Key Issues in Center-Left Debates Around the WorldLearning from Shortcomings

It would mean trivializing the current situation to interpret the crisis facing the SPD and the Greens primarily as a weakness specific to those two parties. In nearly all Western democracies, center-left parties are under pressure, as are center-right parties. What is eroding is not a type of party, but a political model. The latter offered a combination of economic growth, social openness, and international interdependence from which greater prosperity, security, and freedom were supposed to emerge through rules-based procedures and institutions. The setbacks experienced by the SPD and Greens amount to a crisis of liberalism, itself and that is hitting progressives particularly hard because they have believed in this model the most. Accordingly, there has been an intensive quest at the international level for ways out of this crisis.