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December 10, 2003
The central question for the advocates of the Third Way is: how can the welfare state be reformed so that it can still deliver social justice within the budgetary constraints imposed by the integration of a national economy with the global one?
Those constraints mean a smaller public sector. That is what a mobile international financial capital dictates. Footloose capital means international economic competitiveness and fiscal limits on nation states.
Their central argument is that this requires a different approach to public policy.This involves rejecting the traditional role of government as state intervention and avoiding the old statist road of tax and spend.
Where to then? How do you further social democratic reform without the state?
To civil society is the answer.
How does that help? What we find there, the advocates of the Third Way is moral confusion, loss of fraternity, decline of trust and erosion of community. So politics is about rebuilding the relationships and bonds (social capital) between people. It puts the social back in social justice.
So the focus is on the middle ground between state and market that is identified as voluntary and community action. It means winding back the space occupied by the state and markets to allow civil society to thrive and flourish.
In some ways this is very disingenous. Voluntary activity in civil society has been a very strong dimension of politics in Australia during the time of social democracy. Many of the regional public hospitals were buld through volunteer activity and help. Same with Landcare and Coast Care. Same with caring for the elderly and the sick. Same with emergency services, firefighting and surf lifesaving clubs. There was always space for this kind of activityand there has been a very strong tradition of volunterism in regional and rural Australia.
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