Democracy in the presence of liberalism and its enemies: the history of a concept (original) (raw)

Abstract

Western political history has been marked and shaped by so-called liberal democracies. In the 1990s, Francis Fukuyama decreed the "end of history", with the promise of a definitive consolidation of these liberal democracies. Behind this optimism, however, lies an ideological concealment: 'democracy' and 'liberalism' represent two constructs that have not marched hand in hand since the dawn of modernity. If the essential values of liberalism were constituted on the philosophy of John Locke, the modern idea of democracy has, at least since the French Revolution, been presented as something attractive on the one hand, while also being dangerous and frightening. According to Tocqueville, although democracy is inevitable, its harmful effects must be ameliorated. A whole series of conservative thinkers, dating at least as far back as Edmund Burke, have set themselves up to react against and reduce these effects. In this sense, it is worth handling with the foundations of modern democracy and the requirement that the exercise of state power is vested in the people, through a perspective in which collective and community values take a certain precedence over individual ones; a stronger concept of social equality, while the concept of liberty acquires the positive notion of political liberty, with support from authors such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The question is: how does the historical process since the French Revolution demanded the transformation of the concept of democracy? At the same time: in what way this same process weakened the concept of democracy.

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