Social democracy between demise and reemergence: What would a political landscape without social democracy look like?

At least since the publication of Przeworsky’s book Paper Stones in 1986, scholars have debated the relationship between social democratic parties and working class ideas. If there is no link between the two, ie no structural reason to presume that social democratic parties will speak for working class interest, then working class interest must be understood as a question of successful articulation. This is exactly the situation emerging in Europe, as social democratic parties have been unable to respond successfully to financial crisis, and we see instead the emergence of actors on the margins, mainly in the form of ERPs but also and more recently in the form of new Left contenders, fragilising social democratic parties. This contribution proposes that social democrat parties in Europe made a strategic mistake in the 1990s and 2000s when they adopted post-political or cartel positions focused on the middle class, and ruled out the possibility of moving to the Left, and that they face the strategic dilemma of either breaking with this strategy and rearticulating forms of working class interest, or continued erosion of support. It argues that middle class preferences are unstable, and that the center was therefore a much more fragile construction than hitherto acknowledged, and that the process we are witnessing in Europe today is a break up of center values under the influence of right wing and left wing radicalism, renewing a political battle in which social democracy must either become a political force or find itself in historical retreat.