[PDF] Social Democracy In The Making eBook

Author : Gary Dorrien
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 595 pages
File Size : 50,37 MB
Release : 2019-04-23
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0300244991

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An expansive and ambitious intellectual history of democratic socialism from one of the world’s leading intellectual historians and social ethicists The fallout from twenty years of neoliberal economic globalism has sparked a surge of interest in the old idea of democratic socialism—a democracy in which the people control the economy and government, no group dominates any other, and every citizen is free, equal, and included. With a focus on the intertwined legacies of Christian socialism and Social Democratic politics in Britain and Germany, this book traces the story of democratic socialism from its birth in the nineteenth century through the mid-1960s. Examining the tenets on which the movement was founded and how it adapted to different cultural, religious, and economic contexts from its beginnings through the social and political traumas of the twentieth century, Gary Dorrien reminds us that Christian socialism paved the way for all liberation theologies that make the struggles of oppressed peoples the subject of redemption. He argues for a decentralized economic democracy and anti-imperial internationalism.

Author : Gary Dorrien
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 595 pages
File Size : 19,90 MB
Release : 2019-04-23
Category : Christian socialism
ISBN : 0300236026

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An expansive and ambitious intellectual history of democratic socialism from one of the world's leading intellectual historians and social ethicists The fallout from twenty years of neoliberal economic globalism has sparked a surge of interest in the old idea of democratic socialism--a democracy in which the people control the economy and government, no group dominates any other, and every citizen is free, equal, and included. With a focus on the intertwined legacies of Christian socialism and Social Democratic politics in Britain and Germany, this book traces the story of democratic socialism from its birth in the nineteenth century through the mid-1960s. Examining the tenets on which the movement was founded and how it adapted to different cultural, religious, and economic contexts from its beginnings through the social and political traumas of the twentieth century, Gary Dorrien reminds us that Christian socialism paved the way for all liberation theologies that make the struggles of oppressed peoples the subject of redemption. He argues for a decentralized economic democracy and anti-imperial internationalism.

Author : Sheri BERMAN
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 11,1 MB
Release : 2009-06-30
Category : History
ISBN : 0674020847

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In addition to revising our view of the interwar period and the building of European democracies, this book cuts against the grain of most current theorizing in political science by explicitly discussing when and how ideas influence political behavior. Even though German and Swedish Social Democrats belonged to the same transnational political movement and faced similar political and social conditions in their respective countries before and after World War I, they responded very differently to the challenges of democratization and the Great Depression--with crucial consequences for the fates of their countries and the world at large. Explaining why these two social democratic parties acted so differently is the primary task of this book. Berman's answer is that they had very different ideas about politics and economics--what she calls their programmatic beliefs. The Swedish Social Democrats placed themselves at the forefront of the drive for democratization; a decade later they responded to the Depression with a bold new economic program and used it to build a long period of political hegemony. The German Social Democrats, on the other hand, had democracy thrust upon them and then dithered when faced with economic crisis; their haplessness cleared the way for a bolder and more skillful political actor--Adolf Hitler. This provocative book will be of interest to anyone concerned with twentieth-century European history, the transition to democracy problem, or the role of ideas in politics.

Author : Sheri Berman
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 219 pages
File Size : 16,76 MB
Release : 2006-08-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1139457594

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Political history in the industrial world has indeed ended, argues this pioneering study, but the winner has been social democracy - an ideology and political movement that has been as influential as it has been misunderstood. Berman looks at the history of social democracy from its origins in the late nineteenth century to today and shows how it beat out competitors such as classical liberalism, orthodox Marxism, and its cousins, Fascism and National Socialism by solving the central challenge of modern politics - reconciling the competing needs of capitalism and democracy. Bursting on to the scene in the interwar years, the social democratic model spread across Europe after the Second World War and formed the basis of the postwar settlement. This is a study of European social democracy that rewrites the intellectual and political history of the modern era while putting contemporary debates about globalization in their proper intellectual and historical context.

Author : Wolfgang Merkel
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 407 pages
File Size : 32,11 MB
Release : 2008-03-31
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1134071787

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Globalization, European integration, and social change have devaluated traditional social democratic policy instruments. This book compares and explores how social democratic governments have had to adapt and whether they have successfully managed to uphold old social democratic goals and values in the light of these challenges. This volume examines the policy measures of social democratic parties in government in a comparative framework. The authors focus on traditional social democratic goals and tools, in particular, fiscal, employment, and social policy, in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark. They identify three policy patterns in social democratic governments: traditional, modernized, and liberalized social democracy and provide a comparative account of the explanatory power of the national context for policy adopted by social democratic parties. Finally, the extent to which social democratic parties have been able to use the European Union as a political space for social democratic governance and policy-making is examined. Social Democracy in Power will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, comparative politics, European studies and public policy.

