Abstract
In 1999, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder issued a joint statement entitled The Third Way, Die neue Mitte. The statement committed itself to a “newly defined role for the active state” and stated that “the essential function of markets must be complemented and improved by political action, not hampered by it” , sometimes raising eyebrows among the European left, not least the French one, which thought that both SPD and Labour had abandoned their social-democratic commitments and embraced neo-liberal ideology. Recently, a clutch of welfare and labour market reforms was adopted in Germany, sparking protests and demonstrations. The Third Way has brought controversy among students of social-democracy when it comes to its relations with social-democracy and its positioning on a right-left spectrum. For its major academic theorist, Anthony Giddens, the Third Way is “social-democracy revived and modernised” , whereas for one of its most vocal critics, sociologist Stuart Hall, it stands for “deregulation of markets, the continued privatisation of public assets, low taxation, breaking the inhibitions to market flexibility and institutionalising the culture of private provision and personal risk” .
