The Transition to ‘New’ Social Democracy: The Role of Capitalism, Representation and (Hampered) Contestation David J. Bailey This article argues that existing accounts of the transformation from ‘traditional’ to ‘new’ social democracy has thus far only identified the contextual changes that have prompted this move. In doing so, they have failed to account for the motives of social democratic party actors in undertaking the transition to ‘new’ social democracy in response to those changes. The article draws upon a critical realist method, and Marxist and anti-representational theories, to conceptualise ‘tradi- tional’ social democratic party relations as suffering from tensions between constituents’ demands for decommodification, the attempt by party elites to contain (and thereby ‘represent’) those demands and the (in)compatibility of this process of containment with the need to recommodify social relations in the light of periodic crises in contemporary capitalism. It argues that these tensions explain the attempt by party elites to promote the move towards ‘new’ social democracy, the (eventual) acquiescence of party constituents to those attempts and the subsequent exit from social democratic constituencies which has resulted. The argument is made with reference to the British Labour Party and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Keywords: social democracy; Labour Party; SPD; centre-left parties Existing literature seeking to explain the transformation, by social democratic parties, from ‘traditional’ to ‘new’ (or ‘Third Way’) social democracy has tended to focus on either material processes such as the global extension and liberalisation of the international political economy (Gray 1996) and the fragmentation and/or erosion of the industrial working class within contemporary post-Fordist capitalism (Kitschelt 1994), or ideational convergence around neo-liberal norms (Hay 1999). However, these contextual changes cannot by themselves explain the decision by social democratic party actors to promote, and in most cases bring into effect, a transfor- mation from ‘traditional’ to ‘new’ social democracy. Indeed, while ‘traditional’ social democratic parties may have experienced economic, political and/or ideological obstacles in recent decades, these do not, by themselves, explain the abandonment of faith in ‘traditional’ social democracy by social democratic party actors. Put differently, why have social democratic party actors not adopted a re-emboldened commitment to ‘traditional’ social democracy in an attempt to overcome the material and/or ideational adversities they face in realising their political and policy goals? In seeking to answer this question, the present article attempts to explain the adoption of ‘new’ social democracy by social democratic party actors in the light of the contextual changes identified within the existing literature. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2009.00373.x BJPIR: 2009 VOL 11, 593–612 © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Political Studies Association