Making Progressive Politics Work

Launched  a new publication on "Making Progressive Politics Work" represents a significant attempt to advance this challenge of prioritisation and radical reform. It brings together policy recommendations and proposals by over 40 leading international thinkers on how progressives should approach the major economic and political challenges of our times.

The publication is led by a Policy Network introduction on "How social democracy can triumph in the 5-75-20 society." It argues that social democrats have to build operational policies that focus on the 'new insecure' –  the middle 75 per cent –  and move on to more radical territory than compensatory redistribution. Getting overly obsessed by 'communitarian' vs 'cosmopolitan' politics or appeals to a past era of working class collectivism is unlikely to result in much electoral traction.

Contributors: Philippe Aghion (Harvard), Will Hutton (Oxford), Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics), Jacob Hacker (Yale), Andrew Gamble (Cambridge), Monika Sie (WBS), Gavin Kelly (Resolution Foundation), Eric Beinhocker & Nick Hanauer (INET), Vicky Pryce (Economist), Robert D. Atkinson (ITFI), Tim Besley & John Van Reenen (LSE), Michael Mandel (PPI), Peter van Lieshout & Robert Went (WRR), Thomas Aubrey (Policy Network), Saskia Sassen (Columbia), Benjamin Barber (CUNY), Bo Rothstein (Gothenburg), René Cuperus (WBS), Anne Wren (TCD), Brian Bell (Oxford), Stephen Machin (UCL), Carl Benedikt Frey & Michael Osborne (Oxford), Alan Manning (LSE), Maarten Goos (Leuven), Lane Kenworthy (Arizona), Julie Madigan (Manufacturing Institute), Frans Bieckmann (The Broker), Paul de Beer (Amsterdam), Bruno Palier (Sciences Po), Silja Häusermann (Zurich), Moira Nelson (Lund), Dalia Ben-Galim (IPPR), Alan Brown (Warwick), Edoardo Campanella (Harvard), Anton Hemerijck (VU Amsterdam), Ian Mulheirn (Oxford Economics), Steve Fuller (Warwick), Andreas Schleicher (OECD), Tom Kenyon (Nesta), Averil Macdonald (Reading), Christal Morehouse (Bertelsmann Stiftung).

Progressive Governance Conference

The publication will inform a Progressive Governance Conference in Amsterdam on 24-25 April, hosted by Dutch Labour party (PvdA) leader Diederik Samsom and Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands Lodewijk Asscher.

Ahead of the European Parliament elections next month, this major gathering jointly organised by Policy Network, Center for American Progress (CAP) and Wiardi Beckman Stichting will bring together over 300 leading politicians, thinkers, policymakers, academics, and campaigners from across Europe and North America for a major two day programme of policy exchange and debate.