Reinventing the Left in the Global South The Politics of the Possible

This book offers a fresh appraisal of the nature and significance of the democratic Left in the Global South. The moral and intellectual leadership of the Left is shifting south from its European birthplace. It is in the Global South, most notably in Latin America, that one finds newly self-confident progressive movements. This 'new' democratic Left includes parties and social movements that not only are avoiding the familiar pitfalls that ensnared socialists and social democrats in the twentieth century, but also are coping with the realities of the twenty-first century, especially neoliberal globalization. In analyzing and illustrating three innovative strategies - moderate social democracy, radical social-democratic transition to socialism, and Left populism - this study nudges the debate about the Left out of the well-worn grooves into which it has fallen in recent decades.

1. Reinventing the Left; 2. Alternative visions: leftist versus neoliberal paradigms; 3. How neoliberalism fails; 4. Making history: agency, constraints and realities; 5. Pitfalls and promise of the moderate Left; 6. The radical Left: moving beyond the socialist impasse; 7. Politics of the possible.

Richard Sandbrook is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Since 1968 he has focused his research on the Left's experience in the Global South, the relevance of social-democratic thinking to the reshaping of neoliberal globalization, the political economy of the basic-needs and market-oriented development strategies, the relationship of democratization to development, and the political role of workers and the urban poor in Africa. He has published over 50 articles and ten books, including Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects (with Marc Edelman, Patrick Heller and Judith Teichman, Cambridge University Press, 2007).