Social democracy and cultural concerns in Europe
It’s also culture, stupid!
Anti-migration populism, identity and community in an age of insecurity
Policy Network organised a major gathering in Berlin on 20 and 21 January which focused on the cultural challenges to social democracy. The event was organised in partnership with the Wiardi Beckman Stichting, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Das Progressive Zentrum,
The main purpose of the event was to analyse why social democrats have struggled to empathise with voters’ unease about moral and social decline, and effectively respond to anti-immigrant, anti-elite and anti-Islamic populism.
The traditional view espoused by many on the centre-left has been that if policy and political energy is focused on getting the socio-economic questions right, then the answers to our cultural problems will fall into place. In acknowledging that cultural and moral values, as well as aspiration and socio-economic security, matter to social democratic voters, this seminar marked a serious attempt to facilitate ideas and debate on how social democrats can get back in touch with large parts of the electorate.
Sessions were held on voting behaviour and cultural concerns in Europe; the solidarity of society under pressure; the three I-complex of immigration, integration and Islam; the causes and remedies of the pan-European populist revolt; and how social democrats can cherish identity and community in a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan era.
Key note speakers included: Frank Walter Steinmeier, leader of the SPD parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, Job Cohen, Leader of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) and Trevor Phillips, chair of the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The full agenda can be viewed here.
This seminar was part of the joint Policy Network and Wiardi Beckman Stichting Amsterdam Process research programme, which seeks to facilitate a new round of ideological renewal and revisionism capable of overcoming traditionalist inertia as well as the mistakes made during the latest revisionist projects, such as the Third Way.
It follows on from a recent seminar in Madrid on centre-left political economy and an earlier round of meetings in Amsterdam.
Policy Network will shortly publish a series of Amsterdam Process papers emanating from the topics discussed at the event.