«Третій шлях» та ідейно-інституційна еволюція Лейбористської партії Великобританії

Abstract

The model of the “third way”, based on the maximum convergence of the ideological positions of socialism and liberalism, in terms of ideological and theoretical development, became the most elaborated project of the ideological renovation of the European social-democratic parties in the late twentieth and in the early twenty-first century. In the mentioned period, exactly this strategy of ideological reform was chosen by the British Labour Party (LP) in order to get out of the deep political and electoral crisis. Since the example of British Labourites can be significant for identifying possible directions of ideological modernization of the socialist movement in Ukraine, it is very important to study their experience of party reforming. Hence, the purpose of the article is to identify the peculiarities of ideological and organizational modernization of the LP in accordance with the concept of the “third way”, proposed by the British scholar A. Giddens. The methodological bases of the study are the provisions of discursive neo-institutionalism. In addition, the author analysed the dynamics of the LP electoral results; this gave a possibility to empirically determine the effectiveness of the chosen strategy of party modernization at various stages of its ideological reformation. Thus, the article defines the peculiarities of ideological and organizational modernization of the LP in accordance with the “third way” concept. It was proved that in the ideological dimension for the LP this meant a withdrawal from the principles of democratic socialism and the incorporation of a number of neoliberalism provisions, which in general determined the party's movement to the right. In the institutional dimension, this has acquired the nature of intraorganizational transformations aimed to change the composition and structure of dominant party coalitions. After the study of the dynamics of the LP electoral results, it became clear that the strategy of party's reformation chosen by Labourites had been effective (victories in the parliamentary elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005) in the context of a request for the construc- tion of “responsible capitalism” in the British society. However, the “New Labourites” failed to cope with the challenges caused by the Great Recession, which questioned the effectiveness of neoliberal approaches to economic policy (defeat of the LP in the 2010 elections). It was substantiated that this defeat forced the British Labourites to look for new strategies of the ideological renovation of the party.