Third Way

The "third way" is a political term applied to a variety of "third choice" options that some offer as an alternative to dichotomous situations which may otherwise appear polarized.

Examples of "third ways" include:

• The "Third Way" of ordoliberal economics between Soviet-style socialism and the free-market economic order of the Anglo-American type, leading to the social market economy.

• The "Third Way" idea of former social-democrats which replaces socialism with capitalism and a minimum of socialism, the strategy of radical centrist politics to bring the social-democratic parties back to power where they lost elections in favour of more economic ideas than pure social democracy. The Third Way has been promoted heavily by Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder and Bill Clinton.

• A "third way" approach to Cold War-era foreign policy, siding with neither the US nor the Soviet Union (this in turn spawned the phrase third world). See in that regard the Non-Aligned Movement.

• A "third way" approach to the concept of Church and State, neither theocratic nor atheist

• Benito Mussolini often described fascism as the third way between capitalism and socialism. In that vein, there is a modern neo-fascist movement known as the International Third Position or Third Positionists and there is a neo-fascist party in Britain known as the Third Way (UK) (unrelated to Tony Blair's concept of the Third Way.)

In the late 1990s, several groups independently began using the term radical centre to refer to certain kinds of third way thinking.