European Social Democracy between Political Economy and Electoral Competition

Abstract

In the 1980s and 1990s, social democratic parties have experienced unprecedented difficulties in choosing and implementing economic policies. At the same time, they have found it harder to frame electoral appeals in an increasingly complex environment of party competition. The pressure to make choices in innovative ways, in turn, has generated strains in social democratic party organizations and has affected the loyalty of party members and activists. Explaining the diverse trajectories of European social democratic parties in these decades requires a substantive and a theoretical departure from conventional accounts of social democratic success that worked well for the post–World War II era labeled by some contributions to this volume the "golden age" of social democracy.