© REUTERS/Annegret Hilse

In many places, left-wing parties and especially those on the center-left are struggling for their survival. The technical term for this phenomenon is “Pasokification.” The formula refers to the long-standing Greek social democratic party, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement or PASOK, which was thrown out of government in 2013 after barely achieving a vote share in the double digits. It has since served as a warning sign for the unstoppable decline of former major parties.

Observers spoke at that time of a unique shock, but Pasokification is by now (almost) everywhere. Sure, historically the center-left has always had to accept painful losses of votes. In recent years, however, the decline of the left no longer seems to be reliably followed by phases of recovery. PASOK, for example, received just 8.1 percent of the vote in last year’s elections—and that was in an alliance with several smaller left-wing parties.

But it shares this fate with many socialist and social democratic parties, some of which have shaped the fate of their societies for decades: the Labour Party in Israel, the Social Democrats in Austria, the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, and other center-left parties in Ireland, Spain, Italy, Australia, and of course Germany, where the country’s oldest party, the SPD, now seems stuck with a support of 15 percent. In all these countries, center-left parties have long been political fixtures, and yet today they face existential challenges.

A cartography of left-wing governmental responsibility leads to a world map with only a few red spots: In Portugal and Spain, in Sweden, Denmark and Finland, social democrats or socialists lead governments, and beyond Europe they also rule in Mexico and New Zealand. Otherwise the map looks conservative or liberal, if not populist-autocratic.

Victims of Fragmentation

So, what is going wrong? The analysis is complicated not only by ideological differences, but also by the fact that analytically it is almost impossible to separate the shock of the left from the more general crisis of those parties that traditionally had broad appeal to many parts of the electorate.

Yes, left-wing parties are losing not only elections but also members, and with few exceptions, worldwide. But in times of individualization this is true for conservative parties and ultimately for mass organizations as a whole: trade unions, churches, associations. One consequence is a political fragmentation, which is not least supported by the desire for ideological clarity. “I want to be part of a youth movement,” sang the Hamburg band Tocotronic many years ago. But who today longs to be part of a big political party?

The center is shrinking, the number of parties in the parliaments is increasing, and the ideological span is growing. For years, the vanguard of this development was the Netherlands, which currently has 13 parliamentary parties. But the trend can now be observed in every advanced Western democracy, with the exception of those with strong winner-takes-all voting systems, such as the UK or the United States.

So, is the crisis of the left merely part of a general malaise of the parties? The empirical evidence suggests otherwise. In fact, embedded in the distress of the parties, left-wing politics is experiencing a crisis within a crisis. Many formerly decidedly “left” parties have recently renamed themselves “progressive” or “progressive” movements. The Socialist International (SI) has been supplemented and partly replaced by a Progressive Alliance. Programmatically, the Swiss Social Democrats currently describe themselves as “the most important force for progress.” The Parti Socialiste in France also promotes “human progress,” while comrades in Austria place themselves “at the forefront of progress.” But what if progress causes concern rather than confidence? Opinion polls in the EU and the US show time and again that less than 30 percent of people are optimistic about the future. For parties that see themselves as parties of the future, this is not an optimal starting position.

Seen globally, optimism has long since migrated to the global South—despite having objectively limited life chances. In Western democracies, on the other hand, optimism about progress has found new homes: in liberal alternatives—in France, for example, with the particularly pro-European Emmanuel Macron—but also in parts of the Green movements, which have largely abandoned the culturally pessimistic criticism of progress of their founding years. Ecological movements are still a phenomenon of developed industrialized countries—in all 54 sovereign African states taken together, for example, there are only a handful of Green members of parliament. But in many OECD countries, public interest in the issue of climate protection has proven to be a powerful driver for Green parties.

The parallel success of right-wing populist forces can be seen as a significant counterbalance to this approach and is also reflected in the demographic composition of the electorate.

Even before the left started to melt, this polarization was supported by the prominence of issues that seem unfavorable for center-left parties. The eurocrisis, refugees and migration, climate protection: in none of these fields have center-left parties in European democracies traditionally shown any special competence. But can thematic trends alone explain long-term crises?

“The End of the Social Democratic Age”

It is characteristic of the current crisis of the left that the discussion of causes precedes the actual manifestation of symptoms by years, in some cases decades. As early as 1983 Ralf Dahrendorf proclaimed “the end of the social democratic age” and predicted the current crisis of the left, seeing it as a consequence of its success. In Western industrialized countries in particular, he said, distribution conflicts had been so completely resolved by the work of social democracy that the healing of society made it possible to stop taking medication. “In the end,” Dahrendorf stated, “we almost all became social democrats.” The diagnosis applies today to numerous Western societies and has serious consequences for the differentiation of social democratic policies.

It is difficult to contradict the broad strokes of Dahrendorf’s thesis, but there are real questions about the details. Certainly, one can hardly deny that there has been socio-political and economic progress. But the diagnosis of social saturation seems to depend heavily on one’s own perspective. For years, surveys have shown that majorities worldwide perceive the prevailing economic system as highly unjust. In addition, rising rents, insecure employment and extremely unequal opportunities in life remain such a massive problem in many places that the goal of social justice can hardly be seriously considered to have been reached.

A completely different, yet also influential approach to explaining the current crisis of the left also refers to successes, but—apparently paradoxically—to the electoral successes of left-wing parties themselves. These are the ideological reforms of left-wing parties using key phrases such as “New Labour”, “Third Way” and “Neue Mitte.” Based on the successes of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, numerous center-left parties attempted to reinvent themselves as a force of the center in the 1990s. From the Netherlands, Finland, and Germany to New Zealand, Israel, and Brazil, party leaders relied on a credo that, according to the Schröder-Blair paper, “Europe: The Third Way/Die Neue Mitte,” “the essential function of markets must be complemented and improved by political action, not hampered by it.”

At the ballot box, this break with tradition initially proved to be a recipe for success. However, privatization, liberalization, supply-side policies and often significant cuts to state welfare services made left-wing parties attractive to the middle of the political spectrum only to the extent that they appeared to be increasingly unattractive to those further to the left. Looking back, it is hardly surprising that this economic middle course strengthened alternative offers from the far left and from a social-chauvinist new right, not only in Germany but also in Greece, France and Italy. This ideological break came in combination with political flexibility, which resulted in numerous coalition formations with center-right parties.

