Leftism Reinvented (Harvard University Press, June 2018), by Stephanie Mudge, associate professor of sociology, analyzes the history of the Swedish and German Social Democrats, the British Labour Party, and the American Democratic Party. Tracing their shift away from promising protections for the poor and disenfranchised, the book raises new questions about the roles and responsibilities of left-leaning parties — and their experts — in politics today. The book develops a century-long comparative, historical, and biographically-sensitive analysis of the American Democrats, the German and Swedish Social Democrats, and the British Labour Party. Focusing on the central role experts play as interpreters, representatives, and spokespersons inside political parties, the book tracks how close mid-20th Century ties between economics professions and center-left parties hitched their fates to each other--such that when economics changed, left parties changed with it. The result was a new role for economists as spokespersons for markets and, alongside them, the rise of new strategic experts and policy specialists who spoke for 'what wins' and 'what works.' The result, however, was a declining capacity to meaningfully represent the historical poor, working, and middle-class constituencies of left parties.

Stephanie L. Mudge is Associate Professor of Sociology and Chancellor's Fellow at the University of California, Davis, and Series Co-editor (with Anthony Chen) of Cambridge Studies in Historical Sociology. She is a historical, political, and economic sociologist specialized in the theoretically-driven analysis of Western parties and center-left/progressive politics, economic ideologies and institutions, monetary government (central banks) and the politics thereof, and the relationship between politics and expertise. Mudge completed her PhD in sociology at UC-Berkeley and has held visiting and postdoctoral fellowships at MaxPo/Sciences Po (Paris), the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI, in the UK), the Max Planck Center for the Study of Societies (MPIfG, Cologne, Germany), and the European University Institute (Florence, Italy).

View the book at Harvard University Press