Social democracy is an ideology and political movement that emerged in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century in response to the processes of industrialization and democratization, and which shaped the politics of the continent ever since (Eley 2002; Keman 2017). Indeed, social democracy is behind the drive for universal suffrage, the development of comprehensive welfare systems and a tamed form of capitalism, although, obviously, and as this volume explains, the genealogy of these developments is eclectic.

The variation in the timing of these big social, economic and political changes meant that social democracy emerged in many shapes and guises and spread at a different pace across Europe. However, it is possible to just about identify a rough point of origin. The economic, political and ideological revolution that paved the way for social democracy was led by Britain, France and Germany. As Lindemann explained, “economically the British paved the way; politically the French offered the most influential model” and both “provided the context for modern socialist ideas” (1983: 8) to spread across the continent. Finally, as Engels suggested, Germany, where the first social democratic party emerged, offered the template for the practice of social democratic politics (1978 [1895]: 565).

The rise of social democracy roughly accompanied the processes of industrialization and democratization which were quite advanced in Britain but far less so in Russia, Spain, Sweden and even France. The process of industrialization provoked great demographic changes, which led to political transformations. Broadly speaking, those demographic changes were about the large exodus of workers from rural areas into urban centres. Those workers found themselves uprooted from their families, friends and familiar places, working in extremely harsh conditions in the new factories for a barely living wage but with no political voice and therefore without the power to transform their own lives.

In many ways their lives and lack of agency were not very different from the lives of European propertyless peasants, workers and paupers since immemorial times. What was different this time was that the ideals of the French Revolution, notably the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, as well as the liberal values that were empowering an assertive new political class, suggested that this state of affairs was not God-given and could be changed.