BERLIN — Germany inched toward a new government on Friday, as leaders from the center-left Social Democrats, the previous partners of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc, agreed to sit down next week for exploratory talks on resuming the arrangement.

Andrea Nahles, parliamentary whip for the Social Democrats, said that her party’s leadership would meet on Wednesday with its counterparts from Ms. Merkel’s conservatives to begin the process that a majority of Germans, according to recent opinion polls, hope will lead to a fourth chancellorship for Ms. Merkel. The two groups governed together from 2005 to 2009, and again from 2013 until this year.

The Social Democrats’ party conference, a three-day gathering that opened on Thursday, voted by hand on the prospect of beginning open-ended talks and approved it by a “large” majority, according to Niels Annen, a senior Social Democrat who counted the votes. No fixed percentage of the vote was given.

“We don’t have to govern at any price, but we also can’t reject governing at any price,” Martin Schulz, the party’s leader, told delegates in a rousing speech on Thursday.