The Concept of Liberal Democracy

Today it is customary to talk about Liberal Democracy as if the component concepts-- liberalism and democracy-- have some kind of natural affinity or fit.  But both concepts are ambiguous in themselves,  and their historical convergence in the form of the unit-concept, "Liberal Democracy," is, at the very least, problematic if not somewhat incoherent. The history of the terms "democracy" and "liberalism" reveals separate strands that only later appear to hang together, but originally were quite distinct. Democracy now seems to go together  with liberalism, but liberalism (based around toleration and freedom to live the kind of life one wants without interference) had nothing to do with Athenian Democracy or Civic Republicanism in Rome (which influenced the American founders greatly). 

Athenian (direct) democracy had nothing to do with protecting "individual rights" or allowing people to live and express themselves as they wished. Far from it. Every year the people (demos) would vote to ostracize any one citizen they most disdained without regard for that citizen's "rights." In other words, any citizen might be thrown out of the Polis,  or even put to death, for no reason at all except for  their unpopularity. Further, the liberal conception of a private sphere in which we may choose to participate in government or choose to abstain from political life didn't exist. While slaves, who far out-numbered citizens,  kept the silver mines running, citizens were forced to participate based on choice by lot. The lots revolved on a yearly basis, but as with conscription there were few exemptions. Thus rule by the people  (demos = people; kratia = rule) was literally the order of the day for those adult males defined as citizens-- a minority of the total population. Many who lived in Athens but came from other Poleis (known as "metics" or foreigners) lacked citizenship. As for the citizens,  not all  were equally well-educated, wealthy and so forth. As a result the system was vulnerable to tyrants*  and demagogues who came to exercise outsized power on often poorly informed and impressionable citizens. So, individual rights, privacy, autonomy, the inherent dignity of the person-- all these familiar (to us) concepts associated with democracy were not in play. 

During the Enlightenment and, in the American era of the founders, democracy was, for the most part,  a dirty word that signaled the danger of "mob rule" or the "tyranny of the majority," consistent with Plato's critique. Though there were elements of democracy in the constitution, these were understood as being much closer to the tradition of Civic Republicanism, a mixed form of government that is based a) on citizen virtues and b) institutional guardrails to prevent "factionalism" and rule by majority (checks and balances, appointed officials, indirect elections et al.) It wasn't until the 20th century, for example, that American citizens were able to vote directly for Senators-- and this was before universal suffrage. The word democracy started to be used in a non-pejorative sense only in the mid 19th century. The radicals of the  French Revolution promoted Rousseauian democracy (more on which below), but this ended with Napoleon, and after his defeat,  memories of the Terror that resulted in reactionary movements that led to the restoration of  the monarchy. Democracy in France was not embraced during most of the long 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_long_nineteenth_century

What about "Liberalism?" It too is a cluster-concept in which various historical strands eventually converged in the 19th century-- some more closely interrelated than others. But the assemblage of these strands as a unitary concept, "liberalism," was historical, political and thus contingent. Some of these historical strands include a) religious toleration (esp. vis a vis Protestantism) b) subsequent and gradual generalization of the principle of toleration to secular sphere  c) fear of excessive power concentrated in the central state d) the idea of voluntary power having priority over coercion/force c) the centrality of the individual over the group e) laissez-faire economics, et al. As JS Mill discussed, these core elements sit uneasily with democracy. If the "will of the people"is taken to mean what most enfranchised citizens want, as expressed in electoral outcomes and public opinion, then it would seem to leave little room for individual dissenters and minorities. Further, Mill, like many others in the 19th century, was concerned to make sure that the demos (people) was not simply reduced to a numbers game, with majority being identified with right. His proposed solution was to argue for an "educated democracy" in which all men and (yes) women would get the vote, but only after receiving mandated secondary education was achieved,  so that their input would be based on knowledge and reason rather than passions and popular opinion. This resembles current discussions of "epistocracy" in the sense that the outcome of elections is only a solid basis for governance if citizens are well informed, and have mastered some critical thinking skills.  Mill, in many ways the father of modern liberalism, wants to protect minority rights, minority opinions, as eloquently laid out in On Liberty. But in the end he is also concerned that free expression be "educated" and not vulgar ("It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied" he writes).  This notion of the  "better" state of being is a moral judgment irreducible to the calculus of elections and opinion polls per se. The identification of "better" arguments and opinions will become a hallmark of later attempts to preserve individual liberty and mass participation without ending up with the long feared form of democracy the founders called "tyranny of the majority." Even Justice Oliver Wendell Homes, a champion of free expression, once half-joked that "democracy is what the mob wants."    

