3 - Developing a strategy: the internal dynamics of the centre-left’s response to the crisis of neoliberalism

Summary

The idea that the centre-left has “failed” in the post-GFC environment is widely accepted, but there is little empirical evidence in the literature to help us understand the way in which the parties themselves reacted to the 2008 crash and attendant crisis of neoliberalism. In this chapter, we seek to rectify this by inverting our gaze inwards. We examine the internal dynamics of Labour and the PS and why these centre-left parties adopted the strategies they did post-GFC. To do so, the chapter concerns itself with studying the ideas and discourses developed within Labour under Ed Miliband (2010–15) and within the PS and the Hollande administration, including the campaign leading up to his election in 2012 (2011–17). It reflects on the discussions between policy actors where ideas are articulated, developed and deliberated as part of the development of their programme (Schmidt 2002: 233). This involves analysis not just of ideas but of the location and context of these ideas within the parties and around them (e.g. within associated think tanks), including what groups are encouraging their development and how they relate to the wider economic, institutional and electoral environment. This is achieved through an analysis of semi-structured interviews (for a full list, see the Appendix) conducted with key policy actors and triangulates this with an analysis of over 300 English-and French-language documents, including speeches, private internal party communication and interviews given at the time.

This analysis illustrates how the adaptation of these two centre-left parties to the neoliberal order in the 1980s and 1990s created a number of important internal reputational, ideational and strategic path dependencies. Reputational or “legacy” path dependencies refer to situations wherein parties’ prior commitments, experiences in government and discourses directly condition the strategies they adopt. Ideational path dependencies refer to how sets of economic ideas continue to run through the party, shaping party actors’ understanding of the economic world, even if their basis or rationale has been undermined by events or is contested internally. Strategic path dependencies refer to the way in which a set of “strategic political-electoral” ideas about how the political landscape should be understood and how “politics” is to be “done”, both internally within the party and among the wider electorate.