Hard Choices: Social Democracy in the Twenty-First CenturyISBN: 978-0-7456-1984-2
Hardcover
176 pages
May 2001, Polity
Other Available Formats: Paperback
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The first half of the book restores some of the complexity to
social democracy's past and shows that it was much more subtle,
varied and intelligent than its latter-day critics suppose. Turning
to the present, the second half of the book shows how a few
contemporary half-truths - relating to globalization and
demographic change - have been used to justify the abandonment of
the defining core of a social democratic politics. The book does
not argue that 'nothing has really changed'. In fact, a great deal
has changed and policy-makers have to adjust to a range of new
circumstances, constraints (and opportunities). But those who
exhort us simply to abandon the 'traditional' terrain of the
centre-left are wrong. Social democracy remains just what it always
was - a politics of messy compromises and hard choices.
This book will appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars in politics, social policy and political sociology, as well as the interested general reader.