The route map of the Third Way

Although the ‘Third Way’ has had many previous incarnations, the current version is generally said to have originated with the New Democrats and the Clinton administration, from 1992 in the USA,1 and been taken up by Blair’s New Labour Government in the UK. However, there remains widespread debate over whether the term is applicable only to the Anglo-Saxon ‘liberal’ welfare states of the UK and the USA, or whether it is meaningful for the ‘social democratic’ and ‘Christian democratic’ countries of continental Europe. The main aim of this chapter is to place the debate about the Third Way in the wider context of European social policy. According to Merkel,2 at the end of the twentieth century the debate about the Third Way has become the most important reform discourse in the European party landscape. Giddens3 claims that almost all Centre-Left parties have restructured their doctrines in response to it. Callinicos4 writes that the Third Way has set the agenda for the moderate Left on a European, and indeed a global, scale. Gould5 claims that it is ‘now arguably the dominant political approach throughout the world’. The Third Way is seen as a trail-blazer for a new global social policy, a new model for a new millenium.6 As President Clinton’s former Secretary for Labour Robert Reich puts it: ‘We are all third-wayers now.’ However, if the Third Way is important, it is also difficult to define.7 As Pierson8 puts it, the Third Way has been hotly contested but consistently underspecified. Clift9 argues that it needs more rigourous definition before firm conclusions can be drawn about its compatibility with contemporary European social democracy. In the words of Przeworski,10 how many ways can be third? Merkel11 claims that there are four distinct ‘Third Way models’ in Europe. Giddens12 argues that social democratic parties in Germany, France and perhaps the Scandinavian countries have been following their own ‘Third Ways’. Etzioni13 sees the countries of continental Europe, the UK and the USA as ‘different Third Way societies’. He points out that while societies such as the French and the Italian drive more in the Left lane with others such as the USA more on the Right, HALE MAKE-UP 23/10/03 8:21 am Page 9