1.1 Introduction
This collection advances an alternative understanding of reformist politics, one that we refer to as practical social democracy.Footnote 1 By ‘practical’, we mean that social democracy should not be understood simply as a theoretical concept or as based on a clearly defined and well-established ideology. While social democracy is frequently characterised by core ideological commitments to reformist measures, or as ‘a program to mitigate the effects of private ownership and market allocation’ (Przeworski Reference Przeworski1991: 7), we argue that social democracy – just like any other party family – should also be studied as a phenomenon challenged in its activities and its developments by the logic and multidimensional nature of political parties and the circumstances within which they operate. Accordingly, social democracy entails a set of practices and activities which include, for example, the manner in which reformist parties have responded to changing societal circumstances and have made practical trade-offs in response to circumstances and sometimes competing and changing demands from voters, members, and the surrounding parliamentary landscapes. At the same time, parties have had to reconcile the practical decisions that have to be taken now with ideological goals that speak of a distant future. While engaging with a range of existing theories and earlier research, this introduction outlines the key features of the agenda that we advance in this volume.
Throughout the twentieth century, social democratic parties have been among the most successful party families across Europe and many other parts of the world. In Sweden, the Social Democrats achieved a hegemonic status, serving in government for over four decades without interruption from 1932 to 1976.Footnote 2 In the United Kingdom, Labour’s record has been more chequered, but the party secured landslide parliamentary victories in 1945, 1966, 1997, and 2001 (and of course more recently in 2024). In many other countries, social democrats have governed alone or in coalition governments for prolonged periods. At other times, while in opposition, reformist parties have been the key contenders for power. Frequently, social democrats have shaped policy debates and established the parameters of societal interventions, most obviously with regard to welfare. It is not possible to understand the political history of the twentieth century or the nature of party systems and political competition across Europe and beyond without analysing the nature and significance of social democratic parties, and it is unsurprising that social democracy has attracted much scholarly attention.
Yet much of the current literature focuses on the decline of social democracy. The crisis and decline, death even, of the reformist project is a frequently established trope, one offset by occasional reversals (see, for example, Lavelle Reference Lavelle2008). In the British case, paralleling Jim Tomlinson’s ideology of decline concerning economic performance, there have been persistent claims about the apparently irreversible collapse of the Labour vote (see Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson, Addison and Jones2005 and Reference Tomlinson2016). The problems confronting social democrats are well established, and we do not dispute them. Manifestly, social democratic parties face significant challenges. For much of the post-1945 period, as political parties, social democrats governed based on an understanding that ‘[w]hat was socially just was also economically efficient’ (Green-Pedersen and van Kersbergen Reference Green-Pederson and van Kersbergen2002: 508, 510). Reformists argued that they could solve the practical problem of delivering on their ideological vision through yet another set of sweeping social welfare reforms (Hinnfors Reference Hinnfors2006: 126; Hinnfors Reference Hinnfors2017). However, as traditional economic governance formulas appeared to unravel (Lindvall Reference Lindvall2004), social democratic parties ran into various problems. As certain economic measures no longer seemed to align with evolving regimes, social democrats began to re-evaluate their model, asking fundamental questions about practical decisions, such as, did they need to ‘jettison’ their established policies to achieve their core goals (see Berman Reference Berman, Cronin, Ross and Shoch2011: 47)? Would a lack of delivery in terms of old and established policy commitments ‘potentially antagonize their own activists’ and force the party to renegotiate coalition agreements or lose voters (Müller and Strøm Reference Müller and Strøm1999: 9)? Or can they proactively formulate new policies to shape the circumstances in which they find themselves, for example, by reorganising the welfare state to strengthen support for the social democratic model (Rothstein Reference Rothstein1998; Reference Rothstein2001)? Acute dilemmas confronted reformist actors who responded in myriad ways with varying results. The general and often unrelenting emphasis on decline masks considerable variation in terms of strategies and outcomes.
In such circumstances, we argue that we should not seek to understand reformism purely in terms of an overarching and interrelated set of theories revolving around particular values and principles, ones which need to be implemented as a complete and immutable package. Equally, we do not assume that reformist parties prioritise electoral victory in a direct and uncomplicated fashion. Rather, distinct and varied activities help to define the reformist experience. Social democracy involves parties engaging in a variety of practices and trade-offs, some of which are day-to-day and mundane, including established patterns of actions, a capacity to react to circumstances, the ability to learn, to adapt, and to evolve, and the adoption of norms. Social democratic parties – like other political organisations – are multidimensional entities whose complex structures entail myriad relationships and procedures, many entailing necessary trade-offs, adjustments, and compromises.
This volume develops a framework to understand such practices and trade-offs, one which focuses on social democracy through the lens of party theory and highlights the interactions between organisational, electoral, and policy-making processes. It explores these processes and how these factors shape social democracy across countries and across policy areas. We maintain that such complexities and the practical challenges faced by these parties may shape social democracy as much as the theory or the values upon which it is based. Accordingly, in addition to studying reformism in terms of theoretical and conceptual model-based approaches, we argue that the different activities of social democratic parties can be analysed empirically in terms of their engagement with each other. We highlight three broad ways of examining these trade-offs: institutionalisation (where practices can become entrenched), policy-making (where a process of balancing competing priorities and domains shapes policy-making and where learning and experimentation can lead to innovation as new means are considered to reach existing goals), and rhetoric (where discourse and language may be used in a strategic fashion and also constrain social democrats). Moreover, operating at different times and across various countries, parties of the left have, of course, focused on a wide range of issues: accordingly, our chapters emphasise the importance of contextual factors to any understanding of reformism and to the ways in which trade-offs are made in practice.
