General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Lizzie Warren had an axe, [View all]Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)But generally, the third way is a transnational reaction among leftists and socialists to a perceived loss of power (that happened at different stages in different countries but is generally associated with the Reagan/Tatcher revolution).
Bluntly stated, the political philosophy of Third Wayers is a combination of right wing economic policies and left wing social policies (although the second part is mostly only found in rhetoric while the firs part has been very successfully implemented).
That's why you can't tell a neoconservative from a neoliberal, and that's why you can't tell most democrats from republicans. (Although many people argue that the neocon and neolib are distinct from third wayers, I've yet to see a practical, as opposed to a rhetorical difference - they're all selling the same pack of stale ideas with different marketing strategies.)
Bulding a narrative that coherently deals with the origins of the term is a complex task, as the term was in use among (mostly german) political scientists even before the Second World War and had a slightly different connotation, and often was applied only to economic positions.
The clearest example of a traditionally left wing party transforming itself along the third way is British Labor under the "Blair revolution" (or was it Blair "turn"?), although I think that an unbiased view does suggests that the very same thing happened to the Democratic Party in the US as well. But it gets murky when applied to administrations that pre-date Reagan. Arguably attempts at implementing some kind of third-wayish philosophy among leftists goes back way further than Reagan, but it seems that the era of Reagan and Thatcher were instrumental in shaping the Third Way into a coherent philosphy.