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This book considers the underlying causes of the end of social democracy's golden age. It argues that the cross-national trend in social democratic parties since the 1970s has been towards an accommodation with neo-liberalism and a corresponding dilution of traditional social democratic commitments. The book looks at the impact of the change in economic conditions on social democracy in general, before examining the specific cases of Germany, Sweden and Australia. It examines the ideological crisis that engulfed social democracy. The book also looks at the post-1970 development of social policy, its fiscal implications and economic consequences in three European countries. It considers the evolution of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) from its re-emergence as a significant political force during the 1970s until the present day under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The book also examines the evolution of the Swedish model in conjunction with social democratic reformism and the party's relations to the union movement. It explores the latest debate about what the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) stands for. The SPD became the role model for programmatic modernisation for the European centre-left. The book considers how British socialist and social democratic thought from the late nineteenth century to the present has treated the objective of helping people to fulfil their potential, talents and ambitions. It aims to contribute to a broader conversation about the future of social democracy by considering ways in which the political thought of 'third way' social democracy might be radicalised for the twenty-first century.
–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Freeden, M. (1989) (ed.), The Minutes of the Rainbow Circle, 1894–1924 (London: Royal Historical Society). Freeden, M. (1999a) ‘The ideology of New Labour’, Political Quarterly, 70, 42–51. Freeden, M. (1999b) ‘True blood or false genealogy: New Labour and British social democratic thought’, in A. Gamble and T. Wright (eds), The New Social Democracy (Oxford: Blackwell). Freeden, M. (2015) Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2015) Grayson, R. S. (2009) ‘Social liberalism’, in K. Hickson (ed.), The Political
: whether the people had potential for the future was of little immediate practical political use. Moreover, this feeling that the people mattered was intensified by the continuously strong moral dimension to British social democratic thought. Throughout, this vied with – as well as complemented and overlapped with – more ‘mechanical’ definitions of social democracy in terms of economics, class or institutional change. But the ethical dimension was almost always potent enough to push social democrats to the conclusion that without virtue, engagement and, indeed, plain