Practical social democracy builds on a variety of influential approaches that have shaped scholarly debates about social democracy, including governmental, electoral, and organisational accounts, which we survey in Section 1.3. Following that, in Section 1.4 we lay out the core ideas underpinning practical social democracy and outline our argument in more detail. In Section 1.5, we briefly reflect on the broader significance of this agenda. Throughout, we highlight the varied contributions made by the contributors to this volume. First, in Section 1.2, we briefly explain the focus on practicality as the basis for a deeper understanding of reformist politics.
1.2 Practical Political Parties
The distinctiveness of our approach lies in the focus on the practical challenges that social democracy faces in relation to its embeddedness within political parties. There is, of course, much literature dissecting the nature and development of political parties. Back in 1964, in his classic text, Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups, V. O. Key Jr. mapped out a typology to track the different activities regarding the United States political system that help to define them. He distinguished between (Key Reference Key1964: 163–165):
Key focused on the actors in each aspect of the party: politicians, voters and identifiers, and bureaucrats and members, respectively (see Aldrich Reference Aldrich1995; Schafer Reference Shafer, Maxwell and Shields2011). Without being applied to particular cases, other scholars have identified similar features concerning the strategic ‘arenas’ that parties need to consider (on voters, members, and other parties see Sjöblom Reference Sjöblom1968). With a range of cases examining parties across different countries, Wolfgang Müller and Kaare Strøm emphasised that, alongside ideological goals, political parties often have to make tough choices between seeking office or seeking more voters: they subtitled their 1999 volume, How Political Parties in Western Europe Make Hard Decisions. Each of these accounts stresses the potential trade-offs and dilemmas that parties must confront (see also Harmel and Janda Reference Harmel and Janda1994: 266; Kitschelt Reference Kitschelt, Kitschelt, Lange, Marks and Stephens1999: 322–333).
Certainly, parties aspire to govern, implementing some sort of policy programme while taking account of whatever policy legacies they encounter. But they also need to win power through the electoral process via appeals to voters, and they require an organisational structure to find candidates for office, to delineate their programmes, and to coordinate the activities of their supporters. Such a structure often (though not always) revolves around the party’s ideological commitments and values. Each feature of Key’s typology can be considered.
Party-in-the-government: through being in office, political parties seek to take control of government and implement public policies. They need to respond to policy legacies and consider how statecraft – the art of managing the governing process – might assist in the attainment of their goals. Governing often involves power-sharing through coalitions with implications in terms of bargains over decision-making and compromises over reformist goals.
Parties-in-the-electorate: parties also have an existence among voters in terms of seeking electoral support (Key Reference Key1964: 163). They try to win elections, usually on the basis of manifestos and, if they are in office seeking re-election, on their record. They campaign and they contest. But they also have some sort of basis in society as voters develop identifications with parties (see Green et al. Reference Green, Palmquist and Schickler2002). Sometimes decisions intended to broaden the appeal of a party in the short run can subsequently erode its support among the voters previously identified with the party – as has happened with the German and Swedish Social Democrats as well as British Labour (Przeworski and Sprague Reference Przeworski and Sprague1986; Karreth et al. Reference Karreth, Polk and Allen2013).
Parties as organisations: as organisations, parties recruit and nominate candidates for office, while developing grassroots bases as well as national and subnational structures at the regional and constituency level. They attract members, often on the basis of their policy commitments, so providing a basis for political participation. By developing manifestos, they offer an aggregation of policy issues. A particular feature of the organisational structure of many social democratic parties concerns their close relationship with organised labour. The organisational life of a political party may go, of course, beyond the activities associated with the pursuit of power: it can entail much broader cultural activities covering the collective life of a political community. Examining the interaction of reformist practices in diverse arenas allows us to unravel the complexity of activities pursued by social democratic actors.
Such activities are clearly significant for any political party pursuing its goals. At the same time, the distinct undertakings are not synchronised and may not dovetail with each other neatly. They are often in tension. Hard choices can seldom be avoided. The strain between party activists and more moderate voters, though contested by some scholars, is broadly well established as these groups often have divergent policy preferences. The pursuit of reformist measures in office, in turn, has consequences for the electoral strategy and internal organisation of any party. Such trade-offs take place within particular and distinct contexts. Political parties must take account of the circumstances in which they find themselves, carefully considering the policy legacies that they encounter and the impact of exogenous factors. Issues are rarely settled once and for all. Practical social democracy explores how social democratic parties confront such diverse demands and make the necessary trade-offs: it examines how the interactions between these three dimensions of a political party combine to influence policies and strategies. In the present volume, alongside established scholars of social democracy, we use these aspects from the tradition of work by such writers as V. O. Key, Gunnar Sjöblom, Wolfgang Müller, and Kaare Strøm. We apply them to a single party family with case studies from a range of countries and policy areas, examining the strains of conflicting activities that are especially acute for social democratic parties.
