Leaders try to Breathe Fresh Life into the Third Way

It was once considered the savior of the new left. Britain’s Tony Blair, Germany’s Gerhard Schröder, and Sweden’s Göran Perrson were all champions of the new road to progressive socialism.

Now the "Third Way" is regarded as hackneyed and seems to be running out of steam. But center-left leaders, meeting for an international conference in London on Monday and Tuesday, are hoping it’s not too late to save social democracy.

They want to breathe new life into the Third Way -- a philosophy of governance which cuts a path between capitalism and socialism, as put forth by London School of Economics director and celebrated sociologist Anthony Giddens.

Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is hosting the two-day "Progressive Governance" conference, will be joined among others by German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Swedish Prime Minister Göran Perrson, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Canadian Premier Jean Chrétien and the recently elected socialist President of Brazil, Luiz Lula da Silva.

In a communiqué released Monday evening, the leaders pledged their commitment to a broad center-left agenda.

In social and economic policy, they called for changes in U.S. and European Union agricultural policies, a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol and more investment in children. Addressing global security, the group, whose leaders were split on America's military invasion of Iraq, said they wanted to reaffirm the role of the United Nations and commit to a mutilateralist foreign policy.

"We recognize that the new threats ... require effective action, in accordance with the UN's founding principals," read the communiqué.

Rise and fall of the Third Way

It is the fifth such conference since the Third Way was called into action by Blair and his close friend and ally, the then president of the United States Bill Clinton. And when it began, the prospects looked good for modern socialism.

The Third Way had swept Blair to power in 1997 on a wave of post-Thatcher 'Cool Britannia.' Gerhard Schröder was elected in the same year on the Neue Mitte ("New Center") ticket -- the German version of the Third Way. Clinton's Democrat administration was actively practicing the word of Giddens' and eleven of the fifteen governments in the European Union were social democratic.

Six years on, things have moved on. Europe is trying to repair the cracks that appeared after the U.S. war against Iraq split the union down the middle. Blair, once chummy with Gerhard Schröder is now often seen with Italy's right-wing, media mogul premier Silvio Berlusconi, also appears to have carved out an exceptionally close relationship with the now U.S. President, Republican George W. Bush, after the successful military campaign to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power.

In Germany, Gerhard Schröder is desperately reconciling running the trade union gauntlet to push through his center left reform package "Agenda 2010", intended to revive the stagnant Germany economy and keep the flagging social welfare state alive with the Neue Mitte philosophy. Blair, too, is begin to hear whispers of discontent from both the British electorate and UK trade unions as public services, which include the much-maligned National Health Service (NHS) continue on a downward slide.

A way forward

Speaking at the conference on Sunday, Blair told journalists: "We can make mistakes as progressives, as modern social democrats…It is important to realize that whilst we are reforming and changing we've never got to give up on the basic values of solidarity, social justice and social democracy."

Whether he and his fellow modern day comrades can come up with concrete solutions to get the Third Way out of its current rut will be seen in the joint communiqué the conference is due to produce when it ends on Monday evening. But Giddens -- who will step down as LSE Director in October -- does not believe his philosophy is defunct, saying he believes the Third Way is not dead and that the ideas it encapsulates are still relevant.