Marco de políticas, regulaciones e incentivosincentivos

3.2.1 Emergence of “The Third Way”

The term “The Third Way” is currently used to capture the new political ideology of New Labour² Party who secured the central power of Britain following the 1997 General Election. The term was used to mark out New Labour’s departure from both the post-war social democratic (old left) and then neo-liberal (new right) political ideologies.

2 “New Labour” is an alternative branding for the Labour Party dating from a conference slogan first used by the Labour Party in 1994 which was later seen in a draft manifesto published by the party in 1996, called New Labour, New Life for Britain. It was presented by Labour as being the brand of the new reformed party that had in 1995 altered Clause IV and reduced the Trade Union vote in the electoral college used to elect the leader and deputy leader to have equal weighting with other individual parts of the electoral college.

The name is primarily used by the party itself in its literature, but is also sometimes used by political commentators and the wider media. The rise of the name coincided with a rightwards shift of the British political spectrum; for Labour, this was a continuation of the trend that had begun under the leadership of Neil Kinnock. “Old Labour” is sometimes used by commentators to describe the older, more left-wing members of the party, or those with strong Trade Union connections.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)

The Third Way emerged corresponding to some ideas by Clinton’s Democratic government in US, and also some political debates in continental Europe about the future of social democratic parties (Clinton, 1996; Newman, 2001, p. 40). All of them could be perceived as positive responses to the changing context discussed above by central left politicians and the ideas interacted by each other internationally.

The Third Way thoughts made very significant theoretical progress by the reconfiguration of relationships between market and welfare, public and private, individualism and collectivism (Mullard, 2000). It is clear that the mutual relationship between families/individuals and the society is no longer like the simple assumption of the social-democratic model: the fully employed workers contribute to the state in their work-place and benefit from national welfare provision. That could easily reach the balance between the in-ward and out-ward wealth of both sides in a homogeneous industrial society. In this model, the state granted a series of rights to people, but did not demand responsibilities (Driver and Martell, 1998; 2000). The coming of the post-industrial society quickly broke the old-style balance. In a macro-scale, the boom of the aging population, lengthening periods of education and the increasing unemployment caused by industrial decay produced heavy burdens to the welfare system that public expenditure can no longer afford to pay for. Certainly, the old style individual-state relationship has become a major obstacle to achieving economic renaissance in a new competitive global market circumstance.

Neo-liberal politicians have recognised the dilemma, and prompted the revolutionary attempts to change the whole system. Through a series of reforms, they finally transformed the traditional individual-state relationship into an individual-market relationship; here everyone should take more personal responsibility and gain most social well-being from the market rather than rights to require welfare provision from the state. This neo-liberal model is usually flexible in reaching the new balance in a macro-scale. However, the rising social problems show that it is still far from being an optimistic balance. There are at least two things to be noted. First a variety of status (family structure, education level, health, race, social networking etc.) of current families/individuals creates great differences among their capabilities of contribution and the demands of benefits. Second, the surroundings of people in various regions are also quite different, and many official statistics has shown the larger regional gaps in Britain (Hall, 2002). But the social features and regional inequality can never be

addressed by a unitary marketplace. Therefore social inequality and polarisation are inevitable in the contemporary British context.

Thereby The Third Way finally became the mainstream answer to overcoming all the challenges unsolved by the neo-liberalists. Actually, this political ideology was not very fresh. Its origin can be traced back to many political philosophies proposed in the early 20^th century (Macmillan, 1978). However, since the mid-1990s it has become much more influential than ever. More active interventional approaches have been suggested, but all of them should cover the pre-conditions decided by the whole new economic, social and cultural context: the interventional approaches should be effective in promoting social justice but not against the market-oriented economic circumstance in the globalised era; the public interests should be protected but the individual options for personal development should also be highly respected; the public aid should be sufficiently flexible to fit diverse and changing local needs (Blair, 1999). In all, the new ideology should be “pragmatic” enough to ensure that all approaches, whether innovative or not, can be “workable” in the current context.

3.2.2 The nature of “The Third Way”

The Third Way ideology features in many of documents as a new way “beyond Old Left and New Right” (Labour Party, 1997; Miliband, 1994; Blair, 1998a; Blair and Schroeder, 1999; Brown, 1999; Darling, 1999), which is - above all - an endeavour to respond to the post-war social democratic state and the Conservative government’s series of reforms on the state (Driver and Martell, 2000). In front of the contemporary challenges from economic, social, cultural and other aspects, The Third Way idea tries to absorb or combine the ideas from both Old Left and New Right, in order to tackle the social problems in more pragmatic ways. The eclectic mix of political ideology accepts essential roles of both the global markets and the desire for social well-being in contemporary British society (Freeden, 1998).

The key principles of this new political ideology have been broadly agreed by most writers (Giddens, 1998a; Brown, 1999; White, 1998; Hargreaves and Christie, 1998; Le Grand, 1998; Driven and Martell, 2000). The Third Way politics now seeks to resolve the core ideological tension of the past two centuries: the controversy and opposition between socialism and liberalism. It believes that the ethical foundations of socialism -

fraternity and equality - can coexist with the freedoms of liberalised markets and liberal democracy. To be specific, Tony Blair (1998a) identified them by four principles in his third way pamphlet for the Fabian Society: “equal worth”; “opportunity for all”;

“responsibility” and “community.” Although the interpretations of these basic values and the extent to which are still being debated, these values are undoubtedly producing a profound effect on contemporary British politics.

The first, “equal worth”, obviously comes from the legacy of the traditional left-wing political concern that human beings should be treated equally and not discriminated against. However, just as discussed above, The Third Way politics does not expect any unrealistic visions for the egalitarian outcomes for all. Blair (1998a) suggested that the current core task for pursuing equality is to get rid of existing obstacles to equality, which might include “gross inequality,……, handed down from generation to generation”. The second principle, “opportunity for all”, does absorb the opinion from new right which emphasised “equal opportunities”, but really has gone beyond it. The Third Way idea seeks the substantive (or positive) freedom by which individuals have sufficient resources to develop their talents and exercise the liberty, rather than the negative freedom which only guarantees legal conditions for free individual lives (Driver and Martell, 2000).

The third principle, “responsibility”, is closely linked to the fourth “community”. That differs greatly from both the Old Left and New Right rules. The Third Way idea aims to re-establish the individual-state relationship, with emphasis on both rights and responsibilities to individuals. The increasing rights come from the enhanced public agencies who provide necessary non-profit aid to vulnerable groups or anybody who needs it, in order to give everybody more equal opportunities for personal development.

The responsibility means that the benefits provided by the public sector to everybody are no longer guaranteed. The individuals must be involved in the competition in a market circumstance. Today, the impacts of economic globalisation, together with the revolutionary improvements of information and knowledge communication, have provided individuals with more resources, options and potential capabilities for personal development. Our state should follow or facilitate the trend rather than resist it. Giving increasing rights and responsibilities to individuals should be an essential factor in reaching a new stable, dynamic and diverse society. The Third Way politics hence gives more trust to civil society. Local people are now empowered or involved more in the

decision making of many - especially the localised - public affairs, and higher-level public agencies coordinate and provide help to initiate the “local-centred” or

“community-centred” mechanism.

In Table 3-1 some features of The Third Way ideology have been listed, to show the comparison between the old left and new right.

Table 3-1 Comparative features of three political ideologies

Dimension Old Left The Third Way New Right

Nature Class politics by left Post-class politics, political pragmatism

Institutional Leveller Public as investor and coordinator

Deregulator

Source: Giddens, 1998b; Powell, 2000