Most reformist parties are likely to have an ideological foundation based on a coherent set of principles, one that appeals to and is reflective of its membership. But the implementation of such an ideological programme cannot be read off from such principles in a straightforward manner. The development of policies and their implementation requires an electoral strategy to attain office and an approach to office that takes account of the governing process and inherited legacies. Moreover, a party’s ideological commitments will usually containe vague and elusive elements, partly in order to ensure some flexibility in the implementation of reformist measures. Practical social democracy revolves around the dilemmas that social democrats confront as reformist actors combining these different pursuits. Putting together a strategy to secure certain policy goals will involve trade-offs and compromises. The context in which those trade-offs and compromises take place will shape the strategy that is adopted. Practical social democracy elucidates the importance of this context and the process through which parties make such trade-offs. This notion of practical orientation is similar to Steven Levitsky’s (Reference Levitsky2001) account of party adaptation in labour parties as they respond to changed environmental conditions: our account differs to the extent that it emphasises the ongoing compromised choices a party must make in balancing the different demands with which it is confronted. For Levitsky, ‘sticky’ organisational structures result from routinisation; in our analysis, they also result from the competing demands upon parties and from the complex environments in which they must operate.
All political parties seeking office are likely to face similar pressures, so in that sense practicality may not be unique to social democrats. To some extent these kinds of trade-offs characterise other party families as well. What makes social democratic parties distinctive with respect to balancing concerns across multiple dimensions relates to the fact they have historically had a mass membership, which is why organisational imperatives are especially significant. Reformist parties need to involve their members with a commitment to reformist values in a way that may not be the case with more leadership-centred parties. The close relations that reformist parties enjoy with organised labour offers another layer of complexity. On top of this, reformist parties may seek to govern according to established patterns and norms. Practical social democracy explores how such tensions shape reformist politics and the process of translating progressive ideas into policy outcomes.
While practical social democracy can shed light on many aspects of social democracy, two points need to be emphasised. First, we do not claim that political parties, and social democratic parties in particular, are always and necessarily practical. ‘Non-practical’ political parties are likely to be inflexible, dogmatic, and less willing to compromise or trade off competing concerns, perhaps given strong ideological convictions or a sense that certain goals are non-negotiable and need to be pursued at all cost. Second, although many of the examples discussed in this book or in the wider literature on social democracy have been regarded as successful, practical social democracy is not a theory of success. It is ultimately an empirical question whether any particular instance of social democracy could be regarded as successful based on particular normative or performance criteria. Social democratic governments have also faced serious crises, such as the 1976 British International Monetary Fund crisis or the pressures precipitating President Mitterrand’s famous U-turn in 1983. In some cases the policy challenges may be so complex and even intractable that social democrats and other parties struggle to balance to balance competing concerns (see also the discussion of the climate crisis and immigration policy in Chapters 3 and 16).
1.3 Existing Accounts of Social Democracy
There is, of course, a large and well-established scholarly literature on social democracy, which has focused on a wide range of theoretical and empirical issues, often in the context of comparative studies, contemporary single-country cases, or more historical work. We highlight several broad strands which are not mutually exclusive and constitute important reference points for this study. Much of this literature gives relatively little attention to the organisational imperatives of parties as vehicles for the attainment of social democracy. Existing accounts neglect the particular characteristics of party structures and consequential trade-offs that shape decision-making. In effect much of this literature conceptualises parties as a black box implementing reformist programmes. Practical social democracy unpacks the black box and the significance of these factors for reformist politics.
Prevailing research into social democracy often emphasises the structural and institutional context in which social democratic parties must operate, highlighting – sometimes in a rather sweeping and deterministic manner – the impact that such an environment must have on any reformist initiatives. One variant of this approach suggests that, under capitalism, all governments – social democratic or other – are effectively structurally dependent upon capital and capitalists. Such dependency has a profound effect on watering down the contents of reformist initiatives. Especially influential in this regard was Adam Przeworski’s pathbreaking 1980 paper in New Left Review, ‘Social Democracy as a Historical Phenomenon’, which subsequently formed the core of his monograph, Capitalism and Social Democracy (Przeworski Reference Przeworski1980; Reference Przeworski1985). Przeworski’s argument was straightforward. Left parties pursuing reformist goals would encounter severe structural constraints, largely imposed by capitalism (earlier research on this theme includes Coates Reference Coates1975; Miliband Reference Miliband1958; and Panitch Reference Panitch1976; as well as Taylor Reference Taylor1960). The impact of these constraints was such, Przeworski claimed, that any reformism would be reduced to some sort of minimal content – in effect abandoning any vestiges of radicalism. Przeworski’s analysis gave rise to what was termed the structural dependence of the state on capital (the phrase was the title of a paper he had co-authored with Michael Wallerstein in Reference Przeworski and Wallerstein1988). The growing literature concerning globalisation and the apparent erosion of state autonomy only served to strengthen the nihilism about the structural constraints confronting social democrats.
