Blairism Brazilian Style? Cardoso and the “Third Way” in Brazil
The year 1994 was a fateful one for social democracy on both sides of the Atlantic. Only seven short years ago, the German SPD, the world's oldest and arguably most influential social democratic party, went down to its third consecutive electoral defeat at the hands of Helmut Kohl, leading many to despair about the fortunes of democratic socialism on the European continent. In 1994, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom all had entrenched conservative governments. This may seem like a century ago in political time, and in some ways it was. But 1994 also brought forth several intriguing developments. In the UK, the tragic death of John Smith sparked a leadership struggle in the Labour party, and when the dust cleared the new leader of the opposition was a previously little known 41-year-old member of Parliament (MP) named Tony Blair. In that same year, the British sociologist Anthony Giddens published an influential book called Beyond Left and Right,' a volume that would herald a series of publications proposing a major rethinking of social democracy.2 Meanwhile, in faraway Brazil, the crucial October 1994 presidential election was won by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, self-described social democrat who, quite unusually, exercised the professions of both Giddens and Blair. The stage was set for a critical debate over the renovation of European social democracy and the rapid diffusion of this debate to South America. Over the past seven years, political change in Western Europe has been quite substantial, both in terms of the partisan composition of key governments