The Classical Marxist Conception of Liberal Democracy

1971 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 360-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Schonfeld
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Future ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Marxist Conception

During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Europe witnessed the development and spread of major innovations in the structures and practices of politics which were to reach their fruition during the l900's. It was a revolutionary epoch whose major theme was increased participation by the people in governing themselves: the traditional aristocratic authoritarianism was in the process of fighting and losing its last battles, while liberal democratic political institutions seemed to be riding the crest of the wave of the future.

scholarly journals GLOBALIZATION AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY

1999 ◽  
pp. 276-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Markoff
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The People ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Future ◽  
Democratic Revolution

Writing on the eve of the democratic breakthrough of the late eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau gave vivid voice to a critique of the political institutions across the Channel that were admired by so many French reformers of the day. Commenting scornfully on British electoral practice, he observed in 1762 that:"The people of England regards itself as free, but it is gravely mistaken. It is free only during the election of Parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing. The use it makes of the short moments of liberty it enjoys merits losing them." Rousseau's contention about the limitations of electoral institutions was in no way superseded by the age of democratic revolution that followed. From the 1790s to the present, there have been recurrent complaints about the depth of popular involvement in political life, the reality of popular control over powerholders, and the possibility that the existence of some form of institutional channel for participation could blind publics to the inadequacy of that participation. Rousseau's critique has repeatedly reappeared in one form or another and has informed movements for a more genuine democratization.

scholarly journals The “populist” foundation of liberal democracy: Jan-Werner Müller, Chantal Mouffe, and post-foundationalism

2022 ◽  
pp. 019145372110668
Author(s):  
Lasse Thomassen
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
The People ◽  
Agonistic Democracy ◽  
Ultimate Foundation ◽  
The Way

This article examines the connection between populism and post-foundationalism in the context of contemporary debates about populism as a strategy for the Left. I argue that there is something “populist” about every constitutional order, including liberal democratic ones. I argue so drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theories of hegemony, agonistic democracy, and left populism. Populism is the quintessential form of post-foundational politics because, rightly understood, populism constructs the object it claims to represent, namely the people. As such, it expresses the fact that, because there is no ultimate foundation, politics consists in the construction of contingent foundations. I develop this argument through readings of Jan-Werner Müller and Chantal Mouffe, showing the differences between their respective post-foundational approaches. I show that Müller cannot uphold the distinction between populism and democracy in the way he seeks to do, but I also argue that this does not mean that we must jettison all normativity, only that it requires that we rethink normativity in hegemonic terms.

Populism and the Politics of Rights: The Dual Attack on Representative Democracy

1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Knopff
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
New Science ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
The Cost

AbstractIn Canada as elsewhere, representative democracy is under attack by both populists and rights advocates. The populist challenge comes mainly from Preston Manning's wing of the Reform party. The rights-based challenge is grounded on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These two challenges are different in obvious ways, but from the point of view of representative government—and ultimately of liberal democratic constitutionalism—what they have in common outweighs their differences. What they have in common is the appeal to a mystical being or icon beyond ordinary politics. In effect, the People or Rights become what God was to pre-liberal theocratic politics: a transpolitical trump on ordinary political division, a way of placing opponents “beyond the pale,” a demand for unattainable purity in public life and policy. While bills of rights and populism appear to flow, respectively, from the liberalism and the democracy of liberal democracy, they are, in fact, vehicles for precisely the kind of politics liberal democracy was designed to overcome. Representative government, not populism or entrenched rights, was at the heart of the “new science of politics” designed to make liberal democracy possible. Representative institutions, properly arranged in a system of checks and balances, were a way of blending liberalism with democracy, giving each its due, but indirectly, so that neither would be taken to self-destructive extremes. Populism and the judicialized politics of rights threaten to dissolve this salutary blend, at the cost of liberal democratic constitutionalism.

scholarly journals The limits of conjecture: Political liberalism, counter-radicalisation and unreasonable religious views

Ethnicities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Badano ◽  
Alasia Nuti
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrine ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Theory Reasoning ◽  
The Stability

