FREE ESSAY ON THE THIRD WAY

THE THIRD WAY

"We live in a world of dramatic change and the old ideologies that have dominated the last
century do not provide the answers". (Tony Blair). Do you think Blair's "Third Way"
provides the answer?
In this essay I intend to examine the underlying concepts of the Third Way and the
solutions it has to offer on some of the major issues confronting contemporary British
and politics. I shall in no way be able to do justice in this short essay by discussing
the Third Way in any great detail as the Third Way itself has proven to be a very
ambiguous subject. I am proposing to structure this essay in a way so that I shall be
able to cover three to four central ideological concepts of Blair's Third Way.
So what is the Third Way. It's critic's claim that it's eyewash, void of any real
substance. They hold it to be a collaboration of policies, which are with out any real
content. They define the Third Way as being undefined, an elusive set of doctrines which
have been taken from existing ideologies on order to form an incoherent set of policies.
They argue that the underlying concept of the Third Way is in no way unique, it's
remnants can be found littered throughout the twentieth century where a compromise or a
third way has a always been sought to the problems of that particular time.
Alan Ryan offers the following interpretation:
The Third Way is a distinct and viable political position, but it isn't an innovation. It
first emerged in British Politics about a century ago at which point it was known as new
Liberalism. (1)
Keeping in mind that before the advent of the Third Way, the Labour government before its
ascent to power was portrayed has having a non-ideological basis for their policies. 
Steven Wood (a fellow in politics at Magdalene College, Oxford) says that the "Third Way
represents a product differentiation with out really knowing what the product is" (2)
Proponents of the Third Way argue that class is no longer the driving force in politics
and that the old divisions of left/right are meaningless. They base their argument on the
premise that in a world which is rapidly in a constant state of flux in terms of
technology and globalisation. A new innovative and powerful form of politics is vital.
They stress that there are no borders that can not be transgressed in order to find the
solutions deemed necessary for the problems facing the contemporary period. The politics
of left and right should be interchangeable and no barriers to entry must exist between
left and right if politics is to be prosperous. 
The Third Way was first promulgated by new labour in 1998 during a series of lectures
given by Tony Blair and senior Labour colleagues. Tony Blair argued that:
Third Way is a position of "radical centre" that is beyond old definition of left and
right, meaning that it is a method of selecting the best policies of traditional left and
right. (3)
In more apparent terms it can be defined as a partnership between the public and private
sectors. 
The emergence of Blair's Third Way was the acceptance of economic globalisation as a hard
fact with all its consequences for economic growth in a highly competitive world market
and the type of jobs which it is going to make available. Globalisation, however, is a
highly ambiguous term. It is multidimensional in its scope and ambivalent in its meaning.
There is much evidence to support the fact that communication; effects of ecological
destruction, diseases, cultural encounters and migration to a certain extent are
transgressing political frontiers. The nation states are more than ever playing an
increasingly dominant role on the world stage. Financial markets have become thoroughly
globalised. There yet remains to be seen a single world-wide marketplace in which all
economic unities compete with each other. This is further proof that this is not
synonymous to comprehensive economic globalisation. 
Tony Blair states in his explanation of the Third Way:
Just as economic and social change were critical to sweeping the right to power, so they
were critical to it's undoing. The challenge for the Third Way is to engage fully with
the implications of the change. The changes he identifies concern global markets and
culture, technological advance and information industries. (4)
The Third Way seeks to promote global developments at both the local and national level.
Proponents of the Third Way argue that the advancement of global markets and
technologies, enhance the ideals of community, locally, nationally, and globally this
being a response to change and insecurity. With this there will come a new political
agenda, which is founded, on mutual responsibility across the globe. These aims will have
far reaching consequences in terms of opportunities for people and businesses through the
achievement of an open world and an open economy. However, its success they claim will
rest on a strong mutual feeling of certain values through a global commitment to help
those affected by debt, environment and genocide. According to their plans, globalisation
is meant to serve as a great engine of economic growth, spurring innovation and making
capital and labour much more productive than they were under protectionism. They are not
ignorant of the fact that there are major obstacles to achieving their objectives such as
undeveloped civil societies which leads to undemocratic regimes, there is a need for
democratic leaders to announce a global war on poverty are a few. Nevertheless they
stress hope in that the Asian economies who are known as tiger economies have shown great
resolve and their exemplified advances has shown that the global economy has great
potential.
