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

Democracy and Liberalism: Crisis, Pathologies and Resistance

Liberal capitalist democracy is a universal socio-political project of our age. But this project is in crisis and in decline. The current crisis of democracy caused by the darwinist spirit of the late capitalist order only proves that democracy is an instrument for strengthening the dominant positions of the ruling liberal elites. in other words, democracy, in particular liberal democracy as a hegem-onic form of the contemporary global democratic project, functions as a formal ideological-instrumental framework for the reproduction of the dominant position of a ruling class serving the interests of the few, not the many. In this way, anti-democratic sentiments among the masses are fuelled almost everywhere in both Western and non-Western cultures where political elites have assumed a formal democratic mask. Furthermore, the existing crisis of the Western liberal democratic project has given crucial benefits for the revival of anti-elitist populism in the contemporary world. The goal of this paper is to critically examine the fate of democracy in modern times as well as to shed light once again on the crisis of the liberal conception of democracy, including its concomitant pathologies, resistances, and political and social consequences.

GOOD GOVERNMENT, LIBERALISM AND DEMOCRACY

Pierre Rosanvallon’s new book, Le bon gouvernement (The Good Government) , published in France in 2015, puts forward a large number of interesting questions on the meaning of democracy, its actual effectiveness as a form of government, its origins and its future outcomes. Within the globalised mesh in which all the political systems of the post-modern technological age operate, Western democracies seem to be, as Rosanvallon himself claims, caught between the rock of an executive power which tends to take on more and more areas of competence and prerogatives and the hard place of needing an effective and democratic way of sharing the decisions taken, which often appear to be determined by political dynamics falling outside popular control. This kind of situation, which is in part contradictory, as Rosanvallon himself clarifies, is conditioned by the necessity to respond effectively and rapidly to the demands of an interconnected and fast-evolving world, which are often in contrast with the natural slowness of the democratic procedures and the ever broadening gap between the ruling class and the sovereign people. It is not infrequent that the latter, in turn, interpret the executive’s decisions as extraneous to their interests, when not in sharp contrast with them, feeding the perception that government élites pursue murky schemes whose objective is not to promote the material wellbeing and the cultural development of the people they represent, but rather to satisfy the thirst for gold and power of a limited class of individuals who manage the world on a global scale. This is reinforced by increasingly generalised instances of corruption and maladministration which are deeply calling into question the liberal-democratic order and political culture, so painfully restored within the Western civilisation after the defeat of the totalitarian, fascist and authoritarian regimes which raged in Europe until the end of the Second World War and beyond (cf. Spain, Portugal and Greece). In this perspective, Le bon gouvernement intends not only to reconstruct the history of democratic theories and their applications, but also to promote new forms of future democracy capable of effectively responding to the challenges put forward by the new world order. From both an analytical – i.e. concerning the history and interpretation of democracy – and a synthetic – regarding the elaboration of new models of government and representation – point of view, the perspective adopted by the author inevitably stimulates critical reflections and objections which can be summed up in the following thematic nuclei, which will be taken into consideration in this short essay: 1. The need for a distinction, within democratic theory, between form of government and the principle of legitimation of power. 2. An analysis and theoretical-practical reformulation of the democratic forms of government on the basis of the complex articulation which connects knowledge and power. 3. A relationship between direct democracy and the preservation of liberal principles.

Democracy: From One Crisis to Another

Democracy is in crisis. This crisis is the paradoxical outcome of its triumph over its erstwhile rivals. Having prevailed over the totalitarian projects of the first half of the 20 th century it has developed in such a way that it is now undermining its original goals of individual and collective autonomy. Modern liberal democracy – the outcome of an inversion of the values of tradition, hierarchy and political incorporation – is a mixed regime. It involves three different dimensions of social existence, political, legal, historical/economic, and organises power around these. A balance was achieved after the upheaval of World War II in the form of liberal democracy, on the basis of reforms which injected democratic political power into liberalism and controlled the new economic dynamics it had unleashed. This balance has now been lost. Political autonomy, which accompanied modern historicity and its orientation towards the future, has been overshadowed by economic activity and its pursuit of innovation. As a result, the very meaning of democracy has become impoverished. The term used to refer to the goal of self-government, it is now taken to be fully synonymous with personal freedom and the cause of human rights. The legal dimension having come to prevail over the political one, democratic societies see themselves as 'political market societies', societies that can only conceive of their existence with reference to a functional language borrowed from economics. This depoliticisation of democracy has facilitated the rise to dominance of a new form of oligarchy.

