In the Name of Social Democracy The Great Transformation, 1945 to the Present

Following the locust years of the neo-liberal revolution, social democracy was the great victor at the fin-de-siecle elections. Today, parties descended from the Second International hold office throughout the European Union, while the Right appears widely disorientated by the dramatic 'modernization' of a political tradition dating back to the nineteenth century.The focal point of Gerassimos Moschonas's study is the emergent 'new social democracy' of the twenty-first century. As Moschonas demonstrates, change has been a constant of social-democratic history: the core dominant reformist tendency of working-class politics notwithstanding, capitalism has transformed social democracy more than the latter has transformed capitalism. Now, in the 'great transformation' of recent years, a process of 'de-social-democratization' has been set in train, affecting every aspect of the social-democratic phenomenon, from ideology and programs to organization and electorates. Analytically incisive and empirically meticulous, In the Name of Social Democracy will establish itself as the standard reference work on the logic and dynamics of a major mutation in European politics.

Gerassimos Moschonas is Assistant Professor in Comparative Poltics in the Department of Political Science and History at Pantheion University, Athens.