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Abstract

There is a wealth of literature on social democratic parties (SDPs) due to their historic electoral success and their influence on the most important socio-economic institutions that govern the advanced economies. Scholars have studied them from many different perspectives. Based on this literature, the chapter provides a brief conceptualisation of the social democratic party family. It then summarises different explanations for the challenges that SDPs face, highlights different causes of their (varying) electoral success, and discusses their record in government. The chapter argues that the literature often discusses individual explanations in isolation and does not sufficiently highlight that the success of different programmes and policies is often context-specific. Moreover, due to the variety of parties that make up the party family, it is often difficult to generalise from one case to another. The conclusion highlights avenues for future research that could help to further understand the contemporary transformation of SDPs.