Difference Between Liberals and Social Democrats

Both liberals and social democrats accept free market economics and want to help the poor, so how do these ideologies differ from each other?

I want to clarify something I think confuses a lot of North Americans who are curious about the Nordic countries: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

Because there is no social democratic party in the US, many Americans don’t quite understand the difference between social democracy and social liberalism. Many Americans, for example, would look to Canada and decide it is sort of like Nordic countries because it has public health care.

Yet Canada is very different as it is based more on social liberalism than social democracy. I am using the term “social liberal” explicitly because there are many ways of being a liberal. For example, you could be a classic liberal, favoring a small state and free-wheeling capitalism. A social liberal, by contrast, is someone who favors regulated capitalism with a friendly face.

But doesn’t that sound a lot like social democracy? Indeed, the two can easily be confused, which is why I want to clarify their differences to my North American readers.

Individualism vs Collectivism

To understand the difference, you need to understand the origins of each ideology. Social liberals began as liberals with a very…