Never has the Left held power in so many advanced economies, yet never has the difference that this makes to economic policy been so hard to specify. Across a range of European countries and in Australia governments of the Left have struggled to chart a distinctive course in the face of the neoliberal backlash against state intervention, the welfare state, and guaranteed full employment. This volume is the first to examine the records of these governments in securing high employment and a more equal distribution of income in the face of slow growth and global pressures to reduce inflation. Detailed studies of governments from Mitterrand to Blair and from Keating to Papandreou by leading writers from the countries are complemented by surveys of experience of the welfare state and of the ideological and historical background to these governments' attempts to further the objectives of social democracy.