Neither “Neue Mitte” Nor Radical Left

Comprehensive criticism of the aberration of the “Neue Mitte” has recently almost developed into a basic consensus of left-wing Social Democrats. It is not only the leader of youth wing of the SPD, Kevin Kühnert, who calls the Schröder-Blair years a “original sin.” At party congresses in Austria, too, the social reforms of the “Third Way” have been comprehensively, ritually exorcised as a neoliberal “demon”—not to mention Great Britain and Italy, where clearly left-wing party leaders Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Zingaretti took over the party leadership from Third Way supporters.

In this widespread, more economic reading of the crisis, center-left parties are and will remain called upon to rediscover classic redistribution positions and to bring about a renaissance not only of their own values but also of the conflict over economics as the decisive playing field for elections. In political reality, however, turns to left-wing economic purity have rarely proved successful in the long term. Lost trust is difficult to win back—especially for a left-wing party that wants to continue to participate in government. Only in crisis-ridden Portugal does a center-left party seem to have succeeded so far in assuming lasting government responsibility by adopting a decidedly leftist course. Elsewhere, clearly leftist parties seem to be fading after a brief surge.

The short-term successes of more radical left-wing hopefuls such as Alexis Tsipras in Greece, Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France, Pablo Iglesias in Spain and not least Bernie Sanders in the US appear to have evaporated, at least for the time being. Even the “Jeremy Corbyn Blueprint,” which the US magazine Jacobin still saw as a signpost “for the coming years” in 2017, seemed to have faded, at least until the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. One reason is probably that the forces driving anti-elitist left-wing populism are difficult to translate into sustained political support. The question is: if the key to rescuing the center-left is really turning toward the more radical left, why do the more radical alternatives that already exist fail at the ballot box—or like Bernie Sanders fail to be nominated?

New Dividing Lines?

Starting from this question, another school of thought has established itself in recent years. This line of thinking sees the current crisis as being rooted in a combination of economic blunders and cultural errors, which together led to a loss of traditional voter milieus. The British journalist David Goodhart has proven to be influential in the Anglo-Saxon discourse here, noting a division of Western societies into globalization-friendly “anywheres” and more traditionalist, more nationally oriented “somewhere.” For Goodhart, this dividing line represents a new social divide that runs through the traditional core electorate of center-left parties. In the German-speaking world, this analysis corresponds to the contrast between communitarians and cosmopolitans described in particular by the political scientist Wolfgang Merkel.

Attempts by center-left parties to compensate for the economic course of the “Third Way” through progressive flagship projects in the field of identity politics or with regard to an open attitude to immigration issues are not only unsuitable for returning alienated voters to the parties. In fact, they exacerbate the problem. Precisely because compromises are more difficult to reach in identity politics than in economics, this new line of conflict undermines the traditional voter coalition of center-left parties. In this context, my colleague at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Ernst Hillebrand speaks convincingly of a center-left “that stands with one leg each on two ice floes that are slowly but inexorably drifting apart.” The parties are forced to decide to which segment of society they will make urgent political offers. However, since any shift in emphasis on the cultural conflict axis is likely to face considerable resistance from the remaining electorate, a shift in direction would only be possible at the price of an initial worsening of the crisis.

Perhaps because of its far-reaching implications, this interpretation has so far met with little response in progressive parties themselves. Critics of this view not only reject on moral grounds any suggestions of adapting to political opponents; they also fear that progressive parties could lose the last shred of credibility if they appear to be trying to ingratiate themselves with supporters of conservative positions. After all, in the end people will likely still choose “the original.” The question remains, however, as to how these critics explain the success of parties that are economically left wing, but more conservative in terms of identity politics. The SPÖ in the Burgenland region of Austria, the Social Democratic Party of Denmark or the Scottish National Party, ultimately achieve not only respectable successes with this orientation, but comprehensive election victories.

They thus prove that a combination of left-wing economics and rather conservative values on the cultural conflict axis can certainly attract non-voters and keep the growth of right-wing populist movements in check. It is important to note that adopting conservative values should not be misunderstood as a reactionary backlash, but rather as the preservation of progressive achievements such as equality, secularism, and sexual self-determination.

The Return of the Strong State

Will the COVID-19 pandemic now bring about party-political shifts that affect this crisis? In principle, the way Western societies are dealing with the coronavirus and the varying performances of ultimately competing systems in international comparison should strengthen left-wing political agendas in the short term. While the decisive role that nation states have played in the first phase of the virus control seems at first to run counter to multilateral convictions, it also reinforces the center-left narrative of a strong state capable of action and the primacy of politics.

This applies not only to concrete policy areas, but also, at least possibly in the short term, to a reassessment of traditionally defined work.

In this regard, the Overton window, the window of acceptable policy proposals, has rapidly shifted toward progressive policies during the pandemic. Demands that seemed controversial just months ago have become commonplace almost overnight: massive state investments, proposals for a significant deepening of European integration, an increase in the minimum wage, better pay for “systemically important professions,” growing support even for an unconditional basic income. The left, it seems, is taking to heart the advice of Barack Obama’s advisor Rahm Emanuel to “never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

Certainly, the crisis is evidence of humanitarian commitment, solidarity, and a rediscovery of community. But it gets tricky when one looks at a longer time period. Empirically, there is little evidence so far that economic crises contribute directly to long-term gains in solidarity and to the strengthening of the left.

The 1918 flu epidemic, for example—as American sociologist Lane Kenworthy points out—put an end to two decades of progressive reform in the United States, while the crises of the 1970s and 1980s did not result in the triumph of the left, but in the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Not to mention the consequences of the 1929 Great Depression: at least in large parts of Europe, Black Friday was not followed by Red Saturday but by the disastrous triumph of Brown ideologies. And the economic and financial crisis of 2008 not only allowed neoliberalism to survive but also resulted in a worldwide wave of populism.

The US political scientist Ronald Inglehart has made a significant contribution to understanding the underlying causes of these developments. Based on decades of opinion research in more than a hundred countries, his studies show that the development of progressive values has historically always depended on the perception of economic security. “Reduced job security and rising inequality encourage authoritarian reactions.” A high level of existential security, however, strengthens “openness to change, diversity, and new ideas.”