The undifferentiated neoliberal use of the globalisation argument is to a high degree
ideological, mainly designed to delegitimise labour demands, macroeconomics and the claim
of all political responsibility for the outcome of the economy. Thus it is one of the
crucial watersheds between neoliberal and social democratic politics how the term
globalisation is defined and which consequences are derived from it. For a critical use
of the argument which takes into consideration its conditions and limitations, two
consequences are crucial. The first is that the real shape and amount of globalisation
does not render macro-economic policies and political responsibility for the entire
economy completely obsolete. The second is that much of the political influence, which
has been lost to globalisation, can be regained and re-established at a regional level,
an argument that is particularly valid for the European Union. In addition, concepts to
develop more comprehensive and effective transitional and even global regimes to regulate
the global economy are no mere illusions. GATT shows that there is scope for political
framework setting, which possibly is subject to further amplification if only there is
the political, will to do so.
It has been argued that Blair talks of a workforce that must compete in the global market
place, no doubt against other workforces and with the cheapness of labour as their main
selling point, this again is a distinctive policy framework maybe that of the previous
conservatism government.
They argue that Blair's Third Way has shown no intentions to alter the fact that will
switch the million of pounds gifted to the transitional subsidies into investment for
home based companies which would not desert this country and their local workforce. In
short they stop short of declaring that Blair's Third Way government is powerless to do
anything at all in the face of globalise and its not so free market forces. 
Rethinking governance within the respective political roles of government and society is
one of the central impulses of the Third Way. This concept has two dimensions. The first
is a functional one; it stems from the experience that in highly complex modern societies
it is increasingly difficult to try to steer the development of societies from a
strategically political apex which is placed at the top of the pyramid of society and
unable to oversee to a sufficient extent its performances, problems and functions. The
idea has become prominent that modern governance requires new forms of co-operation
between the political system and civil society, in other words a new division of labour
between state and social actors. Increasingly government becomes a partner of societal
agents, acting as a broker, facilitating, inspiring and monitoring. The devolution of
power to a certain extent seems to be a functional necessity in today's complex
post-industrial societies.
The second dimension of the transfer of political functions onto civil society is a
cultural one, based on ongoing processes and declared needs to rebalance the individual's
sense of rights and obligations in modern societies. A reinforcement of the individual's
sense of obligation can regularly strengthen the citizens' propensity to see first
whether they can themselves jointly solve problems which emerge in their daily life
sphere by spontaneous co-operation, and only inasmuch as this is not possible, delegate
it for effective resolution to the political system. In this dimension, a new division of
labour between state and society is not in the first instance a question of simply
discarding state functions and leaving their fulfilment to the discretion of private
actors. It is rather about rendering a good deal of state intervention superfluous as the
job is done in society itself on a voluntary basis. 
The Third Way proposes the restructuring of some key parts of the welfare state. There
are changes within the society, which make appropriate changes in welfare state
structures unavoidable. To mention just the most consequential ones: 
-  The level of medical technology is expanding constantly and so is, as an unavoidable
consequence, the costs of health-care systems. A system which entitles each individual to
the full scale of medical treatment as indicated by his diseases will constantly raise
the portion of income spent for health, which seems unaffordable already in the not so
long run. 
-  The ratio of working-age population to old-age population is constantly decreasing.
This makes new formulas for a sustainable general pension system mandatory. 
-  In some welfare states unemployment insurance has created a particular unemployment
trap by taxing 100 per cent or more of low-wage income away. New ways of relating the
welfare system and the labour market are needed.
Even though the welfare state is badly in need of reform this should be done in such a
manner as to preserve the basic objectives for which it has been invented. The Neoliberal
remedy is straightforward: reduce the welfare state and resign vis-a-vis the power and
the wisdom of the market. This will, so the neo-liberals suggest, immediately ease the
burden on public budgets and sooner or later adapt workers expectations and attitudes to
the hard facts of the labour market. As Neoliberal thinking considers the market both an
unparalleled mechanism of rational decision-making and a basic value, the social costs of
such a strategy are neglected in theory and tolerated in practice. 
Third Way thinking is definitely considered right by its proponents in their basic
assumption that it would be irresponsible and stupid to take refuge in merely defending
the traditional welfare state while attacking neo-liberal irresponsibility.
Re-engineering the old welfare state structures is inevitable, but only insofar as this
helps to make it sustainable. This holds true for all the classical pillars of the
welfare state. In respect to old age pension, more scope for choice is needed. The
individual should decide how much of his income he would like to save now in order to be
able to spend it later, but a bottom line, which guarantees a dignified life after
retirement, should be maintained. Unemployment benefits should be conditioned on the
acceptance of job offers. Besides, they should be faded out in such a way as to leave a
reasonable increase in income for those who pick up low-wage jobs. 
