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Classic third way or before its time? The New Zealand labour party in local and transnational context

Nolan, Melanie

Description

The exceptionalist debate in labour history has concentrated upon the distinctiveness of a country’s labour, its uniqueness and historical contingency. Some historians are concerned that the current popularity of transnationalism in comparative history achieves exactly the opposite: it, ‘flattens and schematizes the richness, messiness, complexity, and the individuality’ of the case study. In this paper I consider politicians’, political scientists’ and sociologists’ enthusiasm for the Third...[Show more]

dc.contributor.authorNolan, Melanie
dc.date.accessioned2011-11-24T04:25:29Z
dc.date.available2011-11-24T04:25:29Z
dc.identifier.issn0961-5652
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1885/8749
dc.description.abstractThe exceptionalist debate in labour history has concentrated upon the distinctiveness of a country’s labour, its uniqueness and historical contingency. Some historians are concerned that the current popularity of transnationalism in comparative history achieves exactly the opposite: it, ‘flattens and schematizes the richness, messiness, complexity, and the individuality’ of the case study. In this paper I consider politicians’, political scientists’ and sociologists’ enthusiasm for the Third Way model, which seems to concentrate upon commonalities and convergence in the political economies of the western world from the 1930s and 1940s. New Zealand appears to be a classic example of First Way under its first Labour Government (1939-1949), Second Way under its Fourth Labour Government (1984-1990) and Third Way under its Fifth Labour Government (1999-2008). On closer examination, this view only holds if one adopts a caricatured view of ‘Old Labour’ and, although I do not consider it here, the ‘New Right’, too. I argue that a model like the Third Way can be just as useful to labour historians of later twentieth century social democracy as the exceptionalist debate has been to labour historians of class and consciousness at the turn of the twentieth century. Rather than flattening experience, a fine-grained and historical consideration of the Third Way model is useful for it indicates the extent to which New Zealand was early to modernise its social democracy. New Zealand was the first social democratic party in the western world to abandon the socialisation objective and it should come as no surprise to see early intimations of the Third Way in the antipodes either.
dc.format16 pages
dc.publisherW. S. Maney & Son Ltd : Maney Publishing, London UK
dc.rightsThis is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Labour History Review. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication.
dc.rightshttp://maney.co.uk/index.php/resources/authors/copyright_and_permissions_information_for_authors/ Pre-prints, Maney will never unreasonably withhold permission for an author to republish his or her own material, subject to acknowledgement of the original place of publication.
dc.rightsAuthors may archive pre-print (ie pre-refereeing) ... post-print (ie final draft post-refereeing) ... [but not] publisher's version/PDF
dc.sourceLabour History Review 75.1(2010) 98-113
dc.subjectThird way, transnationalism, New Zealand Labour Party, social democratic parties, exceptionalist debate
dc.titleClassic third way or before its time? The New Zealand labour party in local and transnational context
dc.typeJournal article
local.identifier.citationvolume75
dcterms.dateAccepted2010-04
dc.date.issued2011-11-24
local.identifier.absfor160608 - New Zealand Government and Politics
local.identifier.ariespublicationu4105084xPUB487
local.publisher.urlhttp://www.maney.co.uk
local.type.statusAccepted Version
local.contributor.affiliationNolan, Melanie, College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANU
local.bibliographicCitation.issue1
local.bibliographicCitation.startpage98
local.bibliographicCitation.lastpage113
local.identifier.doi10.1179/096156510x12568148664006
dc.date.updated2015-12-10T07:34:32Z
local.identifier.scopusID2-s2.0-77952929326
local.identifier.thomsonID000282199600008
CollectionsANU Research Publications

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