Is the "Third Way" a Socialist Shell Game?

Contact:

Patrick Basham, Director of the Social Affairs Centre,
The Fraser Institute, (604) 714-4549 Email: patrickb@fraserinstitute.ca

Release Date: 19 January 2000

VANCOUVER,BC>>> Does the so-called "Third Way" represent a new centrist ideology or is it solely a marketing stratagem designed to acquire power? This is the question posed by a new paper, The “Third Way”: Marketing Mirage or Trojan Horse? released today by The Fraser Institute.

The Third Way has been described as the Loch Ness Monster of contemporary politics—everyone has heard of it, there are occasional sightings, but no one is sure that the beast really exists. “It’s important to determine whether the Third Way is merely a highly sophisticated and successful political marketing mirage, or whether this movement is, instead, a Trojan Horse for socialists whose ideology threatens our freedom,” says Patrick Basham, Director of The Fraser Institute’s Social Affairs Centre and author of the paper

The three political horsemen of the Third Way—America’s Bill Clinton, Britain’s Tony Blair, and Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder—have shown that present-day electoral contests are won in the ideological centre. As such, the strategy underlying the Third Way movement may be viewed, in part, as an astute political marketing response by Left-of-Centre politicians to a decline in traditional class loyalties and, consequently, traditional partisan loyalties.

The most explicit Canadian illustration of the Third Way comes in the form of the federal NDP. Unable to break out of its small electoral niche, the party has embarked on a similar journey of ideological discovery to that taken by Britain’s Labour Party in the 1990s. Similar policy strains have also appeared in Roy Romanow’s Saskatchewan and Gary Doer’s Manitoba.

“One must be grateful for small mercies but it would be naïve not to appreciate that the ideological instincts of these modernised social democrats are aligned with a general philosophy which places the value of the State above that of the individual,” argues Basham. “The Third Way seems prepared to limit individual freedom in order to conduct experiments in social engineering that 20th century history suggests will result in considerable social and economic cost.”

Established in 1974, The Fraser Institute is an independent public policy organization based in Vancouver.

For further information contact:

Suzanne Walters, Director of Communications,
The Fraser Institute, (604) 714-4582,
Email suzannew@fraserinstitute.ca

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