Not All Will Prosper

In view of the economic consequences of the pandemic, it can therefore be assumed that conflicts over redistribution are likely to experience an exceptional renaissance—and will compete with climate policy concepts for attention. However, in line with the historical experience of the New Deal and the development of the Swedish welfare state, known as the Folkhemmet or People’s Home, for example, left-wing parties are likely to benefit from this trend only where they see themselves in a position to play a decisive role in shaping political developments in the direction of safety nets.

Conversely, however, left-wing forces can hardly rely on an automatic impact of post-pandemic solidarity. On the contrary, there is much to be said for a feedback loop in which strong left-wing forces will tend to be further strengthened, while weak left-wing forces will tend to be further weakened. The “opportunities of the crisis,” which Dahrendorf spoke of in the context of the liberal movement, actually exist for the political left in the age of the coronavirus. It will not be strong enough everywhere to take advantage of these opportunities.

The post A Revival of the Left in the Age of Coronavirus? appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Pedro Nunes

The parallels have been all too easy to draw. The center-left leaders of Spain and Portugal were both facing general elections and both were expecting their parties to emerge the strongest, thus looking to hold talks with parties to their left in order to be able to form new administrations.

But the similarities end there. In the wake of his electoral win on October 6, the Portuguese prime minister and leader of the Socialist Party (PS), António Costa, now dominates a political arena characterized by moderation and consensus. By contrast, Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s acting prime minister and leader of the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), finds himself in a much more polarized and unstable landscape going into the country’s November 10 election, the fourth national vote in as many years.

Although Costa fell 10 seats short of the parliamentary majority he would have liked, his victory was nonetheless a resounding endorsement by Portuguese voters of the geringonça, or “contraption”, the nickname for the three-way leftist partnership he has led since 2015. His government has kept the country’s economic recovery on track while reversing much of the austerity introduced by his predecessors.

In the October 5 election, his PS strengthened its presence in parliament. Forming a new administration looks more straightforward than it was four years ago. He could attempt to repeat a deal with either of his previous partners, the Left Bloc (BE) and the Communist Party, or involve other, smaller, forces on the left.

Five Months of Impasse

In Spain, the upcoming election and its fallout promise to be more heavily fraught with dilemmas and difficulties for Sánchez.

The 47-year-old already won a general election in April, with his party emerging as the largest share of votes but still falling short of a majority. After five months of impasse he was unable to gain the support he needed from other parties in order to form a government, triggering this repeat ballot.

The PSOE’s most natural ally in the wake of the April election appeared to be Podemos, to its left, which leads the Unidas Podemos coalition. But the two parties clashed over the format of a potential new government, with the PSOE wanting a Portugal-style governing partnership and Podemos preferring a formal coalition which would give it control of several cabinet portfolios.

With policy detail barely discussed, the talks descended into a public, and increasingly personal, spat between Sánchez and Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias.

“What people are seeing is the left losing—once again,” said Gabriel Rufián, a member of parliament representing the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), as the clock ran down on an agreement. He was invoking the Spanish left’s repeated and well-documented failure to unite when under pressure. He also warned that it might be more difficult for Sánchez to form a government after a new election, as political storm clouds threatened to gather throughout the autumn.

A Stalled Progressive Vision

Since taking office as prime minister in June 2018, Sánchez has been touted as a standard bearer for the Europe’s center-left. Young, internationally minded, and outspoken on issues such as the importance of a strong EU, climate change, and feminism, he has been seen as an ideal counterweight to the right-wing populism sweeping Europe.

Yet the recent political paralysis has stalled the implementation of his progressive vision for Spain and put his more internationalist ambitions on hold.

Initially, polls had suggested Sánchez’ Socialists would benefit from a repeat election, gaining seats and making them less reliant on other parties to govern. But the political fragmentation which began in Spain half a decade ago, with the arrival of Podemos and then Ciudadanos further to the right, continues. A new party, Más País, led by the young former deputy leader of Podemos, Íñigo Errejón, has emerged in recent weeks and is expected to take votes from both of the other main parties on the left.

Also complicating the panorama is the issue of Catalonia, which has been dominating the political agenda in recent years. As the territorial crisis has refused to fade, it has polarized and often poisoned the national political debate.

Sánchez’s PSOE positions itself as a moderate unionist force, opposed to Catalan independence and the right to self-determination but seeking to calm tensions by finding common ground with those in the north-eastern region wanting to break away from Spain.

Discord over Catalonia

The parties to Sánchez’s right have cast him as weak on the issue, or even a willing participant in the Catalan independence project. The conservative Popular Party (PP) used this message in the April election, as did Ciudadanos, while the far-right Vox owes much of its recent rise to its extreme brand of unionism.

Such discord on this highly emotive issue has added to the lack of post-electoral consensus. Ciudadanos, which has lurched to the right since beginning as a centrist party, refused to consider talks with the PSOE to form a new government after the last election. More recently, the party’s leader, Albert Rivera, appears to have softened his stance but remains wedded to an uncompromising approach to Catalonia which makes any deal with Sánchez difficult, particularly if he should also need the support of Catalan or Basque nationalists.

Angering Franco Nostalgists

Moreover, the Catalan crisis is expected to flare up again with the imminent announcement of the verdict on the case of 12 pro-independence leaders who went on trial earlier this year for their role in the region’s controversial and unsuccessful bid for secession in 2017. The election campaign is therefore likely to take place amid turmoil in Catalonia and renewed tensions with Madrid.

However, Spain’s current polarization is fueled by history as well as geography. Ever since taking office, Sánchez has been trying to exhume the remains of the dictator Francisco Franco from his huge mausoleum outside Madrid and bury them somewhere more appropriate for such a divisive figure. The plan has been repeatedly delayed by legal and bureaucratic hurdles. With the supreme court recently ruling in favor of the exhumation, it is possible that Franco’s body will be transferred before the November 10 election.

The idea of the exhumation is popular among left-leaning Spaniards. However, Franco nostalgists, who are a minority, angrily oppose the move and the political right deems it an unnecessary stirring up of the past. If and when it happens, it promises to add yet another element of animosity to Spain’s riven politics.

