page_title: Social democracy
section_title: Response to neoliberalism and Third Way (1973–2007)
hierarchical_section_title: Social democracy / History / Response to neoliberalism and Third Way (1973–2007)
caption_attribution_description: Colour version of &lt;a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattjiggins/5574109266/in/set-72157626257209813/"&gt;www.flickr.com/photos/mattjiggins/5574109266/in/set-72157...&lt;/a&gt;
context_page_description: Social democracy is a political, social and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented mixed economy. The protocols and norms used to accomplish this involve a commitment to representative and participatory democracy, measures for income redistribution, regulation of the economy in the general interest and social-welfare provisions. Due to longstanding governance by social-democratic parties during the post-war consensus and their influence on socioeconomic policy in Northern and Western Europe, social democracy became associated with Keynesianism, the Nordic model, the social-liberal paradigm and welfare states within political circles in the late 20th century. It has been described as the most common form of Western or modern socialism as well as the reformist wing of democratic socialism.
context_section_description: The economic crisis in the Western world in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis during the mid- to late 1970s resulted in the rise of neoliberalism and several politicians were elected on neoliberal platforms such as British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and United States president Ronald Reagan. The rise in support for neoliberalism raised questions over the political viability of social democracy, with sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf predicting the "end of the social democratic century". In 1985, an agreement was made between several social-democratic parties in the Western Bloc countries of Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands and with the communist parties of the Eastern Bloc countries of Bulgaria, East Germany and Hungary to have multilateral discussions on trade, nuclear disarmament and other issues.
  In 1989, the Socialist International adopted its present Declaration of Principles which addressed issues concerning the internationalization of the economy and defined its interpretation of the nature of socialism. The Declaration of Principles stated that socialist values and vision include "a peaceful and democratic world society combining freedom, justice and solidarity" while arguing that [n]either private nor State ownership by themselves guarantee either economic efficiency or social justice". The Socialist International defined the rights and freedoms it supported as follows: "Socialists protect the inalienable right to life and to physical safety, to freedom of belief and free expression of opinion, to freedom of association and to protection from torture and degradation. Socialists are committed to achieve freedom from hunger and want, genuine social security, and the right to work". It also clarified that it did not promote any fixed and permanent definition for socialism, arguing: "Socialists do not claim to possess the blueprint for some final and fixed society which cannot be changed, reformed or further developed. In a movement committed to democratic self-determination there will always be room for creativity since each people and every generation must set its own goals".
  By the 1980s, with the rise of conservative neoliberal politicians such as Ronald Reagan in the United States, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, Brian Mulroney in Canada and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, the Western welfare state was attacked from within, but state support for the corporate sector was maintained. With the fall of Marxism–Leninism in Africa and Eastern Europe, most of those countries adopted liberal democracy and the former ruling parties moved away from Marxism–Leninism and towards social democracy.
  The 1989 Socialist International congress was politically significant in that members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the reformist leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev attended the congress. The Socialist International's new Declaration of Principles abandoned previous statements made in the Frankfurt Declaration of 1951 against Soviet-style socialism. After the congress, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's newspaper Pravda noted that thanks to dialogue between the Soviet Union and the Socialist International since 1979 that the positions of the two organizations on nuclear disarmament issues "today virtually coincide". The Revolutions of 1989 and the resulting collapse of Marxist–Leninist states in Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War led to the rise of multi-party democracy in many of these countries which resulted in the creation of multiple social-democratic parties. Although the majority of these parties initially did not achieve electoral success, they became a significant part of the political landscape of Eastern Europe. In Western Europe, the prominent Italian Communist Party transformed itself into the post-communist Democratic Party of the Left in 1991.
  In the 1990s, the ideology of the Third Way developed and many social democrats became adherents of it. The Third Way has been advocated by its proponents as an alternative to capitalism and what it regards as the traditional forms of socialis
caption: Jack Layton, former leader of the New Democratic Party from 2003 to 2011, led the party to become the second largest Canadian political party for the first time
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