Jospin, Blair, Schröder: In 1998, it seemed that European social democracy was on the brink of a golden age. Eleven years later, the SPD has lost 10,192,426 votes and gone through six party leaders. The Dutch Labour Party recorded its worst result in history in 2002, followed by the Swedish Social Democrats in 2006 and the Austrian Social Democrats in 2008. The "Third Way" has proven to be a path to the sidelines, and discussions about the end of a people's party have long since begun. It appears that social democrats have no convincing answer to the radical changes in the labor market, to individualization and globalization. Franz Walter, one of the most prominent German party researchers and a recognized SPD expert, examines the causes of the SPD's decline, which, according to Walter, began as early as 1973. He looks beyond Germany's borders and asks.