The post The Iberian Divide appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Source: EuropeElects

With Germany’s political landscape in upheaval, observers of German politics may be excused for thinking that the world is caving in.

In late May, the troubled Social Democrats (SPD), one of the main political parties both in Germany and in Europe’s wider center-left, suffered a disastrous double blow that underscored the party’s existential crisis. The Social Democrats won only 15.8 percent of the vote in the European Parliament elections, down from 27.3 percent in 2014, finishing behind the Greens for the first time ever in a national election. On the same day, the SPD failed to top the poll in Bremen, coming second to Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) in the northern state it has governed for more than seven decades. Shortly afterwards, party leader Andrea Nahles announced her resignation after just a year in office.

The SPD’s collapse has been accompanied by the rising fortunes of the German Greens, who won nearly 21 percent of the vote in the European elections—double their previous result. Crucially, the Greens won the youth vote. Among those under 25, the Greens attracted more voters than the combined tally for the SPD and the CDU, together with their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU). The success of the Greens and the losses of the governing parties were well predicted in the polls, but the results are still bewildering. Opinion polls conducted since have even seen the Greens pushing ahead of the CDU/CSU to 27 percent, making them the main center-left force and the most popular political party in Germany for the first time in history.

The “Greta Effect”

The crisis of the Social Democrats and the rise of the Greens are not unique to Germany, though both effects are particularly strong there. The overall European picture after the elections is marked by a curious divide: In several countries in the north and the center of Europe, the Greens have successfully taken votes away from Social Democratic parties; whereas in the southeast, the Social Democrats seem to be recovering, and the Greens have not done particularly well.

In a similar trend as in Germany, the British Labour Party, the Romanian PSD, and the Austrian SPÖ all suffered disappointing results. The French Socialists (PS), which secured 14 percent of the vote in the 2014 election, were nearly obliterated. In contrast, the French green party EELV surged to a surprising third place, scoring from 8.9 percent to 13.5 percent of the vote. The Greens also reached double figures in several other countries, coming in second in Finland and third in Luxembourg. In the United Kingdom, the Green Party finished ahead of the ruling Conservatives with a score of 11.8 percent. Ireland’s Green Party’s vote trebled in comparison with the 2014 elections, putting it in line to send representatives to the European Parliament for the first time in 20 years. Greens in Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands also did well in the wake of recent electoral successes in regional polls, as many young voters increasingly turn away from the center-left to vote for the environmentalist parties.

Only a couple of years back, opinion polls suggested that the Greens were going to see their support halved in the European Parliament. Instead, their total of seats has now gone from 52 to 75, pushing them into a position of influence. Analysts explain this “Green wave” with the “Greta effect,” referring to the teenage Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg. What is certain is that Green parties have benefited from the fact that it was climate change, rather than migration, that dominated the political agenda and the election campaign in many countries.

Europe’s Southeast is Different

Yet not all member states have been hit by the green wave. In fact, it was largely confined to countries in north-western Europe. The Greens’ gains there masked losses in Austria, Spain, and Sweden in the European elections, and the total wipeout of Green MEPs in Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, and Slovenia, leaving the Green group unrepresented in 12 out of 28 member states. Indeed, most Green parties across the EU failed to make significant gains compared with 2014.

With a few exceptions, Green parties have not been able to consolidate their presence in the south and east of the EU, “a political reality that even the latest wave of stunning European electoral success has not changed,” according to an analysis by the economic news service Eurointelligence. The Greens won no seats in Eastern Europe and only a handful in southern Europe, where a number of Social Democratic forces have co-opted environmental concerns into their platforms, and thus resisted the green trend, including the main center-left parties in Portugal, Spain, Malta, and Italy.

In Spain, a decisive win for the center-left PSOE, taking 33 percent of the vote, seems to provide evidence of a recovery. This result has made the PSOE the largest national delegation in the S&D group, with 20 MEPs, ahead of the Italian Democratic Party (PD), which is also starting to climb back up according to the latest polls. In Portugal and Malta, the governing parties of Prime Ministers António Costa and Joseph Muscat won by a landslide with 33.4 percent and 54.3 percent of the vote respectively. Polls predict an even bigger win for Portugal’s Costa when he stands for re-election in the fall. The Danish center-left Social Democrats also won the European elections and the subsequent general election held on June 5, though the party’s focus on a more restrictive immigration policy is probably not a model for Europe’s other Social Democrats in crisis. Nonetheless, their win is the third in less than a year for center-left parties in Nordic countries after successes in Sweden and Finland.

Environmentalism may primarily be a concern in north-western Europe, and the Social Democrats may yet experience a comeback in other countries and regions of the the EU. Nevertheless, it is likely that this moment will be remembered as a turning point for the Greens: for the first time, they have taken a place among the big players in the European Parliament.

The post Europe by Numbers: Greens Up, Reds Down appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Germany’s troubled Social Democratic Party is rediscovering its roots. With promises of higher wages, pensions, and social benefits, the SPD is trying to woo back working-class voters. “Solidarity, social cohesion, and humanity—those are the principles on which we are building a new social state,” said party chairwoman Andrea Nahles in February after a two-day leadership retreat.

The SPD’s populist turn to the left marks the end of the consensus politics that has shaped the country’s political, economic, and social landscape for decades. While it does not immediately endanger the coalition with Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc, the SPD has made it clear that from now on, political identity counts more than remaining in power.

“We have positioned ourselves clearly,” Nahles said. “If others want to rub up against that—then that’s politics. We actually need more of that.”

2019 brings a series of difficult electoral challenges for the Social Democrats. Over the past 20 years, they have tumbled from 40.9 percent of the votes in the 1998 federal elections to 15 percent in recent polls. In addition to the European Parliament elections in May, four state elections are scheduled for this year.

With its new program “A New Social State for a New Era,” the SPD promises to raise the minimum wage from €9.19 to €12 per hour and introduce the right to work from home. Families with children are to receive far more generous benefits, particularly if they depend on social aid. At the same time, older employees would be entitled to receive full unemployment benefits for a much longer time. In addition, the SPD wants to introduce a minimum pension of €900 per month for employees who have put in more than 35 years of work.

