Conclusion
On an academic level, there is no doubt that Anthony Giddens’ analysis on modernity, post-traditional society, globalisation and social-democracy has had a global success. He has become famous outside the academic field thanks to his theoretical views on the Third Way.
He has even strongly influenced politics in United Kingdom over the past ten years. When Schröder and Blair signed the manifesto for a Third Way in 1999, most of Europe was ruled by social-democrat governments and the Third Way was expected to expand all over continental Europe. But this did not happen, at least officially. Why ?
According to Bruno Amable (see Amable, Bruno. Les cinq capitalismes : diversité des systèmes économiques et sociaux dans la mondialisation. Paris : Le Seuil, coll. Economie humaine, 2005), the Third Way couls be said to be disruptive to the continental European model of capitalism because it purports to modify some of its key elements and the coherence upon which it is based. Continental Europeans have not accepted such a pragmatic model which demands people follow and adapt to globalisation. For them, security requires a certain amount of stability. But will they escape from the Third Way ? Most European countries, if not all of them, are reforming their social models in a Third Way-like manner, in order to preserve them for political reasons.