir Starmer, must surely resign after losing the Hartlepool constituency, a Labour bulwark since 1974, to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.

    Corbyn lost all seven elections (local, national and European) during his five-year leadership and still his supporters refused to accept he might be damaging the party, but Starmer loses one seat and it’s all the proof they need to conclude that he can’t defeat the Conservatives?

    Big if true. (more…)

  • Why the Left Hasn’t Been More Successful

    Frans Timmermans Nicola Zingaretti Pedro Sánchez
    Dutch, Italian and Spanish socialist party leaders Frans Timmermans, Nicola Zingaretti and Pedro Sánchez meet in Brussels, March 21, 2019 (PES)

    The 2008-09 financial crisis. Climate change. The coronavirus pandemic. Rising inequality in the United States. Stagnant middle wages.

    It shouldn’t be difficult for left-wing parties to make the case for bigger government, and yet they are out of power in most Western countries.

    Ruy Teixeira, who argued in 2002 that demographic changes would give Democrats in the United States an “emerging majority”, and who later criticized those same Democrats for forgetting about working-class white voters, believes there are five reasons the left has been unable to build durable mass support.

    His perspective is American, but the European left has committed some of the same what he calls five “deadly sins”. (more…)

  • Lurching to the Left Is Risky for Germany’s SPD. So Is the Alternative

    Olaf Scholz
    German finance minister Olaf Scholz attends a debate in parliament in Berlin, July 8, 2018 (Bundestag/Inga Kjer)

    Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) are increasingly forced into coalitions with the far left. Such pacts haven’t hurt their counterparts in Portugal and Spain, but Germany is a more conservative country with a politics of consensus and arguably less need for redistributive policies.

    The risk is that a left-wing strategy will alienate centrist voters. But the alternative — continuing to rule in grand coalitions with the right — is wearying leftists. (more…)

  • What Can Danes Teach Europe’s Social Democrats?

    Mette Frederiksen
    Danish Social Democratic Party leader Mette Frederiksen gives a speech in Allinge-Sandvig on the island of Bornholm, June 16, 2017 (News Øresund/Sofie Paisley)

    The victory of Denmark’s Social Democrats in the election on Wednesday would some seem to vindicate leader Mette Frederiksen’s lurch to the right. She hardened her party’s policy on immigration and supported such far-right proposals as a ban on prayer rooms in schools and universities.

    A closer look at the campaign she ran, as well as the election result, reveals a more nuanced picture. (more…)

  • Spain’s Social Democrats Buck European Trend

    António Costa Pedro Sánchez
    Prime Minister António Costa of Portugal greets his Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sánchez, in Lisbon, July 2, 2018 (Governo da República Portuguesa/Clara Azevedo)

    Spain’s are among few social democrats in Europe who have figured out how to thrive in a new political reality.

    Although the 30 percent support Pedro Sánchez is projected to win Sunday night is a far cry from the 48 percent support the Socialists won at the peak of their popularity in the 1980s, it is a significant improvement on the last two election results (22 percent in both 2015 and 2016) and almost double what the conservative People’s Party, for decades the dominant party on the right, has managed. (more…)

  • Cracks in California’s Progressive Model

    San Francisco California
    Homes in San Francisco, California, April 5, 2010 (Jerome Vial)

    California may be the future of the Democratic Party, but the left doesn’t have everything figured out in the Golden State.

    Michael Greenberg reports for The New York Review of Books that California likes to think of itself as a liberal bastion against the far-right policies of Donald Trump.

    It is refusing to cooperate with the president’s anti-immigrant policies. It has enacted its own environmental and net-neutrality laws which, given the size and influence of California’s economy, could have a nationwide effect.

    But California also has the highest poverty rate in America and a quarter of its homeless. (more…)

  • Democrats’ Dilemma Is Familiar to Europe’s Center-Left

    Pedro Sánchez Christian Kern António Costa
    Spanish, Austrian and Portuguese social democratic party leaders Pedro Sánchez, Christian Kern and António Costa attend a meeting in Lisbon, December 2, 2017 (PES)

    Democrats in the United States have the same dilemma as social democrats in Europe: should they deemphasize progressive social policies in order to win back working-class voters or side with the socially progressive middle class?

    The parable isn’t perfect. The big cultural issue in Europe is immigration. In the United States, it’s race relations more broadly and changing social norms.

    But that makes a strategy of accommodation with blue-collar voters who switched from Barack Obama to Donald Trump in 2016 even less attractive to the American left. It would mean repudiating causes like Black Lives Matter and transgender rights because they offend Trump voters’ desire for social order. (more…)

  • Three Reasons Liberals Need to Look Left, Not Right, for Allies

    Leonardo Carella, an expert on Italian politics, argues that, strategically and policy-wise, pro-market liberals now have more in common with social democrats than they do with conservatives.