Hitting a Nerve

According to opinion polls, the SPD may be hitting the right nerve. Two-thirds of voters say they would back at least some of the proposals, particularly those on the minimum wage and pensions.

For the SPD’s coalition partner, however, the “New Social State” consists mostly of no-gos. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the new leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has been trying to sharpen her profile as a conservative on issues ranging from conscription to migration. Giving way to the SPD on social benefits would not help her cause. Her predecessor Angela Merkel, the most pragmatic and centrist leader the CDU has ever had, has said little in public about the new SPD program. But it is clear that even she will find the new ideological divide difficult to bridge.

Germany’s conservatives want to spend more money on defense while cutting the solidarity surtax that was introduced nearly 30 years ago to pay for the cost of German reunification. The SPD, faced with the prospect that its new social policy proposals could cost more than €40 billion a year, says it’s a question of rethinking the government’s priorities—and possibly of raising taxes for the wealthy.

In a highly symbolic move, the SPD also renounced the painful labor market and social benefit reforms that Gerhard Schröder, the last SPD politician to make it to the chancellery, introduced in 2003.

The most contentious of these reforms is “Hartz IV,” named after Volkswagen’s former labor director Peter Hartz. As one of Schröder’s close advisors, Hartz drew up the proposals to limit unemployment benefits and introduce sanctions for long-term unemployed people not making enough of an effort to find a job.

Unanimously and with obvious relief, the SPD leadership recently decided to abolish the “Hartz IV” regulation, replacing it with a “citizen’s income” that would be paid out for much longer and with far fewer sanctions. “We are leaving Hartz IV behind, and not just in name,” Nahles declared at the close of a retreat where she received unanimous support for her new program.

Nahles Vindicated

It’s safe to say that Andrea Nahles must have felt vindicated. In Schröder’s time, she was one of the most prominent voices of the SPD’s left and a sharp critic of his reforms, fearing they would end up splitting the party and alienating many of its voters.

As it happens, she was right: Schröder’s “Agenda 2010” package of liberal reforms caused thousands of trade unionists and SPD traditionalists to leave the party and join the newly-founded Left Party, which developed into a dangerous competitor. But even for those who stayed, Hartz IV continued to be tremendously divisive. That, in turn, has been a major factor in the steep decline of the party’s vote share since the millennium.

While the program damaged the SPD, it benefited the country. Economists widely agree that Agenda 2010 was central to restoring Germany’s competitiveness and growth. Certainly, Germany would not be the leading European economy today without the market-oriented reforms that Schröder pushed through.

Ironically, it was Merkel who benefited the most: becoming chancellor in 2005, voters gave her credit for the prospering economy. Being able to outshine her junior coalition partners won her four terms in office, while the SPD, in government for three of those terms, went into an accelerating decline. Today, Merkel’s conservative bloc is still the most popular party in Germany by far, while the SPD has been overtaken by the Greens.

The decline has pushed the SPD into a series of leadership struggles. Every turnover at the top kindled great enthusiasm and hope, only to be followed by deeper disappointment and worse elections results. Nahles hasn’t even been in the job for a year, but she is already feeling the heat, with old-time foes like Gerhard Schröder and Sigmar Gabriel, former SPD chairman and foreign minister, leading the attacks.

The initial success of the “New Social State” and the party’s huge relief over getting rid of Hartz IV mean that Nahles has won time for a breather. But much depends on how the SPD’s new identity drive plays with voters.

The initial reaction seems to be positive. According to a recent ARD Deutschlandtrend poll, most Germans like the fact that both Social Democrats and Christian Democrats are sharpening their profiles. Three out of four Germans said they believed it was getting easier to tell the parties apart and that they approved of this development.

The Real Test: Elections

Beyond the polling data, however, there are real elections looming. The first important landmark is the Bremen state election that coincides with the European Parliament elections on May 26. It’s significant because Bremen—Germany’s smallest state with 650,000 inhabitants—is an old industrial center with a large share of traditional blue-collar workers. In the 1970s, it was hit hard by the shipyard crisis, and even today, unemployment is higher than in any other German state. At 9.8 percent, joblessness in Bremen is three times as high as in Bavaria.

Given the city’s working-class background, the SPD has won every single state election in Bremen since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949. This time around, however, the party is faced with a double handicap. Apart from the negative trend at the federal level, local SPD incumbent Carsten Sieling is as uncharismatic as they come.

Adding insult to injury, he appears to be unlucky. Recently, Sieling bought the first tickets in a public raffle—a traditional task for Bremen’s mayor. The first was a blank; so was the second. On his third try, Sieling won a glass of jam. “I hope this is not a bad omen for the state elections,” the moderator of the event commented.

Polls have given the opposition Christian Democrats a tiny lead on the SPD in Bremen, but the race is far from being decided. Both friends and foes of Nahles will watch closely to gauge the impact of the “New Social State” on estranged traditional voters.

In terms of numbers, the state elections in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Thuringia in the fall are much more important than tiny Bremen. Yet in Saxony and Thuringia, in particular, the Social Democrats were never really able to take root after German reunification. For many years, the Left Party—a descendant of the former ruling communist party—was very strong here; in recent years, this is where the far-right populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has bagged its biggest gains.

A Changing Landscape

Can the SPD, with its new promises of more money and more respect, win back the hearts of disenchanted eastern voters? Whether it is a “yes” or “no” answer that emerges from the elections in the fall, Germany’s political landscape is likely to change irrevocably.

If Nahles’ “New Social State” can bring back the votes, the SPD will look to do more of the same, i.e. populist programs for more fairness, solidarity, and equality—programs that will have to paid for by taxpayers (“soaking the rich” won’t be enough), business, and through higher debt.

The gap between Christian and Social Democrats will widen. That won’t necessarily mean an early end to Merkel’s last government, but it would make it difficult to agree on initiatives outside the existing coalition agreement. It’s also entirely possible that the SPD, if it believes that its new program works, could use the agreed midterm evaluation to leave the government. The Greens and the Left would become its natural allies.

While such a development would bring a lot of uncertainty, the alternative is worse. If the SPD’s decline continues with this year’s elections, despair will make the party extremely unstable. With a renewed leadership struggle added to ideological rifts, the SPD could even disintegrate altogether.

