Third Way

Introduction

Social democrats have sought to incorporate civil society into a project of political renewal, which has involved adapting to neoliberalism in a postsocialist world order. As the socialist imaginary, that underpinned the Enlightenment ideal of human progress, has dimmed, social democrats have sought to reinvent themselves. It has not proven to be an easy task. Essentially, there are three current political models, which offer distinctive political solutions: Neoliberalism (model 1); “old” Social Democracy (model 2); and the Third Way (model 3). The Third Way seeks to reconcile Social Democracy with Neoliberalism through a modernization project, based upon economic progress. According to the Third Way model, “progress” is the constant expansion of economic growth underpinned by rising production, consumerism, and market dominance. In this postmodern reality, neo-Tocquevillean social theorists, notably Etzioni (1993), Fukuyama (1995), and Putnam (1993, 2000), have claimed...