All this can and must be done and there are many ways to achieve it. Pragmatism,
creativity and a spirit of innovation are required. The message of the Third Way is
however a renewal of the idea that each citizen is entitled to a dignified standard of
living when all his own efforts have failed. The guarantee of a decent life is not
dependent on economic merit but a human right. It might be more necessary than before
that the individual can prove that he has undertaken everything possible to earn his own
living, but in case of failure, he has a right to social solidarity and he has a right
that the blame for market failures are not put on his shoulders alone, so that in
addition to poverty and insecurity he would be stigmatised with failure, remorse and
blame.
For all these reasons the Third Way could prove a meaningful concept for the renewal of
social democracy only to the degree to which it offers meaningful welfare state reforms
without discarding the guarantee of social security. Otherwise it would not only damage
the public identity of social democracy and deny its confession of basic values, but also
contribute to social disintegration. 
Therefore, a Third Way project must conform by a concept not just of opportunities for
all, but of social justice, which implies the guarantee of a minimum standard of material
well being. Of course, such a guarantee implies the individual's obligation to seize
every opportunity offered to him by the markets or the society to make his own living.
Thus, employability, may be one of the useful objectives for welfare state reform, but
not the sufficient condition for a renewed social democratic project as long as there are
not enough jobs available for everybody. 
And finally I would like to draw this essay to an end with a discussion on one of the
most disputed features in the Third Way project as it is has been offered by Tony Blair
is its concept of a general culture of entrepreneurship for all members of modern
societies. It is meant to do away with the widespread attitude of entitlement, and,
consequentially, allow for a major increase in labour market flexibility, welfare state
reduction and a related increase in self-determined voluntary social activities. The main
thrust of the concepts seems to be towards overcoming the deeply rooted welfare
consensus, which is prevalent in most European societies. Some of the distinguished
promoters of the Third Way project such as Blair, Giddens, and in have repeatedly
declared that the individual independent of the degree of education, job qualification,
or social position must start to consider him or herself as an entrepreneur, fully
responsible for his own fate in the world of markets. Everybody should develop awareness
that the risks of the labour market are in the last instance ones own risks and not
failures created by default structures of society which entitle the individual to strong
social guarantees. Such a major cultural change, which amounts to adopting a substantial
portion of neo-liberal culture, would have serious consequences at two levels. According
to its critics at the structural level, it would reduce the welfare state subsidies to
support for employability. At the socio-psychological level, the individuals at the lower
strata of society would get the feeling, that beyond this limited support there is no
reliable social security, which they are entitled to, whatever the outcome of their
efforts in the labour market in the last instance, will be. Individuals would have to
accept almost unlimited degrees of economic and social flexibility.
In conclusion I shall prefer to sit on the fence and watch this argument unravel itself.
Although the Third Way is similar for all the European governments, each one of them as a
different set of policies and topics of their own and differing methods as to how to
achieve these objectives. Third Way needs three structural elements to succeed suggests
Szreter:
First, the need of moral principles and priorities is essential. Second, a clear ideology
with more details needs to be related to the real world. Third, these principles need to
be clear, with policies and practices on how to change current policies to the Third Way
policies. (5)
Finally we are in the middle of an exciting journey to which only time holds the answer.

Notes
1. Britain recycling the Third Way Alan Ryan Spring 1999
2. Third Way debate summary (www.netnexus.org/library/papers/3way.html)
3. New Statesman (In a speech of the Third Way) 22nd May1998 
4. The Political Quarterly Publishing Co.Ltd 1999
5. New Statesman (Social Capital, the economy and the third way) 8th May 1998
Bibliography
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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-  Giddens Anthony. (2000), The Third Way and itsCritics, Polity Press
-  Giddens Anthony. (1998), The Third Way:The Renewal of Social Democracy, Cambridge
Polity
-  Hargreaves Ian. (1998) Tomorrows Politics: The Third Way and Beyond, London Demos 
-  Powell Martin. (1999) New Labour: New Welfare State? The Third Way in British Social
Policy, Bristol Polity
-  Harrington Patrick. The Third Way-An Answer to Blair, 
(http://freeespace.virgin.net/www3.org/3way/critique.htm)
-  Alberto Assad. (1998) The Third Way: The Radical Centre, University of Colorado
(www.colorado.edu/iec/Fall98RW/third.html) 
-  Jones B. (2001) Politics UK, Longman 4TH edition