Author : Lane Kenworthy
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 25,50 MB
Release : 2013-12-03
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 019932252X

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America is the one of the wealthiest nations on earth. So why do so many Americans struggle to make ends meet? Why is it so difficult for those who start at the bottom to reach the middle class? And why, if a rising economic tide lifts all boats, have middle-class incomes been growing so slowly? Social Democratic America explains how this has happened and how we can do better. Lane Kenworthy convincingly argues that we can improve economic security, expand opportunity, and ensure rising living standards for all by moving toward social democracy. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of social policy in America and other affluent countries, he proposes a set of public social programs, including universal early education, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, wage insurance, the government as employer of last resort, and many others. Kenworthy looks at common objections to social democracy, such as the oft-repeated claim that Americans don't want big government, which he readily debunks. Indeed, we already have in place a host of effective and popular social programs, from Social Security to Medicare to public schooling. Moreover, the available evidence suggests that rich nations can generate the tax revenues needed to pay for generous social programs while maintaining an innovative and growing economy, and without restricting liberty. Can it happen? Kenworthy describes how the US has been progressing slowly but steadily toward a genuine social democracy for nearly a century. Controversial and powerful, Social Democratic America shows that the good society doesn't require a radical break from our past; we just need to continue in the direction we are already heading.

Author : Adam Przeworski
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 46,99 MB
Release : 1986-12-26
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780521336567

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Not to repeat past mistakes: the sudden resurgence of a sympathetic interest in social democracy is a response to the urgent need to draw lessons from the history of the socialist movement. After several decades of analyses worthy of an ostrich, some rudimentary facts are being finally admitted. Social democracy has been the prevalent manner of organization of workers under democratic capitalism. Reformist parties have enjoyed the support of workers.

Author : Geoffrey Kurtz
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 10,60 MB
Release : 2015-06-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0271065826

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Jean Jaurès was a towering intellectual and political leader of the democratic Left at the turn of the twentieth century, but he is little remembered today outside of France, and his contributions to political thought are little studied anywhere. In Jean Jaurès: The Inner Life of Social Democracy, Geoffrey Kurtz introduces Jaurès to an American audience. The parliamentary and philosophical leader of French socialism from the 1890s until his assassination in 1914, Jaurès was the only major socialist leader of his generation who was educated as a political philosopher. As he championed the reformist method that would come to be called social democracy, he sought to understand the inner life of a political tradition that accepts its own imperfection. Jaurès's call to sustain the tension between the ideal and the real resonates today. In addition to recovering the questions asked by the first generation of social democrats, Kurtz’s aim in this book is to reconstruct Jaurès’s political thought in light of current theoretical and political debates. To achieve this, he gives readings of several of Jaurès’s major writings and speeches, spanning work from his early adulthood to the final years of his life, paying attention to not just what Jaurès is saying, but how he says it.

Author : H. Pautz
Publisher : Springer
Page : 373 pages
File Size : 38,98 MB
Release : 2012-03-13
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0230368549

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An analysis of think-tanks in Britain and Germany and their role in the re-making of the British Labour party and Germany's Social Democrats as 'Third Way' parties. The part that think-tanks played in the creation of the the 'workfare state' in the 1990s and 2000s is also explored in this book.

Author : John Callaghan
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 34,99 MB
Release : 2017-05-26
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1526125099

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This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. The search for social democracy has not been an easy one over the last three decades. The economic crisis of the 1970s, and the consequent rise of neo-liberalism, confronted social democrats with difficult new circumstances: tax-resistant electorates, the globalisation of capital and Western deindustrialisation. In response, a new bout of ideological revisionism consumed social democratic parties. But did this revisionism simply amount to a neo-liberalisation of the Left or did it propose a recognisably social democratic agenda? Were these ideological adaptations the only feasible ones or were there other forms of modernisation that might have yielded greater strategic dividends for the Left? Why did some social democratic parties feel it necessary to take their revisionism much further than others? In search of social democracy brings together prominent scholars of social democracy to address these questions. Focusing on the social democratic heartland of Western Europe (although Australia and the United States also figure in the analysis), it gives the first detailed assessment of how the new social democratic revisionism has fared in government. The book begins by considering the underlying causes of the end of social democracy’s golden age and the magnitude of the challenges faced by social democratic parties after the 1970s. It then proceeds to examine detailed case studies of how particular social democratic parties responded to this changed political terrain. Finally, it contributes to a broader conversation about the future of social democracy by considering ways in which the political thought of ‘third way’ social democracy might be radicalised for the twenty-first century. The contributors offer a variety of perspectives – some are sceptical of social democracy’s prospects, others more sanguine; some supportive of the performance of social democratic parties in government, others bitingly critical. But they are united by the conviction that the themes addressed in this book are crucial to understanding the current politics of the industrialised world and, in particular, to determining the feasibility of more egalitarian and democratic social outcomes than have been possible so far in the era of neo-liberalism.