Organized as a series of tightly linked, comparative assessments, Mapping the West European Left 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...