A Renewed Social Democracy for an 'Age of Internationalism': An Interpretivist Account of New Labour’s Foreign Policy

Judi Atkins

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper employs an interpretive approach to explore New Labour’s use of social scientific theories in developing its foreign policy. After situating New Labour in the broad tradition of social democracy, it outlines the beliefs that most social democrats shared about the values of internationalism, international community and moral leadership. Taking these concepts in turn, the paper then considers how New Labour modified their content in response to issues raised by ‘New Times’. In so doing, it problematizes New Labour’s responses by revealing that they drew on ideas taken from complex interdependence theory, communitarianism and democratic peace theory respectively. The paper then examines how these theories, in conjunction with the reformulation of its foreign policy, influenced New Labour’s transformation of the three values, before concluding with a brief examination of the dilemmas arising from this process.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)175-191
JournalBritish Journal of Politics and International Relations
Volume15
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013

Bibliographical note

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Atkins, J. (2013), New Labour's Internationalism. The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 15: 175-191, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-856X.2012.00536.x.  This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.

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