Gregg Hymowitz At present, social researchers and political and social organizations often use the term "social democracy" to describe and propose the opening of new spaces for action by citizens.
For there to be a "political democracy" requires certain conditions: the rule of law, division of powers, universal suffrage, fair elections, term of office in public acts of government control systems. But the idea of "social democracy" is based on the fact that the mechanisms of political decision-making is inserted a larger social systems of which it is party, and where everyday social relations between people are shaped by power relations that usually not structured according to democratic principles.
J. Herrero Yustas think of this:
" How much democracy and where democracy 'in relation to this question, we want to advance a radical democratic homogeneously in all vectors of democratization, while at the other extreme, a conservative Democrat, prefer low eno many of these vectors .... What areas beyond the regime (political) should be the democratic mechanisms of decision making and the principle and the rights of citizenship '... dealt with these issues requires theories of democracy have not been written yet. "
Habermas J RGEN and Norberto Bobbio has oriented its work to deepen the democratic dynamic and have developed extensive budgets and challenges inherent in the concept of "social democracy".
Habermas argues that democracy lives on budgets or Institutions or state legal rules created, but only channel. Through his theory of communicative action, and its model of a deliberate policy, has sought deepen communication processes that occur not institutionalized into the fabric of all types of organizations that comprise civil society and building a people as active agents in decision-making processes. In this sense Habermas has stressed the importance of dialogue processes, reasoning, deliberation and consensus, to establish democratic societies.
Bobbio emphasizes the need for mechanisms of representative democracy in modern societies, and are skeptical about the forms of direct democracy, usually driven by a defense of the assembly (assemblies). By contrast Bobbio uses the concept of "democratization process", not as a multiplicity of mechanisms of direct democracy, but as the rules of representative democracy in the areas of civil society governed by principles of hierarchy. 5
In 1998, at the XIV Summit of Mercosur, Nelson Mandela presented the idea of social democracy with a phrase that has been held:
"If there is no food when hungry, if there are no medicines when they are sick, if there is ignorance and does not respect basic rights of the people, democracy is an empty shell, even if the public vote and have Parliament." 6

Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy by Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Paperback - Jan 1, 1992)