This authoritative survey provides the first comprehensive map of the trials and tribuations of the West European left over the last decade. Organized as a series of tightly linked, comparative assessments, it provides a guide to the state of the left in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Spain. While all the essays are detailed historical compositions setting recent crises and dilemmas in a longer perspective reaching back into the postwar settlement they articulate original insights into the contemporary political conjuncture. Why did Swedish social democracy lose hegemony and direction while its Norwegian counterpart showed unexpected resilience? What was the background to the Danish rebellion against Maastricht? What are the prospects for the SPD and the Greens in post-unification Germany? Should the British Labour Party embrace electoral reform? What propelled the French Socialist Party from triumph to disaster? And why did the Italian left fail to