Three social democracts, from l-r: Manuel Valls, Francois Hollande, Matteo Renzi. PAimages/Poll ABACA. All rights reserved.Antonis Galanopoulos: Hollande is the most recent example of a social democratic leader who failed. What are the main reasons for the decline of social democracy?
Philippe Marlière: The decline of social democracy is essentially due to a number of policy choices. For instance, in the case of Greece, would Pasok have collapsed the way it did if it hadn’t implemented the austerity policies that we know? It’s the same today with France. The Socialist party is doing very badly because it has been implementing policies which are not responding to popular expectations and needs. At the same time, would the far right, the populist right, be as important as it is if social democracy had done things differently? Probably not.
But the problem of social democracy is deeper than that. The history of social democracy of the past 15 years has been a history of steady decline. The structural decline is due to the deep transformation of the traditional constituencies of social democracy: blue collar workers, white collar workers and employees. Gradually all these social categories have undergone dramatic political and sociological transformations which have been brought about by recent economic and workplace changes.