Other research about social democracy’s fate focused on the electoral record of such parties, usually highlighting their ostensible failures at the ballot box. Traditionally, social democrats appealed to working-class voters for electoral support on the basis of a seemingly natural alignment with socialist values. But, given that the working class has never constituted a majority of the electorate anywhere, such an appeal raised serious challenges for any social democratic party seeking to win office (see Gay Reference Gay1962). Complementing his work on structural dependence, the electoral impasse was a central aspect of Przeworski’s analysis. Together with John Sprague, in Paper Stones, Przeworski offered a bleak evaluation of electoral socialism. To win office, radical politicians needed to secure support beyond their working-class base and so were likely to moderate their policy positions. At the same time, however, such a strategy would alienate traditional proletarian voters. Social democrats were trapped: any new votes were insufficient to offset the loss of traditional support and so win power. In effect, reformists were condemned to permanent opposition: ‘They are forced to go back and forth between an emphasis on class and an appeal to the nation. They seem unable to win either way’ (Przeworski Reference Przeworski1985: 29).
Arguments about a structurally doomed social democracy have not gone unchallenged and, through the 1980s, scholars contested Przeworski’s conclusions. Gøsta Esping-Andersen (Reference Esping-Andersen1985), Walter Korpi (Reference Korpi1983) and John Stephens (Reference Stephens1979), among others, often called ‘labour movement’ theorists, separately offered accounts which broadly emphasised the capacity of social democrats to shape the circumstances in which they found themselves. A robust labour movement could pressure capitalists into making concessions (see also O’Connor and Olsen Reference O’Connor and Olsen1998; Korpi Reference Korpi2005). Scholars have also disputed gloomy conclusions about electoral breakdown. Labour movement theorists, such as Esping-Andersen (Reference Esping-Andersen1985), highlighted the capacity of social democrats to mobilise voters, effectively building a cross-class coalition. A strong, well-organised, and disciplined reformist movement could secure electoral support and pursue social democratic goals. In such a manner, Francis Castles argued that the electoral dilemma might be transformed into ‘virtuous circles’, with reformist measures providing ‘a sure foundation for continued electoral success’ (Castles Reference Castles1978: 124 and 129). While the debate between Przeworski and assorted labour movement theorists remained essentially unresolved, it dominated discussion about social democracy well into the 1990s (see also Kitschelt Reference Kitschelt1994).
More recently, research on reformism’s electoral performance has tended to focus on its seemingly inexorable decline and crisis. As this literature has demonstrated, the electoral fortunes of social democratic parties have deteriorated across much of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in recent decades (Keating and McCrone Reference Keating and McCrone2013; Cronin et al. Reference Cronin, Ross and Shoch2011; Mainwaring and Kennedy Reference Manwaring and Kennedy2018). A detailed study drawing on data from thirty-one countries over a hundred years finds that most of the fall in the social democratic vote over recent decades is associated with the decline of the industrial working class as well as, to some extent, changes in the public sector (Benedetto et al. Reference Benedetto, Hix and Mastrotocco2020). Some scholars working within this tradition have stressed the decline of the traditional proletariat and of unionisation within the workforce (Pontusson Reference Pontusson1995; Reference Pontusson2013; Hassel Reference Hassel, Beramendi, Häusermann, Kitschelt and Kriesi2015). Recent work has considered the impact of a range of structural changes, notably related to the rise of the knowledge economy, and the challenges of adjusting social democratic programmes in response to these trends, various new demands from a wide range of social and occupational groups, and the growing significance of other left-wing parties (Häusermann and Kitschelt Reference Häusermann and Kitschelt2024). Other scholars have simply emphasised the difficulties of winning office at the ballot box as electorates became increasingly fragmented and volatile (Eley Reference Eley2002). Reformist parties faced a new challenge of building alliances between what remained of their traditional class base, what might be termed the new ‘precariat’, and those socially liberal middle-class voters who had turned towards the left (sometimes on the basis of non-economic issues, such as environmentalism). Stephanie Mudge has offered a historically based analysis identifying different stages that the social democratic project has moved through (Mudge Reference Mudge2008; Reference Mudge2018). Emphasising the role of party economists in shaping such a course, she claims that socialism gave way to Keynesianism, which later developed into an embrace of many neoliberal principles (on historical parallels, see Andersson Reference Andersson2006).
Another research focus in recent decades has been inspired by the electoral success enjoyed by social democratic parties in newer democracies in other parts of the world beginning in the last few decades of the twentieth century (Sandbrook et al. Reference Sandbrook, Edelman, Heller and Teichman2007). Much of this literature has focused on Latin America (Lievesley and Ludlam Reference Lievesley and Ludlam2009). This literature has analysed the impact of left governments on social policy and inequality (Huber and Stephens Reference Huber and Stephens2012) as well as the diversity of left politics across the region, especially in the context of the ‘Pink Tide’ or the revival of leftism in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Levitsky and Roberts Reference Levitsky and Roberts2011). While much of the traditional literature focused on the lack of a labour party or socialism in the United States (Archer Reference Archer2008; Sombart Reference Sombart1977), some studies have started to integrate the United States into comparative studies of reformist politics (Cronin et al. Reference Cronin, Ross and Shoch2011; Mudge Reference Mudge2018) or even as a case that has gradually been developing into a distinctive form of social democracy (Kenworthy Reference Kenworthy2014; Reference Kenworthy2020). The re-emergence of social democratic parties in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of communist party rule has also attracted extensive scholarly attention (Ishiyama Reference Ishiyama1997; Grzymała-Busse Reference Grzymała-Busse2002; Snegovaya Reference Snegovaya2024; see also Chapter 16 for a discussion of practical social democracy in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe).
