Public Policy Sources #33:
Introduction

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The fight for freedom…is not over, and probably never will be. It will always be confronted by a variety of opponents, be they outright collectivists or, as is more common today, those who play the worn but nonetheless seductive tune of the Third Way.2

The mid-to-late 1990s have seen self-styled “progressive” policy makers in the ascendant. As such, the current period is described by a leading British political figure as, “The era of the catch-all Third Way,”3 while an American commentator concludes that, “The development of Third Way politics does indeed look like a historic shift, not least because it is global in scope.”4 These assertions are borne out by the fact that left-of-centre politicians subscribing to the Third Way paradigm now govern five out of the seven leading Western nations and head 12 of 15 European Union (EU) governments.5 This is an impressive achievement and, given President Clinton’s policy zigzagging over the past 7 years, a fortuitous one, as the credibility of the Third Way movement now rests most heavily upon the shoulders of its Western European membership.

Following upon several years of informal interactions, the imprint of leading political and intellectual figures is being stamped on the Third Way movement at a series of on-going policy seminars attended by an international coterie of centre-left policy makers, most notably President Clinton, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and their closest advisors. Organized by senior White House strategist Sidney Blumenthal and David Miliband, Blair’s senior policy advisor, these seminars began at Chequers6 in November 1997, and have since taken place at the White House (February 1998), again at Chequers (May 1998), in New York (September 1998) with then-Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov also participating, at a forum in Washington, DC (April 1999), in the company of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the environmentalist Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok, and Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema, leader of the former Communist Party now known as the Democratic Party of the Left, and, most recently, in Florence (November 1999) with the additional participation of France’s Socialist Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, and Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Consequently, such a flurry of transatlantic brainstorming led an American newspaper to editorialize that, “At century’s end, a new political formula seems to be emerging around the globe,” posing the question, “Is the Third Way an innovative political reconstruction or just a new arrangement of the same old furniture?”7 As such, the Third Way has been described as the Loch Ness Monster of contemporary public policy—everyone has heard of it, there are occasional sightings, but no one is sure that the beast really exists.8 It is of considerable importance that proponents of the competitive market determine whether the Third Way is merely a highly sophisticated and successful marketing mirage, or whether this movement is, instead, a Trojan Horse for socialists whose ideology threatens the free society. Specifically, it is important to recognize that, “At its heart is social policy—shaping a new set of relationships within society,” delivering in its proponents’ eyes, “Not just a fairer society… but a more effective one.”9 This, of course, begs the questions, why, how, and for whom? By surveying the policy and political foundations upon which the Third Way movement has been built, then analyzing the “theory and practice” of the leading Third Way politicians in North America and Western Europe, this report attempts to provide a preliminary response to such larger and smaller questions.

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