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.

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, our jobs run, our housing runs, as opposed to right now, we think we’re in sort of a dictatorship of capital—the big corporations kind of make the decisions about everything, really,” says Megan Romer, the co-chair of the DSA.

Democratic socialism in the U.S., Farinella says, is not the socialism seen in the former Soviet Union, which was an autocratic system that eliminated capitalism by putting all major industries under centralized government control. Democratic socialists don’t want large corporations to be controlled by the government, and don’t want an autocracy; rather, they want to place the power of decision-making in the hands of the people through a democratic process.

Farinella says that democratic socialism also isn’t the kind of social democracy seen in Scandinavian countries, which reject authoritarianism and, in his words, “combine free market capitalism with high taxes” to fund social programs such as health care and education. Democratic socialists, meanwhile, don’t support capitalism (though some self-described democratic socialists have suggested that it is possible for democratic socialism and capitalism to exist together).

Democratic socialism “resides perhaps in the middle of the spectrum,” Farinella says.

“The democratic socialists in the United States want to shift political and economic power away from corporations and ultimately move beyond a capitalistic system, which they view as inherently unfair and exploitive,” he says. “They want to replace capitalism with an economy driven by social need rather than by profit motive, and they want to do this with workers and ordinary citizens making decisions about how to deploy resources—not having government make the decisions about how to deploy resources.”

“They want to do it all through democratic processes and institutions,” he adds.

How does it differ from the mainstream Democratic party?

Democratic socialists tend to support policies to the left of mainstream Democratic politicians.

Democratic socialists “are very focused on making sure basic needs are guaranteed,” Farinella says—for instance, universal health care, free tuition, housing for all, paid family leave, and free child care are all policies that the DSA supports. 

Some of those policies are in line with those backed by moderate Democrats. But others may not align with the views of many in the party; for instance, on its website, the DSA says it wants to “allow workers to freely migrate between countries to seek employment without restrictive immigration controls,” as well as “provide access to jobs, labor rights, and social services to all immigrants.” While the Democratic party has vocally criticized the Trump Administration’s hardline immigration policy, some of the DSA’s views on immigration may fall to the left of the more moderate Democrats.

Strategically, a politician identifying themselves as a democratic socialist could create problems for their campaign, Farinella says, because the word “socialism” can bring “a lot of baggage with lots of people, and there’s a lot of confusion over what they’re really talking about.”

“To a lot of Americans, democratic socialism is a nonstarter because of the preconceived negative notions they have about what socialism is and their notions may or may not be actually descriptive of what the democratic socialists in the United States are talking about,” Farinella says.

But Farinella says it’s not surprising that democratic socialism is gaining popularity now, at a time when there’s “enormous economic inequality and the perception that the economic system is failing a lot of people”—particularly young people.

“At a time when people are feeling left behind and feeling that the economy is structured in such a way as not being equitable and not being fair, they’re going to be interested in exploring other systems,” he says. “There are plenty of people who think the system is not working for them, and so they are looking elsewhere for a system that they might feel is more just and equitable and would give them a better shot at economic success.”

-Philip Wang contributed reporting.