Practical Social Democracy

This chapter introduces practical social democracy as a novel framework for understanding reformist politics. It argues that social democracy can be understood in terms of the challenges that reformist parties face with respect to balancing electoral, governance, and organisational considerations. These dimensions of politics are often in tension, but each of them is of central importance to reformist parties, which is why such balancing is essential to social democracy. The chapter contextualises practical social democracy by relating it to the existing literature on reformist politics and political parties. In addition, the chapter provides an overview of the volume as a whole and discusses how practical social democracy can shed light on a range of topics, such as the evolution of reformist politics, policy making in various issue areas, and the role of ideology and rhetoric.