Abstract
For more than a decade there has been a tendency for social democratic and labour parties in the developed capitalist world to move to the right. A variety of explanations have been offered. These include discussions of loss of political direction, sometimes underpinned by shifts in the class composition of the parties or the impact of a new stage of internationalised capitalism. Far less attention has been paid to two other factors. One is the impact of the period of relative economic stagnation on a global level, which has affected all countries with significant social democratic parties since the mid 1970s. This has, through higher levels of unemployment, contributed to another widespread influence on social democratic politics, lower levels of working class selfconfidence and hence of trade union and other struggles with employers and governments, despite some impressive but short-lived upsurges, notably in France, Italy and Greece, during the 1990s.
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