Woes of European social democracy

Marcel Pauly gives us an overview, with charts included, on the question, European Social Democracy Extinct? Social Europe 01/26/2018:

Almost everywhere in Europe, social democratic and socialist parties are losing support: last year, the German SPD saw a historic bad result in the parliamentary elections. Its sister parties in France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic have even sunk to single digit shares of the vote. European social democracy is fighting for its political survival: since the new millennium, its vote share has fallen in 15 of the 17 countries we examined – sometimes dramatically. ...

In every country there are of course differing, individual reasons for this development. But there are also common roots that can explain the crisis faced by socialists and social democrats in many countries. First, parties have lost many of their core voters. European social democracy, born out of the labour movement of the nineteenth century, had a large support base upon which it could rely for votes: the workers, above all people engaged in manual labour. It is now an ever shrinking demography: the working class is fragmented, the conditions that supported the social democrats for decades across Europe have disappeared.

I have some reservations about his demographic analysis in that he doesn't seem to have a particularly clear version of who and what the "working class" is. That's pretty common in analysis of American politics as well. A big part of that is that political polls don't consistently collect economic data on voters being surveyed. But the stats on educational attainment are more commonly gathered. So American pundits and journalists tend to use not having a four-year college degree as a proxy for "working class." It's certainly not an ideal measure.

This article doesn't deal with the programmatic aspects that affected this process, i.e., the center-left parties adopting neoliberal economic programs: reduction of public services, privatization, deregulation, financialization, reduction of wages, salaries and pensions; weakening of unions; corporate-deregulation "trade" treaties.

The article was originally published as Tot oder lebendig? Spiegel Online 26.12.2017, though the Social Europe version has an additional chart. An English version, Social democrats are having a hard time, also appeared at the European Data Journalism Network 01/10/2018.

The crisis of Social Democracy in Europe

Ignacio Ramonet, the former editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique, addresses the very topical issue of The decline of social democracy in Europe IPS/Deccan Herald 05.28.2014:

In 2002, the social democrats were in power in 15 countries of the EU. Today, despite the fact that the financial crisis has proved the social, moral, and ecological bankruptcy of ultraliberalism, social democrats rule in only five countries.

Indeed, repudiating their very foundations has become a habit: European social democrats decided years ago to ramp up privatisations, demand lower budgets at the expense of the citizens, call for raising the retirement age, dismantle the public sector, while pushing for giant corporate mergers and concentration and pampering the banks. It gradually converted itself, without remorse, to social-liberalism, dropping as priorities certain objectives that were part of its ideological DNA — for example, full employment, the defence of acquired social advantages, the development of public services, and the eradication of hunger and poverty.

The most dramatic example of a loss in confidence for a long-standing social-democratic party in recent years is that of PASOK in Greece. Mark Lowen reports on that sad story in How Greece's once-mighty Pasok party fell from grace BBC News 04/13/2013:

The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) has dominated the Greek political scene for more than three decades. It soared to power in 1981. The dictatorship had just ended here; Pasok created a welfare state, transforming Greece into a modern, European country.

But today it languishes at around 6% in the polls, widely reviled for corruption and for accepting hated austerity while in power in 2009. ...

For now Pasok is on life support as part of the coalition government. But few expect it can truly rise again. At its height, it was backed by almost half the Greek electorate under the adored leadership of Andreas Papandreou.

It has since refounded itself with a new name, Ελιά (Elia/Olive Tree), or at least attached itself to the name of a small group that already existed, as Andy Dabilis describes for the Greek Reporter (Venizelos Says PASOK Over, Olive Tree In 04/30/2014)

Essentially declaring his once-dominant party dead, PASOK Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos says it will survive the critical May elections for the European Parliament and Greek municipalities although it has had to attach itself to a new center-left political group Elia, The Olive Tree.

PASOK had been polling around 3-5 percent in polls after joining the coalition government of Prime Minister and New Democracy Conservative minister Antonis Samaras and backing tough austerity measures that have made most Greeks furious at the ruling parties.

And Dabilis explains some of the policies that have led to such a state of affairs for the party once known as PASOK:

Venizelos was made Deputy Premier/Foreign Minister in return for supporting pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions and worker firings that his party had begun on the orders of international lenders in a previous administration headed by then-premier George Papandreou, who quit in 2011 after relentless protests, strikes and riots. [my emphasis]

The left economist Costas Lapavitsas discusses this crisis of Social Democracy in Europe in Financialization and the Collapse of European Social Democracy - Costas Lapavitsas on RAI The Real News (7/8) 05/29/2014:

Tags: austerity economics, eu, euro, european union, greece, social democracy