    I think he is right, for three reasons: (more…)

  • Social Democrats in Iberia and Scandinavia Try Opposite Strategies

    António Costa Pedro Sánchez
    Prime Minister António Costa of Portugal greets his Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sánchez, in Lisbon, July 2 (Governo da República Portuguesa/Clara Azevedo)

    What is the future of European social democracy? Your answer may depend on where you live.

    If you’re in the Mediterranean, it’s cooperation with the far left. Social democrats in Portugal and Spain have come to power under deals with far-left parties. In both cases, unwieldy coalitions were greeted with skepticism, but now Prime Ministers António Costa and Pedro Sánchez are riding high in the polls.

    In Greece, Alexis Tsipras’ Syriza party has even supplanted the center-left altogether.

    In Scandinavia, by contrast, social democrats are trying to win back working-class voters by taking a harder line on borders, crime and defense.

    Both strategies appear to be working. (more…)

  • Germany’s Social Democrats Understand They Need to Pick Side

    Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) recognize they should have picked a side.

    In a damning analysis of the party’s dismal 2017 election performance — support fell to a postwar low of 20.5 percent — outside experts argue that the campaign lacked “substantive profile”.

    The SPD has failed for years to find answers to fundamental questions and to position itself clearly and unequivocally. Whether on the issue of refugees, globalization, internal security or the diesel scandal: the party leadership always tries to please everyone.

    The trouble with trying to please everyone, as I’ve argued before, is that you likely end up pleasing no one. (more…)

  • Five Imperatives for the Left

    Pedro Sánchez Christian Kern António Costa
    Spanish, Austrian and Portuguese social democratic party leaders Pedro Sánchez, Christian Kern and António Costa attend a meeting in Lisbon, December 2, 2017 (PES)

    Ruy Teixeira sees five imperatives for the left in Europe and the United States:

    1. Up with the new coalition: Accept that the old working class has moved to the right. Focus on minorities, women, college-educated professionals and the lower-educated service worker “precariat”.
    2. Down with inequality: It holds down growth, it holds down living standards, it holds down upward mobility among the young, it leaves entire regions behind and it destroys healthy politics.
    3. Unite the left: The era when one tendency, like social democracy, could dominate the left and didn’t need allies is over.
    4. Forward to an open world: There is no going back to a closed, tradition-bound world.
    5. Ride the long wave: The economic potential of our time, with its monumental technological changes, is vast, albeit held back by a lack of societal investment in the future and retrograde policies pushed by the right. The left should be all about untapping that potential and riding the long wave. (more…)

  • Trump’s Son-in-Law Loses Access, Macron Takes on Rail Unions

    The Washington Post reports that officials in at least four countries — China, Israel, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates — have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, “by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign-policy experience.”

    Officials in the White House were reportedly concerned that Kushner was “naive and being tricked” in conversations with foreign officials, some of whom said they wanted to deal only with Kushner and not with more experienced personnel.

    Despite having no political or policy experience, Kushner was put in charge of everything from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to American relations with Mexico.

    Politico reports that he has now lost his access to top-secret intelligence along with other officials in the White House who did not clear background checks.

    The question: Will Trump accept this decision? Or will he once again put his family’s interests before his country’s? (more…)

  • For the Future of the Democratic Party, Look to California

    Los Angeles California
    Skyline of Los Angeles, California, November 15, 2009 (Keith Skelton)

    Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira argue that California’s Democrats are leading the way in developing a progressive vision for the twenty-first century:

    The New California Democrats understand that a healthy society needs a strong government that’s well funded, and they don’t shy from raising public funds through progressive taxation. But the New California Democrats appreciate the market and the capabilities of entrepreneurial business. They are tech-savvy and understand the transformative power of new technologies and the vibrancy of an economy built around them. They understand that to solve our many twenty-first-century challenges, we need business to come up with solutions that scale and that grow the economy for all.

    If the twentieth-century progressive model was the welfare state, the twenty-first century’s could be what Leyden and Teixeira call the “opportunity state.” (more…)

  • Lessons for Democrats from Europe

    Alexis Tsipras Martin Schulz
    Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and European Parliament president Martin Schulz answer questions from reporters in Brussels, February 4, 2015 (European Parliament)

    How can Democrats win back working-class voters who have switched to the right?

    The obvious solution is to become more populist. Less Hillary Clinton, more Bernie Sanders. Tax the rich, spend more on welfare, make health care universal and oppose new trade deals.

    Except we have seen social democrats try this in Europe and it didn’t work.

    When left-wing parties cling to a shrinking working-class electorate, they end up neglecting middle-income supporters — and satisfy neither. Parties that takes sides are more successful. (more…)