Contemporary debates can, at times, we suggest, be overly stark in their conclusions, suggesting that social democracy is relentlessly becoming neoliberal and inescapably in electoral decline (for the British case, see Hay Reference Hay1999; as well as Hay and Watson Reference Hay and Watson1998; Reference Hay and Watson2003). The focus of this literature on neoliberalisation masks, we suggest, some of the fluidity, complexity, and contestation surrounding social democracy. It is also not clear whether such accounts can explain the renewed interest in social democracy in various parts of the Global South, such as the ‘Pink Tide’ in Latin America. Within its broad goals and its practical character, there are many varieties of reformism on offer, a reflection of the diverse choices made by social democrats and the contexts within which they operate (on varieties of welfare state see Esping-Andersen Reference Esping-Andersen1990; on the economy see Hall and Soskice Reference Hall and Soskice2001). From the statism of postwar British Labour (discussed in Chapter 5) to the theoretical concerns of the Rehn–Meidner model, from Keynesian welfarism to the Meidner plan of the 1970s, alongside other more modest corporatist experiments, social democracy exists in myriad forms (see Pontusson Reference Pontusson, Cronin, Ross and Shoch2011 on later developments in Sweden). The social model developed from the 1980s onwards, frequently associated with European Commission president Jacques Delors, offers a further indication of the variety encompassing reformism. The social model, associated with pan-European interventions, signposts an approach that is explicitly flexible and evolutionary. In the 1990s, Tony Blair’s New Labour articulated a Third Way as an outlook that it claimed was an original position, distinct from both traditional social democracy and neoliberalism. Many commentators regarded the Third Way as neoliberal, although its architects would challenge such a claim (Giddens Reference Giddens1998). Recent attempts to move beyond Tony Blair’s New Labour are hard to interpret (see Chapter 10). But the grip that Corbynism exerted on Labour between 2015 and 2020 evidenced a deep concern about neoliberalism in some parts of the Labour Party (Guinan and O’Neill Reference Guinan and O’Neill2018). Even during the Blair years, aspects of Labour’s politics contained commitments to interventionism and redistribution that resonated directly with social democracy or could be said to have built on social democratic principles, albeit values that were interpreted in various ways (Bevir Reference Bevir2012; Hinnfors Reference Hinnfors2006). The broad scope of such variation in social democracy reflects the different reactions of social democratic parties to the governing, electoral, and organisational demands upon them (see, for example, Anderson Reference Anderson2001). Encountering varied circumstances, social democrats respond to such demands with different strategic choices.
1.4 Practical Social Democracy: Towards an Agenda
Back in the early 1970s, Anthony Crosland, a politician frequently hailed as the leading theorist of British social democracy in the postwar period, angrily swiped at his critics, stating that he had no intention of endlessly debating the theory of equality: ‘I observe that there exist extreme inequalities in Britain … A practical politician [like he was] … is not required to answer the stern examiner’s question: how much equality ultimately? He has plenty of harsh, specific and unmerited inequalities to combat in the next ten years; and a decade is my timespan, not eternity’ (Crosland Reference Crosland1974: 16–17). It is worth noting the extent to which Crosland’s Reference Crosland1956 magnum opus, The Future of Socialism, was an essentially empirical account of existing arrangements in social democratic Britain (Wickham-Jones Reference Wickham-Jones2007; see also Chapter 5). Others have argued that the essence of Swedish social democracy is its pragmatism, as captured in an oft-cited passage from Marquis Childs:
the wisdom of the Swedes lies above all in their willingness to compromise, to meet what appears to be reality. They have not been ‘bound’ by a ‘system’, nor have they been committed to dogma. In a sense they are the ultimate pragmatists interested only in the social order. This may explain why many have argued that their contribution to political and social thought has been slight. (Childs Reference Childs1961: 161; see also Tilton Reference Tilton1990)
In developing the notion of practical social democracy, we aim to go beyond the recent preoccupations of much of the scholarly literature. We highlight the practices entailed in reformist politics and put such practices at the centre of the analysis, emphasising the endeavours that social democracy revolves around. In many circumstances, rather than offering a model-based formula or theoretical abstractions, we can identify reformism in terms of the wide range of activities that it embodies and the specific contexts within which social democratic parties find themselves. This volume focuses on practical social democracy through the lens of three broad themes: institutionalisation and the evolution of social democracy; social democratic policy-making; and rhetoric, language, and ideology.
Institutionalisation and contestation. A key set of questions associated with social democratic practices relates to their durability and trajectories over time, which is the core focus of Part I. Many studies of social democracy have highlighted the flexibility and responsiveness of social democratic parties to evolving circumstances and the willingness of social democratic leaders such as Eduard Bernstein, the German theorist and politician, and Hjalmar Branting, the social democratic prime minister of Sweden for much of the first half of the 1920s, to modify key features of their agendas. Yet there are also important elements of continuity in social democratic practices, raising questions about the circumstances under which social democratic practices become institutionalised and embedded. Such institutionalisation – for instance, the introduction of a universal and generous welfare state – involves the emergence of norms and conventions which become part of the architecture of orthodox social democracy. While such institutionalisation may follow the logic of punctuated equilibria based on critical junctures followed by periods of relative stability and increasing returns (Pierson Reference Pierson2000), practical social democracy addresses both continuity and change by reformist parties as a political problem.
