Different Road Maps, Similar Paths? Social Democratic Politics in the UK and Germany

Abstract

Parties that win elections – particularly if they win them frequently and convincingly – are never short of admirers. The recent successes of New Labour are a prime example of this. The German SPD initially showed considerable interest in New Labour's programmatic transformation but it was only a matter of months before it began to back away from much of the Blair-inspired ‘Neue Mitte’ agenda. This contribution analyses some of the reasons for this. It emphasises that even where political parties have ostensibly similar aims and goals, there are clear limits to the amount of convergence that we should expect to see in terms of policy outputs. The SPD has subsequently been ‘stretched’ between divergent institutional and party-political contexts and even though it is prioritising similar problems and challenges to its British equivalent, it is highly unlikely to come up with similar solutions.