Social democracy is officially a reformist democratic socialist political ideology. Social democracy supports legal entitlements in social rights for citizens. These are made up of universal access to public services such as: education, health care, workers' compensation, and other services such as child care and care for the elderly. Social democracy is connected with the trade union labour movement and supports collective bargaining rights for workers. Contemporary social democracy advocates freedom from discrimination based on differences of: ability/disability, age, class, ethnicity, gender, language, race, religion, and sexual orientation. Most social democratic parties are affiliated with the Socialist International.

Social democracy in its current form was originally developed by revisionist Marxist Eduard Bernstein who criticized orthodox Marxism's emphasis on revolution and class conflict, claiming that socialism could be achieved through evolutionary means through representative democracy and through cooperation between people regardless of class. Bernstein claimed that a mixed economy of public, cooperative and private enterprise would be necessary for a long period of time before private enterprises would evolve of their own accord into cooperative enterprise. Bernstein supported state ownership only for certain parts of the economy that could be best managed by the state, he rejected a mass scale of state ownership as being too burdensome to be manageable.

Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM, PC (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician.

The son of a Welsh coal miner who later became a union official and Labour MP, Roy Jenkins served with distinction in World War II. Elected to Parliament as a Labour member in 1948, he served in several major posts in Harold Wilson's First Government. As Home Secretary from 1965–1967, he sought to build what he described as "a civilized society", with measures such as the effective abolition in Britain of capital punishment and theatre censorship, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, relaxing of divorce law, suspension of birching and the legalisation of abortion. As Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1967–1970, he pursued a tight fiscal policy later praised by Margaret Thatcher. In 1970, he was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, but resigned in 1972 because he supported entry to the Common Market, while the party opposed it.

When Wilson re-entered government in 1974 Jenkins returned to the Home Office, but, increasingly disenchanted by the swing to the left of the Labour Party,^{[citation needed]} he chose to leave British politics in 1976 and was appointed President of the European Commission in 1977, serving until 1981: he was the first and to date only British holder of this office. In 1981, dismayed with the Labour Party's continuing leftward drift, he was one of the "Gang of Four" - Labour moderates who formed the Social Democratic Party (SDP). In 1982 he won a famous by-election in a Conservative seat and returned to parliament; but after disappointment with the performance of the SDP in the 1983 election he resigned as SDP leader.

Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson, PC (born 21 October 1953) is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hartlepool from 1992 to 2004, served in a number of Cabinet positions under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and was a European Commissioner. He was a key architect in the rebranding of the Labour Party as "New Labour" and its subsequent landslide victory in the 1997 general election.

He twice resigned from Tony Blair's government while holding Cabinet positions. After his second resignation, he served as the European Commissioner for Trade from 2004 to 2008. He rejoined the government when he was made a life peer by the Queen and took his seat in the House of Lords on 13 October 2008.

Peter Mandelson was born in London in 1953, the son of Mary Joyce (née Morrison) and George Norman Mandelson. His father's family was Jewish, and his father was the advertising manager at The Jewish Chronicle. On his mother's side, he is the grandson of Margaret (Kent) and Herbert Morrison, the London County Council leader and Labour cabinet minister. He was educated at Hendon County Grammar School 1965–72. In 1966 he appeared on stage with the local amateur theatre group, the Hampstead Garden Suburb Dramatic Society as the eponymous lead in The Winslow Boy.

Victor-Viorel Ponta (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈviktor ˈponta]; born 20 September 1972) is a Romanian jurist and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and its leader since 2010, he has been a member of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies for Gorj County since 2004. In the Emil Boc cabinet, he was Minister-Delegate for Relations with Parliament from 2008 to 2009. The joint leader of the Social Liberal Union, he became Prime Minister of Romania in May 2012.

He was born in Bucharest, completing secondary studies in 1991 at the city's Ion Neculce High School. In 1995, he graduated from the University of Bucharest's Law faculty. In 2000, he received a master's degree in International Criminal Law from the University of Catania; he received a degree from the Carol I National Defence University in 2002, and in 2003 received a doctorate in Criminal Law from the University of Bucharest and a master's degree in Political Management from the Social Democratic Institute. He has written several books in his field, including one on the International Criminal Court, the subject of his doctoral thesis. Between 1996 and 1998, and since 2002, he has taught Criminal Law at the Romanian-American University. From 1995 to 1998, Ponta worked as a prosecutor handling cases at the Sector 1 courthouse. From 1998 to 2001, he was a prosecutor at the Supreme Court of Justice in the anti-corruption division, in particular dealing with economic and financial crimes. From 2000 to 2001, he coordinated the Bureau for Combating Money Laundering.