The ‘new’ rhetoric of new labour in comparative perspective: A three‐country discourse analysis (original) (raw)
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2014
Over the last two decades, social democratic-labour parties (SDLPs) have been confronted by various challenges which have had a dramatic impact upon their ideological orientation. Not least of which, these include emerging challenger parties, as well as the Neo-Liberal discourse of the New Right. In this paper, we compare the ideological positioning of three parties in Sweden, Germany, and particularly in Great Britain. We conclude that the ideological profile of ‘New Labour’ now largely mirrors those of other SDLPs. The results are based upon a content analysis of the 1994 (Germany and Sweden) and 1997 (Great Britain) election rhetorics in party manifestos and television debates. The analysis centres on the extent to which the three SDLPs refer to the discourses of Socialism, the Welfare State, Neo-Liberalism, and Ecologism.
New Labour, Neo-Liberalism and Social Democracy
Soundings, 2006
For too long arguments about New Labour across the broad left have remained at a polemical level. The claims and counter-claims are familiar (we heard them a lot during the recent election). On the one hand: privatisation, flexible labour markets, and the feting of business; on the other: regenerated communities, real reductions in child and pensioner poverty, and unprecedented investment in public services. All is adduced as evidence of, respectively, the government’s fundamentally “neo-liberal” or authentically “social democratic” character. The fascinating debate now unfolding in Soundings, following the publication of Stuart Hall’s breakthrough analysis, shows real signs of taking us beyond this impasse, and moving us closer to, if not a conclusive identification of the “essence” of New Labour, at least a more sophisticated discussion of how its various elements are articulated.
Frontiers in Political Science
The ideological evolution of Western European social democratic parties has received considerable scholarly attention over the decades. The most widespread view concerns the alleged programmatic moderation and convergence with the mainstream right of this party family. However, recent empirical investigations based on electoral manifestos come to different conclusions, highlighting an increase over time in Western European social democratic parties' emphasis on traditional economic left goals, especially in recent years. Hence, this article analyses the evolution of the social democratic programmatic outlook with regard to traditional economic left issues. It does so by relying on Manifesto Project (MARPOR) data about such formations in 369 general elections across 20 Western European countries between 1944 and 2021, employing different indicators of economic left emphasis and time to ensure the robustness of the findings. The analysis shows how, at the aggregate level, social d...
2001
During the 1980s and 1990s, the autonomy and capacity of the state has been under considerable stress in regards to the reduction of public policy choice. 'External' forces of globalisation and technical innovations have led to a loss of economic 'boundary control', initiating cross-national policy change and a convergence of public policies on a neo- liberally-led paradigm. This development has been reflected in the processes of policy change experienced by the British Labour Party and the German Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), in particular in the ideologically charged area of 'social democratic' labour market policy (LMP) choices. This study argues, that although political systems and institutional cultures of 'social democratic' parties and agents differ substantially between the UK and Germany, 'social democratic' parties economic policy approaches are increasingly developing along similar lines. Both parties' responses...
Parties are usually seen as representing political ideologies (Adams 1998: 9) and a party’s ideology is part of its identity (Buckler and Dolowitz 2009: 12). But how do party representatives argue for a change of a party’s ideology and how is this rhetoric influenced by the political context? In an analysis of party conferences speeches from the British Labour Party and the German SPD between 1990 and 2005, this paper aims to compare the language of ideological renewal in these two parties at different time. Although both parties publicly announced an agreement on the renewal of social democracy in the Schröder-Blair-Paper in 1998 (Blair and Schröder 1998), I will discuss the differences of the rhetoric of renewal at party conferences, using a discourse-linguistic multi-layered analysis (Spitzmüller and Warnke 2011). I will also demonstrate how these differences can be explained by differences in the context of political culture (Dörner and Rohe 1991; Seck 1991; Welch 2013). On the transtextual layer, the paper will firstly employ will employ Freeden’s (1998) methodology in order to the ideologies of the two parties in question as complexes of political concepts organised in a core-periphery structure. This structure is called the morphology of ideologies. Since party political discourse is often about the changing importance of concepts and a change of their relative positions in the conceptual morphology of ideologies, the paper will then establish which topoi (Wengeler 2013) are employed to argue for changes in the morphology of the parties ideologies. Intratextually, it will analyse the differences of the genre ‘party conference speech’ in Germany and the UK. An integrated analysis of lexical and grammatical metaphors (Simon-Vandenbergen 2003; Charteris-Black 2006) and an analysis of lexico-semantic strategies (Klein 1989; Girnth 2002: 47–71) will reveal the linguistic strategies employed by speakers to convince party members and external audiences at the same time.
