Is social democracy socialism/is Sweden social Democratic?

[TheReckoning]

What do you think?

[Blue3]

Some people get too hung up on semantics and unrealistic cookie-cutter boxes.

[Antonio the Sixth]

There's no such thing as a "socialist country", and "social democratic" as applied to policy is at best a description of a model of welfare state. Sweden's welfare stated used to be the pinnacle of social democracy, but has been severely eroded in the past 30 years.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Social democracy isn't socialism.

Sweden isn't a social democacy, it's a parliamentary democracy. Social democracy is an ideology that isn't shared between all parties that Sweden has in their parliamentary system, and not shared between all governing parties. The social democratic party was able to enact many social democratic policies in place, but it isn't a social democratic country for the reasons i've said. The policies aren't entrenched in the constitution, it could easily evolve abolish these policies when a different ideology is in the majority. On top of that, the issues inside the social democratic party also do evolve and interpretations and definitions of social democracy do change over time.

[PSOL]

Since Olof Palme’s death and the end of Rehn-Meidner model, Sweden cannot be considered a social democracy anymore.

[Big Abraham]

Though Sweden has a more robust welfare state than most of the Western world, it has still been extensively gutted by neoliberalism over the past several decades, with increased deregulation and expanding privatization of public services.

Anyway, social democracy is obviously not socialist, as it can only operate within the framework of a capitalist free market economy, and several rankings have considered Sweden to be a "business friendly" country on par with the United States. It features many of the hallmarks of, and is much closer to, classical liberalism, than Socialism.