Among Germans, the country’s oldest political party is affectionately known as “good old auntie SPD.” But a political institution that once seemed as solid and dependable as the four-stroke engine of a Volkswagen beetle may now be reaching the end of the road.

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© REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer

Punk and social democracy have one thing in common and one big difference. The similarity: both were swallowed by neo-liberal capitalism. The difference: only punk is aware that it is dead.

It’s 40 years since Malcolm McLaren and his then wife Vivienne Westwood opened “SEX”, their London punk boutique that presented a dyed-and-pierced aesthetic with a Sex Pistols soundtrack to the “no future” younger generation in a United Kingdom that was going to the dogs. They had their fun, but what came next? Thatcherism and Spandau Ballet.

Last weekend, to mark punk’s 40^th anniversary in Britain, the late McLaren’s son, Joe Corré, lit a punk funeral pyre. Burning punk collectibles worth several million pounds was a protest, he said, at how the movement had become a “McDonald’s brand … privatized, packaged, and castrated by the establishment.”

That same fate has befallen social democracy, which, roughly a century before punk, took hold in Germany as the political face of the burgeoning union movement. Social democracy empowered the working class by popularizing what were then radical ideas of social justice and state oversight of markets, promising common social goods like universal education and healthcare. Social democracy in Europe survived fascism, and while being co-opted by communism in eastern Europe, it peaked in the 1970s under Willy Brandt in West Germany, Bruno Kreisky in Austria, and Olof Palme in Sweden.

This week their respective political heirs – Sigmar Gabriel, Christian Kern, and Stefan Lövfen – met in Vienna to reboot the social democratic ideals. And barely anyone noticed.

Instead of presenting a concrete plan, theirs was a limp attempt to reboot a failing brand. It fell on deaf ears because Europe’s social democrats have tried this every other year over the last decade. The result: instead of firing up a new generation, social democracy meanders around Europe like an ideological zombie, arms outstretched and stumbling into every hole before it.

Lack of Honesty, Lack of Conviction

The problem is twofold: a lack of honesty and a lack of conviction. If Europe’s social democrats were honest they would admit that they simply don’t have the answer to rebooting the European social democratic model for the globalized world. That is because, like punk, social democracy has been privatized, packaged, and castrated by international capital. Because social democrats, with their “Third Way” politics of the late 1990s, played a role in their own castration. And because, unlike the hard left, social democrats don’t really believe in facing down their castrators. “We are staring into the abyss,” said Kern, Austria’s chancellor of six months, suggesting their endeavor is motivated less by new, fairer politics and more by the fear of Europe’s ruling social democrats losing power – and, with it, their last hold on political relevance.

After decades of neo-liberalism and post-crisis belt-tightening, the three leaders in Vienna said Europe needed a social democratic makeover. Hurray. The EU’s four fundamental freedoms – of trade, capital, services, and labor – needed a fifth social pillar. Great idea.

How? In concrete terms, they said, this meant giving EU governments “more fiscal-political freedom” to invest in growth and jobs, infrastructure, and fighting youth unemployment. Labor laws needed to be updated for the 21^st century single market, Lövfen said, so “EU freedoms don’t come at the cost of workers.”

The problem, as always, is the implementation. These three amigos have little or no political credibility as defenders of the workers or keepers of the social democratic flame. In the mid 1990s, after drinking from the poisoned, third way chalice, German SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder swapped union support to be embraced as the “bosses’ comrade”. He introduced social reforms admirers say saved the German economy or, critics say, gave birth to today’s working poor. Some 14 years on, the SPD still cannot decide whether to disown and reverse the reforms, or own up to them and take credit for the subsequent economic boom. As they say in Ireland: shit or get off the pot.

In the last years, these three social democratic parties were all in power when the EU nodded through eurozone crisis program that socialized billions of private banks debt and hung it around taxpayers’ necks – as “rescue” rings in crisis countries and bailout payments in non-crisis countries. Under Gabriel, the SPD in Germany spends one year chastising Europe’s periphery as fiscal “sinners” and the next sulking that their peripheral neighbors show them the cold shoulder.

The World Has Moved On

As Europe’s social democrats grapple with their extended identity crisis, the world has moved on. First, hard left parties peeled away social democrats’ welfare and social justice robes and added some anti-globalization, pro-Russian patches of their own. Then center-right parties, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, moved back to the center ground. Now squeezed by both sides, the social democrats find themselves in a tug of war with far-right populist parties in Sweden, Germany, and Austria, offering vulnerable voters the promise of more welfare and fewer Muslims. Those hit hardest by globalized transformation are being tempted by an opportunistic, xenophobic social nationalism when what they really need is robust, tolerant, old school social democracy 2.0.

Yet those best placed to deliver this have failed to do so, suggesting they either can’t or won’t.

In his eleven years as SPD leader, Gabriel has announced but not delivered, in order: an EU with an enhanced social dimension; “solidarity” bonds of pooled, lower-interest sovereign debt issues; and more flexible stability pact rules to aid indebted euro members. In recent months he has promised more investment for Germany’s crumbling infrastructure while, last week, his party backed yet another balanced budget with minimal spending for the future.

Each time Gabriel has a new idea, he either drops it privately or, under howls of protest from his center-right coalition partners, rows back publicly. I may be wrong, but this week’s “social pact” bore suspicious similarities to a Franco-German pact Gabriel launched with France’s Socialists a few years ago, and later buried.

And yet the departure of French president Francois Hollande leaves Gabriel as Europe’s longest-serving, most senior Social Democrat leader. Next year’s federal election in Germany offers a chance for Gabriel to change the record in Europe. He could shaft Chancellor Merkel and activate the center-left majority that has existed in Germany since Merkel came to power in 2005 – if he has the courage of his convictions.

The only chance left to revive some form of social democracy is a three-way pact with two of three parties: the Greens, the liberal Free Democrats, and the Left Party. Such a bold move might risk Sex Pistols-style anarchy in German politics. Sticking with the safe option – another grand coalition with Merkel – would be social democracy’s final, fatal embrace of punk’s “no future” philosophy.

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Social democratic parties have been in retreat. But contrary to appearances 
in Germany, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, they can be part of the future if they address issues of economic competence and identity politics.

© Friedrich Ebert Stiftung e.V.

