Wednesday, December 11, 2019

The roots of Muscat's Labour (2) - Michael Briguglio


Last week my blog published my 2001 MA thesis in Sociology 'Ideological and Strategic Shifts From Old Labour to New Labour In Malta' which compared Malta's Labour Party in the 1970s and 80s with that of the 1990s. I had found similarities and shifts within Labour, and such characteristics may help us understand Labour's power today. 

In 2010 I published a follow-up to this study. Entitled 'Malta's Labour Party and the Politics of Hegemony', the paper argued that Labour's strategy under Joseph Muscat, which I dubbed 'politics without adversaries' is akin to convenient alliance-building for electoral purposes, one that may turn out to be effective only for maintaining the status quo. In hindsight, and taking into consideration Malta's current political crisis, we can say that under Muscat, Labour's alliances exceeded the boundaries of what we normally include within electoral strategy in liberal democracies. 

The paper was published in peer-reviewed academic journal 'Socialism and Democracy'  (Routledge, Taylor & Francis), and can be accessed from these links: