21 Facts About Third Way

Third Way is a centrist political position that attempts to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of centre-right economic policies with centre-left social policies.

The Third Way was born from a re-evaluation of political policies within various centre to centre-left progressive movements in the 1980s in response to doubt regarding the economic viability of the state and the perceived overuse of economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularised by Keynesianism, but which at that time contrasted with the rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right starting in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.

Third Way has been promoted by social liberal and social-democratic parties.

The Third Way has been criticised by other social democrats, as well as anarchists, communists and in particular democratic socialists as a betrayal of left-wing values, with some analysts characterising the Third Way as an effectively neoliberal movement.

Third Way politics is visible in Anthony Giddens' works such as Consequences of Modernity, Modernity and Self-Identity, The Transformation of Intimacy, Beyond Left and Right and The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy.

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The Third Way is in favour of growth, entrepreneurship, enterprise and wealth creation but it is in favour of greater social justice and it sees the state playing a major role in bringing this about.

Anthony Giddens of the LSE the Third Way rejects top down socialism as it rejects traditional neo liberalism.

Third Way has been advocated by its proponents as a "radical-centrist" alternative to both capitalism and what it regards as the traditional forms of socialism, including Marxian and state socialism.

Third Way has been advocated by proponents as competition socialism, an ideology in between traditional socialism and capitalism.

Anthony Giddens, a prominent proponent of the Third Way, has publicly supported a modernised form of socialism within the social democracy movement, but he claims that traditional socialist ideology that involves economic management and planning are flawed and states that as a theory of the managed economy it barely exists any longer.

Examples of French Third Way politicians include current President Emmanuel Macron, and to a lesser extent Francois Hollande, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Manuel Valls.

Renzi himself has previously claimed to be a supporter of Blair's ideology of the Third Way, regarding an objective to synthesise liberal economics and left-wing social policies.

Third Way stands for a modernised social democracy, passionate in its commitment to social justice and the goals of the centre-left.

Third Way challenged the failure of the Millennium Dome project and Labour's inability to deal with irresponsible businesses.

Third Way as practised under New Labour has been criticised as being effectively a new, centre-right and neoliberal party.

Third Way Presidents "undermine the opposition by borrowing policies from it in an effort to seize the middle and with it to achieve political dominance".

The Third Way think tank and the Democratic Leadership Council are adherents of Third Way politics.

Third Way has been criticized as being a vague ideology with no specific commitments:.

Third Way is no more than a crude attempt to construct a bogus coalition between the haves and the haves not: Bogus because it entices the haves by assuring them that the economy will be sound and their interests would not be threatened, while promising the have-nots a world free from poverty and injustice.

Left-wing opponents of the Third Way argue that it represents social democrats who responded to the New Right by accepting capitalism.

Third Way argued that "the regulation of financial markets is the single most pressing issue in the world economy" and that "global commitment to free trade depends upon effective regulation rather than dispenses with the need for it".