Social Democracy

On a global scale, social democracy is an ideology of major international political force. The Socialist International has about 150 members (or associated) parties in 110 countries, of which many are electorally successful and quite a few are in government. In addition, several social democratic parties have produced a number of political leaders with an international standing, for instance, Germany's Willy Brandt, France's François Mitterrand, Gro Harlem Brundtland from Norway, Olof Palme from Sweden, and Tony Blair from the United Kingdom. The political ideology of such a broad movement is by nature diffuse, as it includes parties with various histories and from all continents. However, at a very general level, contemporary social democratic ideology can be understood as a combination of “negative” and “positive” rights. On the one hand, social democratic ideology is liberal, with unquestioning respect for human rights and parliamentary democracy. On the other hand, social democracy strongly favors governments' obligation to provide citizens with a number of positive rights in the form of social services and social insurance systems. In this focus on social [Page 1561]rights, social democracy differs not only from free market liberal ideology but also from various forms of conservatism in this emphasis on social and economic equality. Individuals should be entitled to resources that make it possible for them to break away from “preordained” structural limits regardless of whether they are based on social class, gender roles, religion, ethnicity, or culture. Thus, social democratic ideology is strongly connected to the idea that major social change can be launched through parliamentary democracy and stand in sharp contrast to the economic determinism of both orthodox Marxism and neoliberalism.

The main thrust of contemporary social democracy is that market-based economic prosperity and a country's international economic competitiveness are fully compatible with an encompassing, publicly provided system of social insurances and social services, the latter often including huge investments in education and health care. Social democrats, therefore, during the past decades have been in conflict with proponents of the neoliberal economic agenda, who argue that public spending hampers economic growth and individual responsibility. In addition, many social democratic parties, especially those in the Nordic countries, have been pushing for increased gender equality through policies such as subsidized day care, equal pay, and generous publicly funded support for parental leave. Lately, issues concerning environmental protection and minority and immigrant rights have been added to the social democratic agenda.

Concerning the market economy (or capitalism), European social democracy came to abandon its anticapitalist rhetoric during the 1940s and 1950s. Keynesianism was viewed as providing social democracy with policy measures to intervene in the capitalist economic system so as to avoid the type of dramatic crisis that hit the world economy in the early 1930s. However, following the idea of positive rights, social democratic ideology does not embrace an unregulated market economy. On the contrary, the view of markets is pragmatic, which often has resulted in an extensive set of regulations. The impact of social democratic parties during the post–World War II period has been particularly strong in the Nordic countries, Austria, and the United Kingdom and, to some extent, also in the Netherlands, Germany (i.e., former West Germany), Australia, and New Zealand.

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