ARTIKEL /ARTICLES Between old Recipes and new Challenges: The European Left needs a Conceptual Renewal ERNST HILLEBRAND T he center-left parties of Western Europe are in crisis. The number of countries in which they form the government has fallen significantly since the end of the 1990s. Elections are being lost one after another, even in countries where such parties had governed successfully. Four of the five Scandinavian countries – to many observers social democratic societies par excellence – currently have conservative heads of govern­ment. There is a great deal to suggest that this development is not(only) due to the normal swings of the political pendulum, but the effect of a qualitatively new challenge: the center-left parties are losing votes not only to their traditional opponents on the center-right, but increasingly also to new right-wing populist or even extreme right parties. 1 In some countries, these parties have taken root among the traditional electorate of the center left to an alarming extent: in the first round of the French presidential elections in 2002 Jean-Marie Le Pen came first of all candi­dates among workers. 2 Examination of the Causes: The End of a Cycle In my view, this development marks the end of a politico-ideological cycle: the centrist-technocratic project – known as the»Third Way« in the 1. This applies not only to Italy(Forza Italia, msi , Lega Norte), or to France with the Front National, but also to the Netherlands(List Pim Fortyn), Belgium(Vlaamse Belang), Austria( fpö ), Denmark, and Sweden; there is also something of a trend in the uk where the spread of the nationalistic British National Party is increasingly giving Labour cause for concern. 2. Philippe Guibert/Alain Mergier, Le decenseur social – Enquete sur les milieux populaires, Fondation Jean-Jaurès/ plon , Paris, 2007, p. 18. This development is accompanied by a deep organizational crisis for these parties: they are losing mem­bers on a massive scale(the British Labour Party, for example, has lost around half its members since 1997) and therewith the ability to organize election or political campaigns effectively. ipg 4/2007 Hillebrand, The European Left 11