In other words, neither the reproduction nor the transformation of institutions and practices can necessarily be taken for granted (Hall and Thelen Reference Hall and Thelen2009). Social democratic practice often evolves in a gradual fashion, reflecting processes of exhaustion, drift, conversion, and the layering of social democratic policies, as specified in the research by Kathleen Thelen and her co-authors (Streeck and Thelen Reference Streeck, Thelen, Streeck and Thelen2005; Mahoney and Thelen Reference Mahoney, Thelen, Mahoney and Thelen2010). This implies that social democratic actors respond strategically to the conflicting demands and challenges that they meet in pursuing their goals. As economic and class structures have developed, the complexities of gaining support for social democratic agendas have also evolved and affected cleavages within social democratic parties. The chapters in Part I address continuity and change in social democracy and the factors that can account for social democratic trajectories over time and in particular countries.
Social democratic policy-making: innovation, learning, and experimentation. Part II analyses social democratic policy-making from the perspective of practical social democracy. It focuses on the formulation by social democrats of a set of solutions to the practical challenges which they meet in office. Such challenges may be very specific, as in the case of crises or unexpected events, or they can be more general, as in the case of ensuring the operation and availability of public services. To what extent do the choices that social democrats make reflect the exegesis of classical texts and traditions, as in the case of Karl Kautsky’s attempt to build on the work of Marx and Engels, for example (see Berman Reference Berman1998 on Kautsky’s disagreements with Eduard Bernstein)? Or does policy formulation reflect a more practically oriented process of innovation, learning, and experimentation – even an incremental process of ‘muddling through’ (Lindblom Reference Lindblom1959) – in response to these challenges and crises? We suggest that there is a strong element of puzzlement in what social democrats do. We take the term from Hugh Heclo that ‘policy-making is a form of collective puzzlement on society’s behalf’ (Heclo Reference Heclo1974: 305).
Social democratic principles, along with other factors such as structural constraints and electoral considerations, provide important motivations for the decisions that reformists take. But such actors also puzzle about how to square ideological goals with concrete means while at the same time considering potential voter and membership/activist responses both in the long term and short term. That is, they deliberate and consider issues as they find them, thinking about how to respond – in a social democratic fashion – given the prevailing circumstances. At the same time decisions today might have unintended consequences later – with new practical repercussions.
Puzzlement about how to address a certain situation is linked in turn to social learning. Among other scholars, Hugh Heclo and Peter Hall have separately identified the importance of learning as a process of adjustment and adaptation. For Heclo, ‘learning can be taken to mean a relatively enduring alteration in behaviour that results from experience’ (Heclo Reference Heclo1974: 306). For Hall, it is ‘a deliberate attempt to adjust the goals or techniques of policy in response to past experience and new information’ (Hall Reference Hall1993: 277). Heclo and others emphasised the role of the state in shaping such processes. Here we emphasise political actors and their interaction with the state alongside other forces. Social democrats learn. They take account of their experiences, of their successes, and of their failures. The distinction between ‘learning’ and what some would fear is giving up key ideological foundations is not always clear. However, social democratic parties adjust their policies in the context of certain ideological tenets, within an electorate with a particular but gradually changing social composition, within a frequently dwindling membership base (although often with a mass party organisation still in place), and within a parliamentary landscape where coalitions may be necessary and where left–right cooperation can increasingly be challenged by GAL–TAN divisions in the party system (GAL–TAN contrasts Green-Alternative-Libertarian perspectives against Traditional Authoritarian-Nationalist ones; see Dassonneville et al. Reference Dassonneville, Hooghe and Marks2024).
Given a reformist context, learning can be a particularly important aspect of policy-making. The manner in which reformists exhibit social learning frequently illustrates the flexible nature of their politics. Such developments are likely to be shaped by experts (Mudge Reference Mudge2018; see also Hall Reference Hall1993: 277). Social democrats are interested in results as well as in the theories that guide them. Their everyday pragmatism could be indicative of a rejection of overarching dogma or stark theoretical claims (contrast, for example, Labour’s experience between 1975 and 1979 with how monetarists rigidly governed economic policy in the United Kingdom under a Conservative administration between 1979 and 1981; see Hall Reference Hall1986). In the late 1980s, Sven Steinmo emphasised the importance of goal adaptation to social democrats-though he argued that such a process watered down the reformist trajectory (Steinmo Reference Steinmo1988). Adaptation can, moreover, cover other aspects of their project, including the means to secure social democracy, the wider relationships involved, and the norms that govern such organisations.
