WORLD VIEW: The electoral victory in October 1998 of Germany's Social Democrat/Green alliance represented a high-water mark for centre-left influence in Europe, with socialist or social democratic parties in power or sharing power in that year in 11 out of 15 EU states.
Now, after recent defeats for the left in Italy, Denmark, Portugal, Holland and France, the "pink tide" of the later 1990s appears to be ebbing. On September 22nd it is Germany's turn to vote again. At the moment of writing, Gerhard Schröder's SPD is still three points behind the conservative CDU/CSU alliance in the opinion polls and its Green Party allies are not certain of retaining their place in the Bundestag.
Should Mr Schröder fail to close the gap on the conservatives over the summer, social democracy will be left with only a few, geographically marginal, bastions remaining in Europe. As the British journalist Andrew Rawnsley sardonically remarked, when Tony Blair meets EU heads of state later this year and wishes to chat to those of similar political complexion let us hope he can speak Greek or Finnish.
There is, however, one EU state Rawnsley appears to have forgotten, one which goes to the polls just a week before Germany, on September 15th. This is Sweden, a far-away country of which, unfortunately, we read very little.
Sweden has had a Social Democratic government for all but nine of the last 66 years and all indications at this point are that that remarkable record is likely to be extended for a further period this autumn.
This strange aberration in European politics, which we might perhaps call the Swedish exception, raises a number of questions about the EU's centre-left parties, their successes and, now, their apparent failures.
Are there common threads in the recent decline of the social democratic parties? Is this decline merely a temporary, cyclical phenomenon or is the entire centre-left project now in a terminal state? Finally, is there something which those parties which are bucking the trend, principally Britain's Labour and Sweden's Social Democrats, are doing right that the others are doing wrong?
The successive exits from office of centre-left governments over the last year present some features in common and some significant differences. Portugal's Socialists and Italy's Olive coalition both found themselves facing difficult structural problems in the economy without any clear idea of how to tackle them, and both gave way to right-wing forces promising free market solutions to those problems.
In Holland, as in Denmark, rather economically successful outgoing governments fell victim to a certain level of complacency, or boredom, on the part of their natural supporters and a strong challenge from anti-immigration populists.
In Denmark in fact, where social democratic ideology is still strong, this victory for the centre-right was achieved with the aid of a political manoeuvre which has been called "Blairism in reverse" - when the Liberal challenger, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, successfully sold himself as more social democratic than the Social Democrats themselves in his defence of the welfare state. Party loyalists were understandably bitter. As one trade unionist said: "I can't remember a time in our history when the Danes had more."
The recent collapse of the left in France shares some of these characteristics: the relative success of his administration did not save Lionel Jospin's presidential bid from the "disenchantment", boredom, or even frivolity, of the electorate. Though the left in fact polled nearly 43 per cent in the first round of the presidential election (as opposed to 30 per cent for the centre-right), this was split between eight candidates; while the hard right garnered 19 per cent, the Trotskyist revolutionary left also won over 10 per cent.
Getting out of this mess will be the job of whatever new leadership the Socialist Party throws up after its subsequent further defeat in the parliamentary elections of June 9th and 16th. The most serious problem that leadership will face will be the huge cultural distance which exists between itself and the French working class.
French socialism is characterised by a combination of arrogant, if often efficient, technocracy and a refined intellectualism which strikes few chords with the party's support base. As one party member said, casting an envious glance at his more rooted Scandinavian comrades: "Swedish socialists exercise a power which they do not theorise; we theorise a power we do not exercise."
This gulf is not one between left and right. French Socialists love to talk on the left, but often act from the centre. Swedish Social Democrats are pragmatic about means but relentlessly stubborn about the end, which is to deliver employment, services and security to their electorate. French Socialists have only the loosest connections with trade unionism; organised labour - which accounts for 80 per cent of all labour - is the backbone of the Swedish party. French trade unions adore the noisy street demonstration; Swedes the quiet, patient and successful negotiation. The French left still imagines itself anti-capitalist; the Swedes believe capitalism should be run by capitalists but extract from them a high price for social redistribution, with one-third of employment - fine hospitals, schools, crèches and care of the elderly - in the public sector.
If the Swedish model, a firmly left-wing social democracy, is a far cry from Mr Blair's more anaemic Third Way, the two do at least have in common a clear idea of what they want to do and an ability to communicate that idea to the electorate.
The Blair project indeed, which has been characterised as "social-liberal", is showing a distinctly more social side in its second term than in its first.
Europe's social democrats have a variety of problems, some more serious than others. There is, however, reason to believe their decline may be chiefly a cyclical phenomenon which can in time be reversed; indeed their centre-left colleagues in Poland and Hungary have recently returned to office while the Czechs have retained it.
If those parties which have lost power are searching for inspiration in their fight back they could certainly do worse than look to the north. And if they cannot simply appropriate the Swedes' traditions, they can at least seek to emulate their intellectual and political seriousness.
In 1919 the American journalist Lincoln Steffens visited the Soviet Union and remarked: "I have seen the future; and it works." Though in fact it barely worked at all in the sense that Steffens intended, it did have a future of some 70 years. It is clear to anyone who knows Sweden that this is a society which works as well as any has ever done. Whether it is or is not the future, history - and perhaps the markets - will in due course decide.