social democracy

Political ideology or belief in the gradual evolution of a democratic socialism within existing political structures. The earliest was the German Sozialdemokratische Partei (SPD), now one of the two main German parties, which had been created in 1875 by the amalgamation of other groups including August Bebel's earlier German Social Democratic Workers' Party, founded in 1869. Parties along the lines of the German model were founded in the last two decades of the 19th century in a number of countries, including Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. The British Labour Party is in the social democratic tradition.