In the Name of Social Democracy : The Great Transformation: 1945 to the Present

The focal point for this study is the emergent 'new social democracy' of the twenty-first century. Moshonas examines the transformations of recent years - a process of 'de-social-democratisation', affecting every aspect of the social democratic phenomenon.

Following the locust years of the neo-liberal revolution, social democracy was the great victor at the <i>fin-de-siècle</i> elections. Today, parties descended from the Second International hold office throughout the European Union, while the Right appears widely disorientated by the dramatic "modernisation" of a political tradition dating back to the nineteenth century.<br><br>The focal point of Gerassimos Moschonas’s study is the emergent "new social democracy" of the twenty-first century. As Moschonas demonstrates, change has been a constant of social-democratic history: the core dominant reformist tendency of working-class politic notwithstanding, capitalism has transformed social democracy more than it has succeeded in transforming capitalism. Now, in the "great transformation" of recent years, a process of "de-social-democratization" has been set in train, affecting every aspect of the social-democratic phenomenon, from ideology and programs to organization and electorates. Analytically incisive and empirically meticulous, <i>In the Name of Social Democracy</i> will establish itself as the standard reference work on the logic and dynamics of a major mutation in European politics.