A different kind of politician has been gaining prominence in Democratic politics in recent years: the democratic socialist.
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont drew awareness to the ideology with his 2016 presidential bid. In the years since, other politicians—including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York—who have called themselves democratic socialists have emerged on the national stage. And the past year has seen several self-identified democratic socialists prevail in key local races, with Zohran Mamdani winning the New York City mayoral race in November, and Janeese Lewis George claiming victory in the Democratic primary race for Washington, D.C.’s next mayor this week.
Read More: Democratic Socialist Set to Be D.C.'s Next Mayor—Furthering Breakout Year For Left
But depending on who you talk to, they might define “democratic socialism” differently.
“It’s a very ambiguous term, and there’s a great deal of confusion about what it is and isn’t,” says Marc Farinella, a senior advisor to the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and former Democratic political consultant. “There’s a lot of ambiguity even among people who might describe themselves as democratic socialists. I think there’s a wide array of flavors of democratic socialists.”
So what exactly does it mean to be a democratic socialist? TIME spoke to experts to unpack the term.
There isn’t one universal definition of democratic socialism. According to the website of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), democratic socialists view capitalism as “a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit” and want to “replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.”
“What we want to do is extend democracy to our workplace and our housing and society at large, sort of deciding the ways our cities run, o