Social democratic parties and governments are undeniably operating under uncertain and volatile conditions today. Even leaving aside one of the most severe financial crises in the West’s history, capitalism itself is undergoing major structural change: the rate of technological innovation and the decline of industrial-era mass production imply that advanced economies are on the brink of a “third” disruptive industrial revolution, undermining established political and economic institutions. Moreover, fiscal pressures unleashed by the 2008 financial crisis are placing unprecedented strain on public finances, welfare systems, and the future shape of the state. Crisis aftershocks are accentuating the impact of long-term demographic trends, from an aging society to declining fertility rates. The global context is being further reshaped by the rising power of emerging economies and the relative decline of the West.

These “capitalist crises” should be fertile ground for social democratic parties. Counter-intuitively, however, the crises appear to have benefited the center-right and the populist far right, both of which have adeptly exploited the politics of austerity. The moderate right does this by redefining center-left parties as profligate and economically incompetent. Those moderate parties are themselves being challenged, however, by the rise of populist parties even further to the right, particularly in Northern Europe, that deftly exploit voters’ anxieties and insecurities about the increasingly globalized society they inhabit. In last year’s Danish elections, for example, it was the right-wing People’s Party rather than the Conservative moderates that drove former Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s left coalition from power.

The shattering of confidence in global capitalism and the return of state intervention to the center of political debate has done little to revive support for the left. The 2014 European Parliament elections could hardly have been worse for the center-left, resulting in its lowest representation since 1979. In Germany, the SPD has recorded its worst results since the 1890s, despite a very modest improvement in the last federal elections. In Spain, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) did poorly. The Irish Labour Party’s vote halved from 14 to seven percent. In the Netherlands, the Labor Party (PvDA) polled less than ten percent. In France, where the left has returned to government, its future looks far from auspicious.

In 2010 and 2015, British Labour suffered some of its worst defeats since 1918. In Sweden, the “heartland” of European social democracy, the center-left lost two consecutive parliamentary elections for the first time in over a century, before scraping back into power last year. Italy provides the only robust evidence for European center-left optimism: Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party obtained more than forty percent of the vote in the 2014 elections. However, Italian politics are notoriously volatile, and Renzi’s recent setback in regional elections have placed the left a long way from building a viable political coalition in Italy.

European center-left parties’ electoral underperformance can be explained by weak and unpopular leadership; inability to present a credible alternative, especially on economic management; and the cost of internal divisions in unstable coalition governments. It is not just that social democrats are losing elections, however. In the face of growing economic turmoil and escalating government debt, many now question whether social democracy is even capable of revival. The center-left, these critics argue, lacks a persuasive electoral or ideological program and has no credible governing strategy. It is in fact possible that we are witnessing the eclipse of social democracy in its entirety.

Structural Causes

These problems are compounded by structural shifts that are eating away at social democratic parties’ support base, as economic and social change reshape the center-left’s electoral coalition. As the structural environment changes, social democratic ideas that were largely accepted in most Western European countries in the aftermath of the World War II become increasingly open to challenge. The welfare state’s universalism and commitment to addressing unmet material needs has shifted to a focus on enforcing the rules of contribution and responsibility. The perceived legitimacy of center-left beliefs and values is apparently weakening.

Two broad historical shifts have challenged social democrats since the end of the Cold War. The first is globalization, characterized not only by worldwide market integration but also by deregulation and liberalization, significantly emboldening capital at the expense of labor and democratic governments. The second is the structural weakening of democratic politics relative to markets and other social forces, which raises serious questions for a movement such as social democracy, whose existence depends on articulating “the primacy of politics.”

Both the liberalization of global trade and the weakening of politics have a crucial impact. Globalization has revolutionized economics and politics, with major consequences for traditional institutions. But while it has created unprecedented gains in economic growth and living standards, the benefits have not been evenly distributed. Moreover, globalization no longer seems capable of generating gains for those outside the economic and political elite. As a result, there is a strong political backlash against it, expressed most visibly in hostility to liberal migration regimes and to European integration. Cosmopolitanism is now challenged by rising xenophobia, motivated by new insecurities about national identity and belonging.

At the same time, just as globalization and liberalization place new strains on the social and economic fabric of western states, political institutions appear less capable of dealing with these adversities. A 24-hour media cycle and the scrutiny of social media have made politics more transparent, but also more vulnerable to attack. The public mistrust of politicians and political institutions has weakened their legitimacy, as evidenced in lower turnouts at national elections. Voters demand quick results, even though achieving political change too often requires what the German sociologist Max Weber once described as “the strong and slow boring of hard boards.” Moreover, confidence in EU institutions has never been lower. As governments confront increasingly global challenges, they lack transnational mechanisms that can deal with interdependence while ensuring democratic legitimacy and consent.

The decline of social democratic politics, combined with the rise of globalization and the weakening of representative democracy, have long-term implications for the future of social democracy throughout Europe, as well as for Europe’s political left.

Current Weaknesses

What, then, are the structural weaknesses that undermine the performance of social democratic parties? Shortly before the turn of the millennium, the late sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf famously wrote of the “end of the social democratic century.” For him, the Third Way and other “revisionist” projects were merely desperate, and largely fruitless, efforts to remain relevant in a transformed political landscape. This view resonates with those who believe that social democracy’s mission has been accomplished, given that today’s center-left programs form part of any mainstream political menu. Hence, there is no longer anything specific or challenging about social democracy to the status quo.

Social and demographic change, however, pose major questions about the future sustainability and structure of the European welfare state, and concerns have mounted over migration’s social impact across the EU, despite the economic and cultural benefits that migrants bring to member states.

The widening gap between rich and poor increases the likelihood that migration will become a major political issue. Rising levels of unemployment influence attitudes toward intra-European immigrants. As the economic crisis recedes, a “new” Europe is experiencing important and in some instances troubling political developments and tensions. The EU’s eastward expansion, combined with Southern Europe’s economic stagnation, has emboldened new political forces that threaten the mainstream political system.

