INTERNATIONAL POLICY ANALYSIS Future Scenarios of a Better Society? Political Visions and Key Programmatic Ideas of European Social Democracy FELIX BUTZLAFF AND MATTHIAS MICUS December 2012  Europe’s social democratic parties find themselves caught up in a process of reorien­tation, which also includes the working out of a coherent narrative that overarches countless everyday policy measures.  In their economic policy ideas social democrats, in particular in competition-based democracies, are focused on consociationalist forms of cooperation, such as the institutionalised cooperation between government, economy and society glorified as a»partnership«.  Performance and responsibility are crucial to current social democratic notions of society. While performance is largely equated with labour, the old»workers’ parties« have been transformed into modern»labour parties without workers« under the banner of the performance principle.  In a communitarian return to communal networking, preliminary political work and empowerment of the party base seem to be among the most striking changes in comparison with the elite and professionalised parties of the Third Way.  The debates on Blue Labour and the Good Society represent one of the most strik­ing and interesting attempts to reconceptualise social democracy, which also points beyond traditional lines of conflict and group differences.