Conservative parties have been on an electoral roll lately, toppling
center-left governments from Washington to Rome, Paris to Amsterdam. But
let's not toss the Third Way -- the movement to modernize progressive politics -- into
history's dustbin just yet.
For one thing, the Third Way pulse beats strongly in Britain, where Tony
Blair's New Labour party has thoroughly marginalized its Tory opponents. For another, the right's gains don't add up to a Fourth Way -- a compelling narrative of political change to rival the
story of center-left rejuvenation.
In fact, the new center-right governments apparently have come not to
bury the Third Way, but to imitate it. Witness George Bush's attempts
to cast himself as a centrist, "compassionate conservative"
and his brazen filching of New Democrat ideas on education, welfare, and
national service.
More fundamentally, though, there are two reasons to think that the Third
Way will rise again. First, most progressive parties in the transatlantic
world know they can't go back to the old left dogma of class conflict,
welfare paternalism, and big, bureaucratic government. They must modernize
or die. Second, center-right parties have shown little imagination in
responding to globalization's discontents or the rise in Europe of a new
populism centered on the combustible issues of crime, immigration, and
national identity. Their failure opens a window of opportunity for the
center left.
For the moment, however, there's no denying the right's ascendancy, at
least at the ballot box. Beginning with Bill Clinton's New Democrat campaign
of 1992, the modernizing impulse spread quickly to Britain and Germany
and culminated by decade's end with center-left governments in 13 of 15
European Union countries. Today the center-right holds power in Washington
and 13 EU capitals.
The past year's reverses have been particularly brutal. The left lost
power in Italy, Denmark, Portugal, the Netherlands, and France. And while
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder remains personally popular, his Social
Democrats are trailing their conservative opponents in polling for this
fall's elections.
In June, progressive activists from America, Britain, and continental
Europe gathered at Hartwell House outside London to plot the Third Way's
comeback. The strategy session, which featured appearances by Blair and
Clinton, highlighted three distinct challenges facing center-left reformers.
In the United States, Democrats must find a way to break a prolonged
stalemate in national politics that has produced divided government, toxic
partisanship, and profound cynicism about what politics can accomplish.
To build a new progressive majority, the party needs new ideas that expand
its appeal beyond core supporters -- bold initiatives for making Americans
safer, reviving the economy, narrowing cultural divides, and reorganizing
the public sector around modern information networks.
In Britain, New Labour's chief task is to maintain the momentum of reform.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown reminded the Hartwell House group
that Labour's fate hinges on its continued ability to exercise fiscal
prudence and manage a dynamic, growing economy. That will generate resources
the government needs to keep its pledge to improve public services like
health care and transportation -- but new spending must be tied to serious
reform of archaic public-sector bureaucracies.
On the Continent, center-left parties must show economic competence by
reducing persistently high unemployment -- nearly 10 percent in France and
Germany. But as the fall of Holland's center-left government in May showed,
even a strong economic performance isn't enough, as mounting concerns
about crime and immigration thrust social and cultural values into the
political cauldron.
There's a spreading populist revolt against Europe's technocratic and
insular elites, who seem unwilling to confront crime, the growing economic
and social isolation of immigrant communities, and eroding national identity
and sovereignty. Though immigrants are the main target now, Dirk Benschop,
Holland's former foreign secretary, predicted that "European integration
and enlargement will be the next target of the populist right."
Enfolded in the elite consensus, neither Social Democrats nor mainstream
conservatives offer credible responses to these concerns. Center-left
reformers can fill the vacuum. Taking a page from Clinton and Blair, they
can offer crime-fighting innovations that focus on prevention and punish
real malefactors, not the poor. Drawing on America's long experience with
assimilation, the center left should offer immigrants a clear path to
full citizenship based on equal rights and mutual responsibilities. And
progressives can be for European integration while also insisting that
the EU stop empowering bureaucrats and start instead to open its institutions
to far greater democratic participation and accountability.
The center-left will rise again -- when it recaptures the Third Way's spirit
of innovation and radical pragmatism.
