LONDON -- "The Third Way" has become the height of intellectual fashion. But what on earth is it?
The answer is far from simple and far from agreed. But putting it in its broadest terms the proposition is that all our societies, as they struggle to adapt to global forces and the electronic age, can somehow find a middle or third (and better) way forward, midway between the full-blooded market economy on the one hand and old-fashioned collectivism on the other.
The idea that one can have reform and restructuring without too much pain is undoubtedly attractive -- Thatcherism without the prickles, it has been called in the British context.