New Labour: 'The Road Less Travelled'?
Politics, 2003
This article offers a contribution to the debate in recent issues of this journal concerning the relative ‘newness’ or otherwise of New Labour. It briefly assesses the significant arguments of the respective academic protagonists and asks if, in responding to a changing social and economic climate, New Labour, the highly focused use of language and rhetoric aside, is, in a significant sense, different to the measured, pragmatic and reformist revisions of the past. It emphasises significant associations and continuities in Labour's recent evolution and the largely rhetorical and politically (and electorally) expedient nature of the party's current designation. It offers an interpretation of New Labour, based around two related observations of the party's historically broad and complex political culture and diverse perceptions and preferences of Labour's traditionally centre-right ‘governing elite’, that suggests that the post-1994 ‘New’ Labour party possesses significant precedents within elements of Labour's diverse, centre right ‘dominant coalition’.
2015
A great deal of attention has been devoted to the electoral problems experienced by the left of centre parties in both Great Britain and the United States in recent times. This provoked a search by a number of prominent figures on both sides of the Atlantic, as to the reasons for these difficulties and to develop a new rhetoric that would appeal more to the voters. The academic Alan Finlayson has commented perceptively on the importance of words in politics: At the very least we have to acknowledge that politics under democratic constitutions is about some people trying to persuade the rest of us of their virtues or the virtues of their political position. To do so, they employ rhetoric intended to illustrate the ways in which their political programme will be good for us by, for example, associating it with positive ends and characteristics. Anyone who has had any involvement in a political organisation or campaign knows that a central aspect of such activity is the strategic one o...
New Labour or the normalization of neo-liberalism?
This version is the pre-copyedited, preprint version. The published version can be found here: 'New Labour or the normalization of neo-liberalism', British Politics, 2 (2), 282-88, 2007. For some, the landslide victory of the Labour Party in 1997 held the promise of a reversal of the socio-economic transformation of Britain that had been achieved through nearly eighteen years of Conservative government. But it did not take long for the Blair government to disappoint these hopes. For, in many ways, the three successive Labour Governments under Blair's continuing authoritarian plebiscitary tutelage have deliberately, persistently, and wilfully driven forward the neo-liberal transformation of Britain rather than halting or reversing it. And, as Blair proudly proclaimed at the 2005 Labour Party Conference, every time that he has tried to introduce modernization, with hindsight he regrets that he has not been more radical.
British social democracy beyond New Labour: Entrenching a progressive consensus
The British Journal of Politics & International …, 2007
Social democrats are seeking a project beyond New Labour's dwindling Third Way. In particular, they have seized on the idea of a 'progressive consensus' as a means of entrenching a deeper, cultural shift in British society on centre-left terms. This article assesses the potential of social democratic responses to New Labour for fulfilling this task. 'Traditional' and 'modernising' perspectives are identified, each of which have a positive and critical variant. The criticalmodernising approach emerges with the greatest potential for moving beyond the New Labour project. Critical-modernisers operate on the Third Way's analytical terrain-recognising the stillchanging operating environment of the centre-left. However, they seek simultaneously to develop a political narrative that is distinct from the Third Way. In order to achieve this latter objective, the normative heritage of more traditional approaches remains a key resource for critical-modernisers, as they seek to show how more recognisably social democratic themes can resonate with a rapidly changing social context.