Populist parties, especially right-wing populists, have used these tensions to achieve electoral success. Many of these parties, including those on the left, derive their support from citizens alienated from the EU. Their disaffection is the product of the EU’s apparent lack of democratic accountability, the encouragement of the uncontrolled free movement of labor, and the imposition of austerity. Indeed, austerity has driven support for both the populist left and right; in the south, voters have leaned toward parties determined to scale back austerity; meanwhile, many in the north feel they have already paid the price for southern profligacy.

With the notable exception of Greece and Spain, however, the left in the EU has failed to capitalize on the crisis as the right has done. The performance of Green parties exemplifies this trend: the only country where Green parties have recently been successful was in Portugal, with the Unitarian Democratic Coalition and the Ecologist Party The Greens winning a combined share of the vote of nearly twenty percent. This fits with the broader pattern of the growth of the radical left in Europe’s South. The wider picture of Green performance in Europe is one of stagnation. Most countries have seen no change in the number of Green members of parliament.

More importantly, the rise of radical and populist parties is fracturing support for traditional social democratic parties. The growth of the populists is challenging the hegemony that center-left parties have sustained in Europe since World War II. Although there are more right-leaning governments in Europe than left-leaning ones, centrist political parties are increasingly forced to work together in coalition. Though once considered temporary and the by-product of electoral arithmetic, coalitions that span the two wings of the center are increasingly seen as the norm. And in the future, they might be fundamental in holding back the populist tide. The European political landscape has been transformed dramatically.

What Next?

Europe’s social democrats are facing an increasingly bleak future in the face of repeated electoral defeats, but they should not lose hope. After all, the world still needs the values and programs that center-left parties espouse.

So what should be the priorities for renewing social democracy? More recently, traditional parties such as the British Labour party and the Democrats in the United States have witnessed the rise of new insurgent movements from the left: in America this is associated with the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders, and in the UK with the rise to power of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. (Post-Brexit, he faced a coup, with “civil war” ensuing in the Labour Party.) Both figures are symbols of growing disillusionment with the political establishment, and of a desire for social democratic and socialist parties to return to their roots representing the powerless and dispossessed. It is widely believed by their supporters that these two leaders can counter the increasing threat of populist forces in western democracies. What is less clear is whether the left insurgency can formulate a coherent agenda for governing given the serious constraints all progressive parties face, from growing antipathy toward redistribution to popular anger against mass migration.

Capitalism Triumphant?

Intellectually, there are two major challenges ahead that social democrats have to resolve relating to the politics of economic competence and the politics of identity. In the 1990s, Third Way center-left governments undermined themselves by getting too close to market liberalism. In the wake of the Berlin Wall’s collapse, they came to the inevitable conclusion that Western capitalism had triumphed: to gain office, social democratic parties had to run a market economy at least as efficiently as the right. The result was ideological capitulation. Many of the policy regimes and institutions developed in the immediate aftermath of World War II were swiftly abandoned.

This was not wholly misguided. Left parties did need to demonstrate they could manage the capitalist economy effectively, coming to terms with markets. Moreover, in a highly globalized economy, prescriptions arising from an earlier generation of Keynesian theory had to be revised. The problem was that by the time the financial crisis struck in 2007-08, the center-left appeared complicit in the policy decisions that led to the crash. In particular, social democrats had largely given up effective regulation and supervision of the financial sector, alongside any wider objective of strategic intervention to rebalance the economy. The left today needs to rethink its economic approach in order to create a fairer, more resilient, and sustainable capitalism, while clearly rejecting the claim that governments have no business intervening in markets.

Another object lesson is that opposition to austerity on its own is not enough to win power. Of course, premature cuts have weakened growth, jobs, and living standards. In southern Europe, the pursuit of austerity threatens to unleash a social catastrophe. However, center-left parties must show they would be competent managers of the economy, articulating a coherent plan to deal with debt – and not just net public sector debt over the economic cycle, but unsustainable financial sector and household debt. Social democrats have to show how they would govern in a world where there is less money around for state spending after the great recession and the impending threat of secular stagnation. This demands a strategy for regulating financial markets that promotes the public good, tackles systemic risks and reforms banks that are “too big to fail.” An industrial modernization plan would rebalance our economies away from their reliance on financial services toward knowledge-intensive sectors and manufacturing. In reforming the tax system, there ought to be a major clampdown on crossborder tax evasion and fraud and a restoration of the progressivity of tax, using redistribution to tackle new inequalities.

Questions of Identity

The second task relates to the politics of identity. Left parties must not be distracted from confronting deeper underlying political forces. Center-left parties are losing elections because the voters don’t trust politicians to protect their way of life against the impersonal forces of global change. Europe has pitched dramatically to the right – not only toward Christian Democratic and Conservative parties, but new forces adept at exploiting voters’ fears about economic insecurity, immigration, and hostility to the EU. In the heartlands of European social democracy, from the Nordic states to France and the Netherlands, right-wing populists are on the rise. In Austria, a hard right presidential candidate was within touching distance of power.

The left is losing, not just on the conventional politics of economic competence, but increasingly on the vexed politics of national identity. The temptation to raise the drawbridge against immigration ought to be resisted. Flirting with a restrictive immigration policy is superficially tempting when the populist right is winning, but imposing arbitrary limits would be economically damaging as well as politically unprincipled. Instead, low wage and vulnerable workers across the EU ought to be protected. Permitting the uncontrolled exploitation of low-cost labor in Eastern Europe has undermined the entire European project. More safeguards against temporary work and zero-hour contracts are needed.

The center-left must articulate its own vision of a cohesive society, backed by an understanding of sovereignty that accepts the nation-state is the central pillar of security and belonging. Only by securing the trust and allegiance of citizens within the nation-state can the center-left win the argument for international engagement and cooperation, the cornerstone of a liberal world order.

Social democracy in western Europe is not destined to decline in the years ahead. The electoral setbacks it has suffered since the 1990s have been serious, while the long-term deterioration in social democratic parties’ vote share is sobering. Yet social democrats can still draw on a wealth of arguments in remaking center-left politics, grounding the case for fairness and equality in a vision of an inclusive social and economic future. Making the plight of society’s least privileged resonate with the middle-class has always been vital for center-left politics, as has the task of ensuring that the burden of change and structural reform does not fall hardest on the most vulnerable in our societies. This endeavor is even more essential today, given the “new hard times” that Europe is living through.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – July/August 2016 issue.

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