Democracy: From One Crisis to Another by Marcel Gauchet in Social Imaginaries 1.1 (2015) 163-187

Democracy is in crisis. Th is crisis is the paradoxical outcome of its triumph over its erstwhile rivals. Having prevailed over the totalitarian projects of the first half of the 20th century it has developed in such a way that it is now undermining its original goals of individual and collective autonomy. Modern liberal democracy – the outcome of an inversion of the values of tradition, hierarchy and political incorporation – is a mixed regime. It involves three different dimensions of social existence, political, legal, historical/ economic, and organizes power around these. A balance was achieved after the upheaval of World War II in the form of liberal democracy, on the basis of reforms which injected democratic political power into liberalism and controlled the new economic dynamics it had unleashed. This balance has now been lost. Political autonomy, which accompanied modern historicity and its orientation towards the future, has been overshadowed by economic activity and its pursuit of innovation. As a result, the very meaning of democracy has become impoverished. The term used to refer to the goal of self-government, it is now taken to be fully synonymous with personal freedom and the cause of human rights. The legal dimension having come to prevail over the political one, democratic societies see themselves as ‘political market societies’, societies that can only conceive of their existence with reference to a functional language borrowed from economics. This depoliticisation of democracy has facilitated the rise to dominance of a new form of oligarchy.

THE LIBERAL CRITIQUES OF DEMOCRACY FROM TOCQUEVILLE TO HERMANN-HOPPE

2020

In my article I would like to analyze a tradition created by Alexis de Tocqueville which Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn called "true liberalism." According to this political theory, "liberty" and "equality" do not complement each other but are in fact contradictions. In my lecture I would like to analyze how the words "democracy" and "liberty" were evaluated in the texts of the early liberals, how and why they began to be equated with each other. In this article, I will examine three representatives of this tradition in more detail: James Fitzjames Stephen, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe. In the modern age-argue the liberal critiques of democracy the lack of freedom is manifested evidently. Liberty was first eradicated by royal absolutisms and then by successive democratic revolutions. As a result, the vacuum created was replaced by the modern state with Weberian "bureaucratic authority." Modern state bureaucracy overwhelmed all sorts of public bodies, ordinances, provinces and other liberties for the sake of the abstract concept of "liberty." On the one hand, this was done in the name of equality proclaimed on the basis of parliamentary popular sovereignty, and on the other hand it was a product of totalitarianism. of the result these processes in the modern world-while liberty is constant ly being eulogized and has been raised to the rank of an official ideology-there is actually less freedom than in any previous era. *

The Ambiguities of 'Liberal-Democracy'

Polis, 2019

's Demopolis proposes we think about democracy both as a procedural world and as a political culture of self-government for which dissent and disagreement are not unfortunate accidents. A collective made of free and equal citizens is eo ipso an open forum that generates and actually values individual distinctiveness (of opinions, interests and life styles) as a better condition to solve problems and encourage human ingenuity.1 In effect, diversity is a component of the process of democratic deliberation, which translates into an ongoing dialectics of majority/opposition because it presumes that each citizen can change her mind and reconsider previously made decisions. One cannot fail to notice that the entire democratic system pivots around the acceptance of human fallibility, and consists in a public recognition of humility. Self-emendation and the public admission that a previously made decision might be in need of revision are qualities that belong to self-governing citizens, who are thus neither tyrants (who never err) nor oligarchs (who are locked 1 This essay refers to opinions rather than values because opinions are better suited for change through vote counting as naturally open to mutation and reconfiguration (they are verisimi-lar). Concerning 'values,' they are attached to the identity of a person in a more substantive way and although political dialectics and individual rights expose them to change, it makes sense to assume them to be less exposed to transformations or exposed in a length of time that is longer than an electoral cycle. In effect, political parties, when not simply electoral cartels, have a solidity and duration that makes them more than simply a conglomeration of opinions. But I am aware of the contradiction that characterizes representative democracy, wherein the theme of change of opinions has to be thought of within a political process (elections) that generates some persistence of ideas, beliefs and values. Electoral cycles generate a certain solidification of opinions or a narrative that links one election to another and makes citizens identify with or connect to a political group.