Originally proposed by John Rawls, the idea of reasoning from conjecture is popular among the proponents of political liberalism in normative political theory. Reasoning from conjecture consists in discussing with fellow citizens who are attracted to illiberal and antidemocratic ideas by focusing on their religious or otherwise comprehensive doctrines, attempting to convince them that such doctrines actually call for loyalty to liberal democracy. Our goal is to criticise reasoning from conjecture as a tool aimed at persuasion and, in turn, at improving the stability of liberal democratic institutions. To pursue this goal, we use as case study real-world efforts to counter-radicalise at-risk Muslim citizens, which, at first glance, reasoning from conjecture seems well-placed to contribute to. This case study helps us to argue that the supporters of reasoning from conjecture over-intellectualise opposition to liberal democracy and what societies can do to counter it. Specifically, they (i) underestimate how few members of society can effectively perform reasoning from conjecture; (ii) overlook that the burdens of judgement, a key notion for political liberals, highlight how dim the prospects of reasoning from conjecture are and (iii) do not pay attention to the causes of religious persons’ opposition to liberal democracy. However, not everything is lost for political liberals, provided that they redirect attention to different and under-researched resources contained in Rawls’s theory. In closing, we briefly explain how such resources are much better placed than reasoning from conjecture to provide guidance relative to counter-radicalisation in societies (i) populated by persons who do not generally hold anything close to a fully worked out and internally consistent comprehensive doctrine and (ii) where political institutions should take responsibility for at least part of the existing alienation from liberal democratic values.

scholarly journals The wisdom of crowds versus the madness of crowds

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin James
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Wisdom Of Crowds

Declining trust in northern liberal democratic institutions poses serious challenges to legislatures (parliaments). That mistrust extends to traditional media at a time when new digital media are fanning ‘fake news’ and a ‘madness of crowds’. Will the ‘wisdom of crowds’ on which liberal democracy critically depends prevail over the ‘madness’? Can parliaments resolve that tension positively? In New Zealand trust in political institutions is still high, but voter turnout has slid, especially among the young. Parliament has work to do.

scholarly journals Populism, liberal democracy and the ethics of peoplehood

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Wolkenstein
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Justification ◽  
Normative Standards ◽  
Democratic Principles

Populism is widely thought to be in tension with liberal democracy. This article clarifies what exactly is problematic about populism from a liberal–democratic point of view and goes on to develop normative standards that allow us to distinguish between more and less legitimate forms of populism. The point of this exercise is not to dismiss populism in toto; the article strives for a more subtle result, namely, to show that liberal democracy can accommodate populism provided that the latter conforms to particular discursive norms. What the article calls a ‘liberal ethics of populism’ turns out to be closely bound up with a broader ethics of peoplehood, understood as a way of articulating who ‘the people’ are in a way that is compatible with liberal–democratic principles of political justification. Such an ethics, concludes the article, inevitably has a much wider audience than populist political actors: its addressees are all those who seek legitimately to exercise power in the name of the people.

Globalization, Democratic Institutions and The Fairness of the Elections

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Md. Mujahedul Islam
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Critical Question ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Normative Argument ◽  
Significant Direct Effect

A central normative argument of liberal democracy is that elections as instruments of democracy need to be free, fair and neutral to reflect peoples’ opinions. In many parts of the world, particularly democracies in developing countries of South Asia and Africa, governments are formed by elections that are sometimes considered 'flawed' by the people and international observers. This raises a critical question with far-reaching implications for democracy: What affects the fairness of the elections? Is there any significant direct effect of globalization on elections? If not, under what circumstances does globalization influence the quality of elections? Do effective political institutions condition the effect of globalization on the fairness of the elections? I empirically assess these questions from 2006 to 2010 for 100 countries in a time-series cross-sectional statistical model using the 2015 Quality of Government (QoG) dataset. The results suggest that greater levels of globalization significantly increase the fairness of the elections in countries where effective political institutions exist. The results furthermore demonstrate that in the absence of viable democratic institutions, an increased level of globalization may not always correspond to free, fair and neutral elections.

The Challenge of Mass Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The State ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
The People ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Mass Democracy

Chapter 1 analyzes Schmitt’s assessment of democratic movements in Weimar and the gravity of their effects on the state and constitution. It emphasizes that the focus of Schmitt’s criticism of Weimar was mass democracy rather than liberalism. Schmitt warned that the combination of mass democracy, the interpenetration of state and society, and the emergence of total movements opposed to liberal democracy, namely the Nazis and the Communists, were destabilizing the Weimar state and constitution. Weimar, Schmitt argued, had been designed according to nineteenth century principles of legitimacy and understandings of the people. Under the pressure of mass democracy, the state was buckling and cannibalizing itself and its constitution. Despite this, Schmitt argued, Weimar jurists’ theoretical commitments left them largely unable to recognize the scope of what was occurring. Schmitt’s criticism of Weimar democracy was intended to raise awareness of how parliamentary democracy could be turned against the state and constitution.

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