Social learning also implies that it is important to note the feedback mechanisms that guide reformists and help to shape their agenda. Policy legacies influence the initiatives that reformists subsequently undertake. In the words of Paul Pierson, ‘effect becomes cause’ (Pierson Reference Pierson1993). Social democrats develop strategies that reflect the inheritances they receive and the circumstances in which they operate. The contextual dimension of practical social democracy is especially significant. The relevant contexts vary along different dimensions: over time (see Hall Reference Hall, Falleti, Fioretos and Sheingate2016), across countries, and through differing policy areas.
Practical social democracy considers how such strategic challenges affect reformist agendas, either by attenuating them or by emboldening parties to adopt more radical stances. This raises the question how parties weigh up activists’ and unions’ concerns or the preferences of the wider electorate and other policy challenges. The chapters in Part II explore these themes by analysing the evolution of social democratic policy platforms across a range of countries and policy areas.
Language, rhetoric, and ideology. Part III explores the role of language, rhetoric, and ideology. Social democratic parties are generally characterised by a distinctive rhetoric of reformism, a language that underpins their outlook and seeks to persuade voters and others about their claims. Such rhetoric generally reflects their ideological visions, goals, and means as well as the discursive framing of these features in relation to a range of practical challenges (see Powell Reference Powell, Bonoli and Powell2004; Bonoli and Powell Reference Bonoli and Powell2004). Rhetoric is a key means of mobilising members and supporters and of justifying policies and governing strategies when in office. As a result, rhetoric plays a central role in underpinning social democratic practices across the three dimensions of party activity outlined by Key (Reference Key1964).
An added complication concerns the rhetoric surrounding reformist politics. Social democratic politicians articulate their policies, seek to persuade their audiences, and are often adept at projecting different ideas in different contexts to a diverse range of audiences. At times, such discourses may be at variance with actual policy-making. In recent decades, left-wing figures have often adopted a discourse that on the face of it is utterly at odds with the social democratic tradition. For example, the relationship of the Third Way agenda to traditional social democratic principles has been very controversial (Blair Reference Blair1998; Giddens Reference Giddens1998; Hay and Watson Reference Hay and Watson1998). These policies may reflect a more complex relation to reformism (Wickham-Jones Reference Wickham-Jones2003). Elsewhere, of course, reformists may retain their commitment to traditional rhetoric, despite adopting programmatic measures and practical solutions that appear to break with orthodoxy (Hinnfors Reference Hinnfors2006; Reference Hinnfors2017; Keman Reference Keman2011). Traditional rhetoric and commitments to the values associated with social democracy of years past sometimes coexist uneasily with neoliberal reforms or a commitment to greater marketisation. Can such tensions be resolved by implementing market reforms in a more egalitarian way (Gingrich Reference Gingrich2011), and what is the role of language and rhetoric in justifying or legitimating social democratic policies? The four chapters in Part III explore such questions.
1.5 Conclusion and Overview of the Volume
This introduction has mapped out an approach to understanding practical social democracy. We argue that a greater emphasis on the practices associated with social democratic parties and policy-making is a useful complement to the existing literature on social democracy. By focusing on activities related to policy-making in government, and upon its institutionalisation and contestation, as well as upon its rhetoric, we show how such practices are integral to social democracy and also a way of balancing concerns across the three principal dimensions in which these parties are active. Our agenda can be studied, debated, and disputed in myriad ways (as we hope it will be).
While many contemporary observers have asked ‘what’s left of the left’, practical social democracy shifts the focus to three prior questions, namely, what is the left in any particular context, how exactly do social democrats seek to advance their agendas, and what can explain the nature and evolution of social democracy? By using practical social democracy as our starting point, we can endogenise the meaning of social democracy by showing how the meaning of ‘left’ has varied over time and across countries. Such a position opens up scope for understanding why we observe such variation in the nature of social democracy, in the manner that Berman (Reference Berman1998) has analysed differences between social democratic ideas in Germany and Sweden and their significance. Similar questions could be asked about more recent developments, including social democratic approaches to public sector reform and financial market liberalisation (Gingrich Reference Gingrich2011; Cioffi and Höpner Reference Cioffi and Höpner2006). Practical social democracy also complements the debate about electoral decline, notably by unpacking and disaggregating such claims and identifying variation in social democratic strategies and outcomes.
The three parts of the volume examine different aspects of the practical social democracy agenda. Part I focuses on the institutionalisation and evolution of social democracy. Chapter 2, by Sheri Berman, analyses the evolution of social democracy over time and shows that these parties have become increasingly technocratic as they have moved from a membership focus towards a governance focus. She discusses the consequences of these shifts, notably in terms of an emerging representation gap, and reflects on the dilemmas associated with potential strategies for increasing social democratic vote shares in the face of growing support for the populist right. In Chapter 3, Adam Przeworski also focuses on the long-run trajectory of social democratic parties, highlighting some of the challenges that incremental reformism has faced since the 1970s and their implications for the future, especially in the context of the climate crisis. In Chapter 4, Jonas Pontusson analyses the evolution of social democracy by examining changes in the class composition and professional background of politicians and in the nature of the union movement and its ties to the party. Processes of institutionalisation are also integral to Chapter 5, by Mark Wickham-Jones, which examines the causes and consequences of British Labour’s empirical orientation in the years after 1945 and demonstrates the influence of a particular model of the state on the party and some challenges to it.
