The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (275 page)

Policy research institutions of two kinds:

(1) Organizations which seek to assist in the strategic co-ordination of government policies, establish relative priorities, offer new policy choices, and ensure that the implications of policy options are fully considered. They originated in America in the 1960s, and have been copied in the United Kingdom in such institutions as the independent Policy Studies Institute, and the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS), which was created by the Health government in 1971 as a government think tank only to be disbanded in 1983.
(2) Organizations of an explicitly partisan interest that seek to offer policy advice to chosen recipients. These also originated in the United States, with, for example, the Urban Institute or the Brookings Institute for Democrats, and the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute for Republicans. UK examples include the Centre for Policy Studies (Conservative-supporting) and the Institute of Public Policy Research (Labour-supporting).

JBr 

 
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See
international socialism
.

 
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Parliamentary debate on the final form of a piece of legislation. Usually the third reading is a formality, unless the measure is particularly controversial ( See also
bill
).

 
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The parliamentary regime that emerged almost by chance in 1871 after the defeat of France by the Prussians. It was characterized by chronic instability, reflecting the country's deep social and political divisions, its fragmented party system, and the parochialism of its politicians. Lacking legitimacy and unable to handle the domestic and external crises of the 1930s, the regime collapsed in 1940 under the impact of the German invasion.
IC 

 
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Generally, any ideology that claims that it lies in between two traditional approaches that the writer believes are too limited. Specifically, the ideology claimed to underlie the actions of
New Labour
in Britain after the succession of Tony Blair to the leadership of the Labour Party in 1994. In this case, the two old ways are often understood to be socialism and capitalism. However, both its main ideologue in the UK (Anthony Giddens ) and Prime Minister Blair emphasize that it is supposed to be a modernized form of social democracy, rather than an alternative to it.
Although critics of the New Labour Third Way claim that it has no empirical content, its defenders see it as a route between what was seen as the excessive paternalism (and statism) of traditional left policies and the excessive individual personal responsibility of the right. The policy of welfare to work - dubbed ‘tough love’ by British thirdwayers - was an early example: a combination of a greater emphasis on personal responsibility to find work backed with the threat of withdrawal of benefits, but at the same time a reinforcing of a framework of public support). For a while in the late 1990s, the German Social Democratic Party imitated New Labour with a claim to pursue
die neue Mitte
, but that claim too disappeared in the 2000s. The concept has a modest salience in the USA where it has become central to the philosophy of the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist pressure group in the Democrats. See also
social exclusion
.
IM 

 
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The precise historical origins of the term are disputed, but no one doubts its application during the
Cold War
to the less developed countries that were members of neither the advanced industrial capitalist West (First World) nor the rival socialist bloc of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The Third World was politically non-aligned; and much of it consists of former colonies. Subsequently it came to denote the relatively poor countries mainly of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (collectively also referred to as the South), distinguished from the richer countries of the North largely on economic, not ideological grounds.
Always liable to mislead, the term Third World may have outlived its usefulness. First, it suggests a uniformity among countries that are extremely varied economically as well as culturally, socially, and politically. They include newly industrializing countries and what the
World Bank
terms middle-income countries, capitalsurplus oil exporters, and the chronically poor low-income or least developed countries (often called the Fourth World). They all share an objection to colonization, and to the other forms of foreign domination that they may have experienced in the past ( see also
imperialism
), but they hardly constitute a cohesive political force ( see also
non-alignment
).
Secondly, now that the Second World has ceased to exist, following the end of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the appearance there of such typically Third World traits as absolute poverty, can there still be a Third World?
PBI