Social Democracy in Neoliberal Times

Never has the Left held power in so many advanced economies, yet never has the difference that this makes to economic policy been so hard to specify. Across a range of European countries and in Australia governments of the Left have struggled to chart a distinctive course in the face of the neoliberal backlash against state intervention, the welfare state, and guaranteed full employment. This volume is the first to examine the records of these governments in securinghigh employment and a more equal distribution of income in the face of slow growth and global pressures to reduce inflation. Detailed studies of governments from Mitterrand to Blair and from Keating to Papandreou by leading writers from the countries are complemented by surveys of experience of thewelfare state and of the ideological and historical background to these governments' attempts to further the objectives of social democracy.

this book should be required reading for those social scientists and economists who predict global convergence on 'efficient', market-conforming institutions and policies, provides an invaluable reference work for learning from the local successes and pervasive limitations of social democracy in the 1980s and 1990s

Andrew Glyn tragically died of a brain tumour just before Christmas 2007. Andrew Glyn is Fellow and Tutor in Economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is also Consultant to the National Union of Mineworkers, ILO, and the UN.He has previously worked for H.M. Treasury and for the University of Tokyo.