Third way economics

The concept of the Third Way has risen to prominence during the past two decades, with a significant number of democratic political movements associating themselves with its gel philosophy and/or more detailed policy programme. Indeed, number of leading figures on the democratic Left have participated in international summits to discuss the ramifications of an evolving Third Way. Consequently, the Third Way has become an issue worthy of study in order to understand its motivations, influences and theoretical foundations.

The intent of this book is to seek to outline and evaluate the Thad Way. One distinctive feature of this book, however, is that this will be undertaken from an economic rather than political science point of view. There have been a large number of books that have sought to debate the Third Way from a political theory or comparative politics perspective. However, there have been only a handful of previous texts which have sought to analyse the economic policy platform promoted by Third Way supporters the success or weakness of which will partially determine the potential for realisation of social and other political objectives.

The book has been written in a political economy style, so that it should be accessible to non-economics specialists without losing any of the detail. It is intended that the book should be of interest to students following an economics and/or politics course, when understanding of the policies pursued by 'new' social democracy governments is an important issue. However, it is anticipated that the subject matter will be of much wider interest across supporters of trade unions, social democratic political parties, policymakers and their advisors.