Aside from the tension between majoritarian calculus and qualitative standards of rationality and morality (as expressed by Tocqueville and Mill who fear mass conformity to  public opinion and a corresponding "dumbing down" of culture ), there also exists a tension  between the heterogeneity of liberalism (encouraging diverse and potentially incompatible ideas, beliefs and forms of self-expression) and the homogeneity implied by concepts like "popular sovereignty," "The will of 'The People" etc. Such concepts suppose the homogeneity of agreement, of a unitary sovereign                    will and not heterogeneity at its core. This comes out forcefully when we look at  Rousseau's vision of a direct democracy of free and rational beings. The insistence on unanimity and universal principles and the related idea that majoritarian processes result in good and fair outcomes, seems to clash with the claim that all citizens qua individuals are genuinely autonomous and thus free. Rousseau's notion of freedom is obviously not one that protects minority opinions, as dissenters may be, in his (in)famous phrase,  "forced to be free" if their views depart from what is allegedly the rational, moral and universal set of guiding principles expressed by the "General Will"--the unitary and sovereign will of "the people". (Bertrand Russell once quipped that on Rousseau's terms, in which we can be forced to be free, we all enjoy "the right to obey the police.")

During the 19th and 20th centuries,  liberalism and democracy were gradually combined in an attempt to balance individual rights and the rule of "the people" (popular sovereignty)-- in truth a problematic category that assumes overarching agreement when in reality we have a multitude of competing interest groups duking it out (what the founders feared as "factionalism;" see Federalist 10). The idea of "we the people" or popular sovereignty (akin to Rousseau's "General Will") has long since been problematized by political scientists who instead discuss concepts of pluralism, cross-cutting cleavages, and more recently "agonistics" and other markers of conflict and competition which does not add up to an identifiable "general will." 

We have seen that Mill recommended competition of discrepant views in what we now call "the free market of ideas" (Supreme Ct. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketplace_of_ideas   ).  Mill had great faith in the process of such discourse only after mandatory education at the secondary level had time to "refine" public opinion. (Crick: p. 10) Just why we should suppose that a system of education will overlap with "refined" views of the moral and political, views that are more like Socrates than a "fool" in his words, is far from clear. We know that many of the best educated citizens in England also had views on topics like colonialism and race we now frown upon.  Mill himself did not think Indians were qualified for self-rule or participation in politics in the Empire at any significant level. So the concern with popular opinion converging on morally and rationally defensible outcomes is not solved by the mediation of mandatory public education in and of itself.

In later theories, this merger of democracy and liberalism in which we have freedom of expression, but accept the ideas that win out in the "free market" morphed into an idea that moves back towards the homogeneity we see in Roussseau's vision. (Note the tension between individuality and unanimity or at least majority opinion through all these attempts to reconcile liberalism and democracy). What emerges more and more in liberal democratic theory is the valorization of a) neutrality and b) consensus. Rather than hoping that the ideas that win out in the free speech market are good and true, theorists begin to move toward a procedural view of rational deliberation in which the process of dialogue or conversation is both  fair and free, and in which the outcome is a consensus that converges on some notion of the public good. Now it is not education alone, but "free and fair discussion" or deliberation that is hoped to bridge disparate and free individuals and defensible outcomes that reveal the will of the people.

An example of the neutrality/fairness claim can be found in Rawls notion of policy makers drawing up their plans under the "veil of ignorance." Put simply, the idea is that these deliberators can and should bracket their actual empirical interests, and imagine that they don't know where they will end up in terms of socio-economic position, prestige, power etc. This "neutral" perspective (one not tied to any actual or empirical self-interests since you could end up at the bottom of the barrel in principle) is thought to insure an unbiased,  hence neutral  decision-making procedure aimed at rational consensus and the public good.  

In Europe, Jurgen Habermas, has long been developing a theory of deliberation occurring under optimal conditions he has called "the ideal speech situation," one in which all participants operate in a free and unconstrained set of interactions he calls "communicative rationality" or "discourse." He has tried at once to defend universal values while denying any commitment to absolute foundations. "Ideal Speech" is supposed to be  enough to generate substantive universal values for a democracy which are rationally defensible. I cannot go into detail here, but rather I mention it (like Rawls) to show how theorists deal with the problem of mixing individual rights, individual differences autonomy and other liberal values with democratic governance which involves a tendency towards the unitary "will of the people"/"We The People" etc.  Consensus and neutrality are two pivots on which the fusion of liberal values and democratic practices and commitments often turns. Consensus has a long history of being treated as a basis for legitimacy in the proto-liberal tradition of contract theory (e.g. the "consent of the governed" and "tacit vs. express consent" et al.)


It is often assumed that consensus is the best basis for legitimacy rather than arbitrary power/authority. Tied to consent and also fairness/justice in modern liberal theory is the idea that consensus is the product of the "force of the better argument" in rational deliberation. While I don't mean to suggest that coercion is better than agreement or cooperation, the reification of "consensus" as binding universal principle needs to be examined. If you claim that, for example, all legitimate societies rest on the "consent of the governed," you will run into societies that are legitimate in the eyes of those inhabiting it, but which are not based on anything like a rational consensus. Right now, for example, Putin's authoritarianism is legitimate, even popular in Russia. But Putinism did not emerge as a product of rational deliberation and consensus, and it makes no universal claims, but rather nationalistic ones. Putin's regime is widely accepted by Russians,  and only in that sense it has (to a large degree) the "consent of the governed." So consensus there is not what generates the values and policies as in liberal democracy, but is just a contingent sign of public approval after the fact. The people themselves have little input in generating consensus; it is entirely passive.

