Editorial Notes

With this issue, SPE continues to grapple with the questions of what should be progressive politics in this era of neo-liberal globalization, what are the barriers to progressive politics and how can we best analyze the current situation so as to understand both the barriers and the opportunities for progressive political action. Wendy Lamer's article "Neo-liberalism: Policy, Ideology, Govermentality" argues for an analysis of neo-liberalism that makes visible the compromises, contradictions and inconsistencies that characterize its political projects, and therefore counters the disempowering effects of viewing neo-liberalism as a "monolithic" or "totalizing" ideology or system. She contends that conceptualizing neo-liberalism as a form of govermentality is particularly useful for revealing its contradictions, but that this approach needs to incorporate the critical perspectives of feminists and socialists in order to adequately situate an analysis of neo-liberalism that can enhance possibilities for social justice and collective well-being. Rianne Mahon's re-interpretation of recent Swedish politics argues that Swedish social democracy continues to offer a viable alternative to neo-liberalism. Despite studies arguing that the Swedish model has been swamped by the pressures of globalization, she contends that it can still be seen as a way of combining growth with social justice. Mahon's argument stresses that the success of Sweden recently has been the result of political decisions that have moved to integrate new social movements within an expanded class agenda. The article documents these efforts with particular emphasis on women's issues and on the ways these were taken up by the Swedish social democrats. The lesson is that politics counts, and that "old" political movements can evolve in ways that address vital concerns of "new" political movements. Robert Hackett's "Taking Back the Media" argues that the democratization of the media is a much more important issue for the left than has been commonly understood. In order to make this point, Hackett looks unsentimentally at the conceptual and normative wealmesses of the media democratization movement. It is only by looking clearly at the barriers, both external and internal,