Radical Center (politics) - History of The Terms

History of The Terms

In 1955, Geoffrey Crowther, then editor of the UK publication The Economist, declared, "It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position." While the term radical center or similar expressions have been used in various ways since at least the 1970s (like "rigorously center" by the French Giscardian movement or the Portuguese Democratic and Social Centre – People's Party during its foundation), its use became more common due to the Reform Party and Ross Perot, who were frequently described as representing the radical middle due to their attempts to partisanize those portions of the American electorate. Despite a strong showing in the 1996 U.S. presidential election, today the Reform Party is not generally perceived as a major player in national politics, though it has impacted state elections, notably with Jesse Ventura becoming Governor of Minnesota.

Today, the term radical center is most commonly associated with a movement that does not explicitly claim descent from the Reform Party or its ideas, but rather draws its inspiration from the book The Third Way by Anthony Giddens (1998) and Giddens' highly-regarded follow-up book The Third Way and Its Critics (2000). In the U.S., third way politics is most actively represented by the New America Foundation and its book by Ted Halstead and Michael Lind, The Radical Center (2001). Subsequent introductions to radical centrist politics include, most notably, Matthew Miller's book The Two Percent Solution (2003) and Mark Satin's book Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now (2004). (Interestingly, Lind was once a conservative, Miller was once an aide in President Bill Clinton's White House, and Satin was a co-author of the U.S. Green Party's founding document from the 1980s, "Ten Key Values")

The term radical middle appears to have been spontaneously invented by several different communities around the turn of the millennium, apparently in response to frustration with both extremism and moderation. An early use appears to be from Gordon Fee's kingdom theology course at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the 1970s, which helped inspire the Vineyard Movement. He used the term "radical middle" to contrast the evangelical focus on the future kingdom of God with the Pentecostal emphasis on the present kingdom of God. But the first known use of the term "radical middle" was by Jules Feiffer in a comic strip that appears in Hold Me!, a collection published by Random House in 1962.