Liberal Democracy Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The term liberal democracy usually refers to a system of representative government involving the rule of law; competitive multiparty elections for office; limited government powers; protections for private property and for basic individual rights such as free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion; and a sphere of civil society that is distinct from the sphere of politics. The use of the words liberal and liberalism in politics dates from the post-revolutionary period in France, when writers such as Benjamin Constant applied a term that had been used to describe a certain sort of religious belief to politics. These writers used the term liberal to refer to a platform that was primarily concerned with individual liberty, that was open-minded about new institutional solutions to secure this liberty, and that avoided the extremes of both reactionary monarchism and Jacobin republicanism. Liberalism was then associated with constitutional monarchy, and even today most people would classify monarchies such as those found in the United Kingdom and Spain as liberal democracies.

Today the single most common criterion used to determine whether a government is a liberal democracy is whether fair and competitive multiparty elections are held at set intervals. But many observers have suggested that there ought to be a more robust set of criteria. Suggestions abound as to what those criteria should be, but one influential theory was advanced by political scientist Robert Dahl, who elaborated a concept of polyarchy based on a number of different and intersecting scales with which to evaluate a particular country’s success in meeting the broad goals of liberal democratic government.

During the twentieth century it was common to explain major world conflicts as wars between liberal democracy and the alternatives of fascism and communism. With the end of the cold war, it therefore became possible to entertain the Hegelian thesis that there were no serious alternatives to liberal democracy left, as Francis Fukuyama suggested in his much discussed article “The End of History?” Controversy about liberal democracy has not abated, however. Critics continue to suggest that it is a bourgeois form of government in which an oligarchic minority uses its resources to gain access to political office, protect their own property interests, and rule over the majority. Also, the emphasis on individualism implicit in a liberal scheme of rights has been associated with a particular cultural heritage, one that may not be appropriate for all societies. In particular, societies with strong communal traditions may regard the individualism that is a premise of liberal democracy as a threat to the cohesiveness of their community groups. In some cases, such as India, a liberal democratic set of institutions has been modified and adapted to allow for a greater degree of communal control over some parts of the law, as for example when civil law recognizes particular minority communities as distinct subjects and allows traditional courts to adjudicate some matters of dispute.

Perhaps the most interesting theoretical questions about the term liberal democracy concern the relation between the two words: liberalism seems to constrain democracy because a majority is not empowered to violate either the individual rights or the procedures enshrined in the constitution. In addition, the importance of delegation and representation in liberal governments can seem at odds with a democratic interest in widespread political participation beyond the mere act of voting. Indeed, elections were viewed in ancient Greece as an oligarchic or elitist institution because they selected a few citizens to rule the rest. On the other hand, liberal democracies are often justified in the language of popular sovereignty and equality, and political life within such systems of government is filled with claims and counterclaims about which policies adequately and accurately represent the popular will. Both liberty and equality are essential values in liberal democracies, and if they sometimes seem to come into conflict with one another, that conflict is partly constitutive of the form of government itself.

A final area of interest is the question of what sorts of religious beliefs and practices are most compatible with liberal democracy. While some scholars accent the Judeo-Christian roots of this form of government, others argue that there are traditions in Islam and in various religions of Asia that should be equally congenial to liberal democratic rule. The question of whether liberal democracy is a form of government suitable for all societies, or whether it is historically, culturally, or religiously specific, remains an open one.

Bibliography:

Dahl, Robert. Polyarchy. New Haven, Conn.:Yale University Press, 1971.
Fukuyama, Francis. “The End of History?” The National Interest (Summer 1989).
Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. The Federalist Papers. Edited by Clinton Rossiter. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Parekh, Bhikhu. “The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy.” Political Studies 40 (September 1992): 160–175.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Zakaria, Fareed. “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.” Foreign Affairs (November/December 1997): http://www.foreignaffairs.com/ issues/1997/76/6.

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