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Abstract: In this chapter Colin Crouch pursues a social democratic approach to social order and equity in contrast to the relentless market nostrums of neoliberalism and the over-centralised solutions of state socialism. It addresses the vexed question of which social group, groups or movements, are best positioned to act as the key agent or agents to secure and progress social democracy. Crouch sets out the case for the needs and interests of women now being the prime ‘motors’ of change; partly analogous to the role of trade unions and labour organisations in classical social democracy. Citing lifeworld aspects, such as the work-life balance and the gendered division of domestic labour, Crouch argues that a refocused and revamped social democratic state is the best mechanism for improving these areas of popular concern. The trends and projections which Crouch identifies complement and ‘materialise’ the principles of ‘natural’ well-being argued for in Part I of the book and which, if implemented, could pave the way to wider social justice including greater economic equity.

Abstract: This conclusion brings together key points from the alternative macro-paradigms in Part I, the institutional parameters and reforms to these, discussed in Part II– and the political and economic re-structuring advocated in Part III. It argues that a new social democracy is needed to achieve the rebalancing of the market-state-civil society relationship distorted by neoliberalism. This shift, should be based on democratization and accountability in the social and economic spheres as well as in conventional politics. A paradigm and practice drawn from and substantially driven by a social base rooted in recent social movements and more progressive NGOs. Applied to ‘fictitious commodity’ fields such as housing, finance and employment, its discourse would emphasis gender and practical environmental issues to ground a post-neoliberal politics in more relevant and popular concern than the stagnant, tendentious and often obscure abstractions of economic discourse. It is argued that the related ideas and policies could, at the least, achieve a regime change within contemporary capitalism. A change comparable to the social democracy which successfully displaced the market hegemony of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Abstract: Chapter 1 lays out the book’s theoretical framework. Accepting the claim that Israel is a neoliberalizing society, it asserts labor’s agency and its potential to thwart neoliberalism as part of a struggle taking place on the ideological or symbolic level too. It then proposes neocorporatism as a useful conceptual approach, and links this to union revitalization and concepts of power. These theoretical terms and concepts are used to anchor the three “spheres” of union activity which structure the book: union democracy, or workers’ relationship to their representative organization; the balance of power between labor and capital, and the way the potential clash of interests between them is viewed and played out; and the relationship of labor to the political establishment and wider political community. Finally, a short coda explains the research process and approach that led to the book.