The chapters in Part II analyse social democratic policy-making in a range of countries and in the context of various issue areas. Chapters 6 an 7, by Karen M. Anderson and Magnus Feldmann, examine the ways in which structural constraints and domestic politics interact with social democratic priorities to shape policy-making in key areas. Anderson analyses Swedish and Danish pension policies and demonstrates how pension policy reflected complex trade-offs and tensions between different domains of party activity and the varying structural constraints. Feldmann’s chapter studies financial liberalisation in Finland, a policy domain that is often regarded as emblematic of the neoliberalisation of social democracy. His chapter analyses financial liberalisation from the perspective of practical social democracy and illustrates how these reforms came to be seen as a way of solving policy problems and advancing social democratic goals in the face of distinctive structural challenges.
Chapter 8, by Brian Shaev, examines the role of second-order policies within social democratic policy-making by analysing the German Social Democratic Party’s approach to agriculture over the twentieth century and how it has interacted with reformist agendas in core policy areas. Shaev’s chapter highlights the importance of not studying specific policies in isolation as there are often complex trade-offs between goals in different policy areas.
Chapters 9–11, by Rob Manwaring, Emmanuelle Avril and Eric Shaw, and Eunice Goes, analyse the evolution of social democratic policy-making in and out of government. The chapters by Manwaring and by Avril and Shaw consider the role of internal contestation surrounding social democratic policy. Such contestation must be addressed by any party and may cause them to ‘undertake a fundamental re-evaluation of the party’s effectiveness’, especially in the context of electoral defeats (Harmel and Janda Reference Harmel and Janda1994: 267–268). Manwaring’s chapter explores the importance of such processes in shaping the evolution of Labor policy platforms in Australia by highlighting the trajectories of two variants of practical social democracy. Avril and Shaw analyse the ideological ferment in the British Labour Party and highlight the importance of internal party structures in determining the nature of policy change and its durability. Given that many social democratic parties operate in countries with electoral systems based on proportional representation, they often rely on support from other parties. The case of Portugal studied in the chapter by Eunice Goes offers some important lessons in this regard (as does Feldmann’s account of Finland). Her chapter analyses the ‘Gerigonça’ (contraption), which represented a novel form of interparty collaboration and sheds light on the importance of statecraft in advancing social democratic policy agendas, especially in the absence of strong majorities.
Part III analyses the role of rhetoric, language, and ideology. Chapter 12, by Jane Gingrich, shows how social democratic rhetoric on education has changed and evolved over time. Education has been a central policy area to social democrats everywhere. While social democracy was associated with the introduction of comprehensive education, social democratic agendas have varied and increasingly included other elements, such as greater emphasis on social investment and on testing and standards, at times including some role for private education providers. Gingrich’s chapter analyses the ways in which the evolution of structural conditions and education policy are also reflected in different rhetorical framings of education across various countries. It considers the role of rhetoric in practical social democracy and in balancing the concerns of different constituencies and trade-offs across different dimensions of activity. Chapter 13, by Jonas Hinnfors, argues that a significant gap has opened up in Sweden between more or less unchanged social democratic rhetoric and what was actually delivered in terms of policy, notably in the context of increasing private provision of welfare and the growing emphasis on greater freedom of choice (Hinnfors Reference Hinnfors2017). The chapter by Hinnfors analyses the tensions associated with this mismatch and assesses whether it helps legitimate policy reform or whether it might jeopardise the viability of Swedish social democracy.
Chapter 14, by Karl Pike, explores some ‘common meanings’ associated with a number of concepts that are central to social democracy through the lens of influential literary works from Britain and Norway. Pike analyses how such common meanings are integral to competing interpretations of social democratic ideology and explores the implications of such contestation for practical social democracy. Chapter 15, by Jon Lawrence, analyses the British Labour Party by focusing on two case studies. Lawrence examines the practical strategies of local activists in Wolverhampton before 1914 who sought to build support for the Labour Party in the context of the specific constraints of the time. The second case study discusses the importance of ‘vernacular social democracy’ to social democratic practice since the mid twentieth century. Chapter 16 is a conclusion that extends the discussion to cases beyond the traditional heartland of social democracy and considers the impact of some contemporary challenges, notably immigration policy. It also reflects on the main findings of the volume and their significance for understanding social democracy in comparative perspective.
Taken together, the chapters of the volume reflect on the nature of social democratic policy-making, its evolution over time, and its varied manifestations across countries and policy areas. The volume seeks to strike a balance between depth and breadth by revisiting canonical cases (such as Sweden, Britain, and Germany) that are central to the debate about social democracy and also discussing a range of other cases that can shed light on these issues (such as Portugal, Australia, and Finland; see also Chapter 16 for further discussion of practical social democracy in newer democracies in other parts of the world). The wide range of topics and cases that the volume speaks to also implies that multiple approaches are needed to analyse practical social democracy. The chapters draw on different methodologies and sources of data and demonstrate the utility of quantitative analysis, historical analysis, and both single and comparative case studies for advancing the study of practical social democracy.
What the chapters share is a concern with the contextual and practical features of reformist politics and how social democracy operates in practice. While many accounts of social democracy have referred to its practical orientation, this volume contributes to a more nuanced understanding of practicality and shows how such a perspective can shed light on many aspects of social democracy.