So does consensus, of itself, insure "rightness" or the public good? Well, if we mean concrete consensus where people agree on X or Y, then no. People agree on all kinds of things, be they helpful, harmful, true, false etc.  Elevating the idea of consensus to a transcendental status  where it is taken as a "necessary condition of the good society" (e.g. Habermas) seems to be an instance of overreach. Various theorists take a concept (consensus)  that may work well in some cases and not in others, and then generalize until we lose sight of the granularity of politics.  One result is that conflicts can be glossed over by overemphasizing consensus. For example, Manifest Destiny represented a consensus on the part of most American citizens in the 19th century, but not on the part of Amerindians. Why should the "consensus" on the 'rightness" of the Monroe Doctrine (US hegemony over all other populations in the Americas) override "rationally"  the various responses to this consensus-based policy on the part of American Indians, Central and South Americans? How and when can we say that a "consensus" represents an alleged "Universal Moral Principle?" When can we even say it represents "the best practical outcome" in a particular political context? Just where do we find the conceptual link that ties consensus to that which is deemed to be "good" and "right?" Liberals and theorists of liberal democracy have often fetishized consensus formation as an intrinsic good. It needn't be jettisoned; only put into a more empirical and  historical perspective that lacks the transcendental pretense of the theories I've mentioned and others like them.


I believe, in light of the above,  that there is no getting around  value-conflicts that are not resolvable in terms of a 'universal principle' of an ethical/political nature as promised by Liberal Democracy with its talk of universal rights, freedoms and truths. As rhetoric it has been valuable for various groups at various times (e.g. natural rights and dignity claims on the part of various minorities in the past, and more recently appeal to abstract universal "human rights" by any number of identity-based groups). But as much as I agree with the goals of many people invoking human rights, the concept doesn't rest on anything that is "universal" or "self-evident." The concept is a residual one which rests on theology and natural law metaphysics. In fact, it is now customary to refer not simply  to "Human Rights"as universal entities,  but to  "Human Rights Discourse." https://www.e-ir.info/pdf/43822 This at least leaves open the question of whether or not the concept refers to anything beyond the goals and struggles of various  populations (people of color, various ethnic and religious groups,  the impoverished, LGBT, etc.)  The idea of such rights traces back to the liberal, not democratic lineage of ideas. 

In reality the "rights" of these minorities has been anything but "self-evident." Long and often bloody struggles (not rational deliberations) were the main catalysts of change. Documents enumerating alleged human rights (like that of the UN charter) certainly allowed the various groups seeking change to utilize the discourse as a potent rhetorical appeal. But the rhetoric alone neither demonstrates the existence of said rights nor does it insure that they will be recognized in any given context. People within and between different societies continue to disagree on whether or not X or Y is in fact a human right, and even whether human rights exist outside of socially defined discourse (i.e. Human Rigihts Discourse or HRD).  So liberal ideas of "neutrality" and the rational generation of consensus (in this case the alleged consensus manifest in the Declaration of Universal Human Rights at the UN)  block from view the social and historical contingencies, struggles, conflicts and coercive agencies that have been used to advance or suppress the projects of various contesting groups  (e.g. Palestinians, Transgender activists, advocates of same-sex marriage in Russia and other societies that claim allegiance to "traditional values" to say nothing of those East Asian societies that claim human rights is incompatible with Confucianism-- see The East Asian Challenge For Human Rights https://books.google.com/books/about/The_East_Asian_Challenge_for_Human_Right.html?id=p5wt8hUagc8C . 

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I may personally value many of the products of liberalism and democracy. But none of these things, in my view,  are etched in the ether as "good and true." These are forms of life among many others in the run of human events. The quest for certainty and "foundations" in liberal democratic theory and rhetoric has, I think, led to a smug sense that we in the modern west know best and enjoy the epistemic advantages of something called "progress." I think we can function without these conceits, admitting that ultimately our values are based on personal, interpersonal and socially established ideas about how we might best organize society and live. Political theory is more continuous with creativity, imagination and praxis than air-tight logical arguments. Of course logical rigor has an important place in all theorizing, but there are always loose ends and lacunae when theory and actual conditions are juxtaposed.. This may not be a failure so much as an index of the untidy and incomplete nature of individual and social life.  It's not that there's no rationality or logic involved, but the insistence on knowing what is good universally is a case of overreach and hubris. 

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References and Related Readings: 

-Bernard Crick: Democracy: A Very Short Introduction: Oxford U Press:  2006

-John Dewey: The Public and its Problems: Ohio U Press 1988 (orig. 1927) (reasonably good wikipedia summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Public_and_its_Problems

-Michael Freedon: 
1)  Rights, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 1991
2) Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction; OxfordL 2015

-Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelson: Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns: Cambridge U Press: 2008

-Christopher Lasch: The True and Only Heaven:  Progress and its Critics: WW Norton: 1991

- Edmund S. Morgan: Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America: WW Norton: 1988

- Michael Sandel (ed.): Liberalism and its Critics: NYU Press: 1984

-David Stockton: The Classical Athenian Democracy: Oxford:  1989