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This book makes an important contribution to the existing literature on European social democracy in the wake of the 2008 financial crash and ensuing recession. It considers ways in which European social democratic parties at both the national and European level have responded to the global economic crisis (GEC). The book also considers the extent to which the authors might envisage alternatives to the neo-liberal consensus being successfully promoted by those parties within the European Union (EU). The book first explores some of the broader thematic issues underpinning questions of the political economy of social democracy during the GEC. Then, it addresses some of the social democratic party responses that have been witnessed at the level of the nation state across Europe. The book focuses in particular on some of the countries with the longest tradition of social democratic and centre-left party politics, and therefore focuses on western and southern Europe. In contrast to the proclaimed social democratic (and especially Party of European Socialists) ambitions, the outcomes witnessed at the EU level have been less promising for those seeking a supranational re-social democratization. In order to understand the EU-level response of social democratic party actors to the Great Recession, the book situates social democratic parties historically. In the case of the British Labour Party, it also identifies the absence of ideological alternatives to the 'there is no alternative' (TINA)-logic that prevailed under the leadership of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
wider impact on hostilities. Better Some than No Access? Despite the difficulty to secure them, humanitarian corridors are often seen as a necessary compromise. The matter of their efficiency in terms of aid delivery is rarely addressed, both because they are usually deployed where there is no alternative access and because no one can know in retrospect what kind of assistance would have been possible had the corridor not existed. But their restrictive nature merits a few comments. Regardless of their specificities, whether they cross borders, frontlines, or
own societies, especially as reformists of the centre left and right (Clinton, Blair) came to dominate the party-political scene after Thatcher and Reagan embedded the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s. After the Cold War, in other words, the liberal world order was a fact of life. In Margaret Thatcher’s immortal words, ‘there is no alternative’. The consequences of this focus on private enterprise, mobile money, weakened unions, reduced state welfare and regulation and lower taxes are all too visible today in areas like wealth inequality and
-skewed/truncated’ distributions of population of selected districts, by IPC phase classification (Yemen, 2018) Source: Author’s analysis, data from Yemen IPC Technical Working Group. Since there is no alternative measure against which to compare these distributions, the only thing that can be said is that they are highly unlikely – and are likely underestimating the gravity of the situation
a new leader eager to turn the page on the New Labour era seem to have opened up the possibility for a renewal of ideas and policy in the Labour ranks. Now in opposition, the Labour Party has a chance to reflect on the meaning of the crisis. The current situation also offers an opportunity to seek an explanation for the financial meltdown and assess New Labour’s responsibility in the debacle. ‘There is no alternative’ – TINA – was the sound bite which Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Prime Minister, once famously used. This acronym has come to signify that
precisely the common attempt to reawaken a future-orientation deemed oppositional to that sensibility we might identify with Margaret Thatcher and with Francis Fukuyama of 1992: ‘there is no alternative’ to the culminating ‘end of history’ identified with free-market capitalism. 26 These new works are generally on the Left – and compared to the mid-century vision, more radically so. That is to say, this ‘new’ postcapitalism is more self-consciously oppositional to the existing social conditions. Although Paul Mason
The historical relationship between economic crisis and social democracy is both intrinsic and far from straightforward. In terms of electoral performance, an overview suggests that social democratic parties have fared badly as a result of the global economic crisis. The crisis of neo-liberalism creates the potential to consider a shift towards an alternative socio-economic model and set of ideas. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the relationship between social democratic parties and what they claim were two 'Faustian pacts' entered into: one with European integration, and the other with the knowledge-based economy. In the case of the British Labour Party, the book further identifies the absence of ideological alternatives to the 'there is no alternative' (TINA)-logic that prevailed under the leadership of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
belief in their justified character just amounts to thinking there is no alternative to them), that foreclosure can also happen in ways other than through the mediation of beliefs or reasons, whether explicit or tacit. It can happen when the institutions and practices that make up the world are so configured that this or that aspect of the social world does not show up to us – all of us, or some of us – as an object of attention and practical concern. It does not appear, or it appears only asymmetrically, in the space of reasons. It’s not that we accept these
moral arithmetic. In principle, it may be justifiable to inflict harm on a small number of people for the greater good of a much larger number – even to kill the few to save many more lives, if there is no alternative (Thomas is neither a strict deontologist nor a strict consequentialist). But the terrorists made no attempt to carry out this calculation. If they had, they would have seen immediately that the end they sought did not justify the means. The same is true of the Western response to terrorism: Western governments have never seriously tried to show that
destitution to tenuous inclusion. 5 This has created a tiny elite in the most vulnerable of social groups. A recent International Monetary Fund report emphasised this, noting that the fastest intergenerational mobility today in India is not among the upper castes but among the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) (Bhattacharya et al., 2019 ). Neoliberal reforms provide the mirage that economic opportunities are expanding and reinforce the idea that there is no alternative to this course of action, even if those