This scripture was cited at the end of PuritanJohn Winthrop's lecture or treatise, "A Model of Christian Charity" delivered on March 21, 1630, at Holyrood Church in Southampton, before his first group of Massachusetts Bay colonists embarked on the ship Arbella to settle Boston.
In quoting Matthew's Gospel (5:14) in which Jesus warns, "a city on a
hill cannot be hid," Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans that their new
community would be "as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are
upon us", meaning, if the Puritans failed to uphold their covenant with
God, then their sins and errors would be exposed for all the world to
see: "So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have
undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we
shall be made a story and a byword through the world".
Winthrop's lecture was forgotten for nearly two hundred years
until the Massachusetts Historical Society published it in 1839. It
remained an obscure reference for more than another century until Cold
War era historians and political leaders reinterpreted the event,
crediting Winthrop's text, erroneously, as the foundational document of
the idea of American exceptionalism.
More recently, Princeton historian Dan T. Rogers has corrected the
record, explaining that there was no grand sense of destiny among the
first Puritans to settle Boston. They carried no ambitions to build a
New Jerusalem. They did not name their new home Zion, or Canaan, the
promised land of milk and honey. They sought only a place to uphold
their covenant with God, free from the interference they experienced in
England. By the second generation of settlement, New England was a
backwater in the Protestant Reformation, an inconsequential afterthought
to the Puritan Commonwealth in England and the wealthier Dutch
Republic. In truth, America's sense of destiny came generations later.
Winthrop's warning that "we will become a story" has been fulfilled several times in the four centuries since, as described in Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance by Kai T. Erikson in 1966.
... I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arabella
three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of
building a new government on a perilous frontier. "We must always
consider", he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the
eyes of all people are upon us". Today the eyes of all people are truly
upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national,
state and local, must be as a city upon a hill—constructed and inhabited
by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For
we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that
undertaken by the Arabella in 1630. We are committing ourselves
to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and
disorder within. History will not judge our endeavors—and a government
cannot be selected—merely on the basis of color or creed or even party
affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while
essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. For of those to
whom much is given, much is required ...
On 3 November 1980, Ronald Reagan
referred to the same event and image in his election-eve address, "A
Vision for America". Reagan was reported to have been inspired by
author Manly P. Hall and his book The Secret Destiny of America,
which alleged a secret order of philosophers had created the idea of
America as a country for religious freedom and self-governance.
I have quoted John Winthrop's words
more than once on the campaign trail this year—for I believe that
Americans in 1980 are every bit as committed to that vision of a shining
city on a hill, as were those long ago settlers ...
These visitors to that city on the Potomac
do not come as white or black, red or yellow; they are not Jews or
Christians; conservatives or liberals; or Democrats or Republicans. They
are Americans awed by what has gone before, proud of what for them is
still… a shining city on a hill.
Reagan would reference this concept through multiple speeches; notably again in his January 11, 1989, farewell speech to the nation:
I've spoken of the shining city all
my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I
saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on
rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with
people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports
that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city
walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the
will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.
It was right here, in the waters
around us, where the American experiment began. As the earliest settlers
arrived on the shores of Boston and Salem and Plymouth, they dreamed of
building a City upon a Hill. And the world watched, waiting to see if
this improbable idea called America would succeed.
More than half of you represent the very first member of your family to
ever attend college. In the most diverse university in all of New
England, I look out at a sea of faces that are African-American and
Hispanic-American and Asian-American and Arab-American. I see students
that have come here from over 100 different countries, believing like
those first settlers that they too could find a home in this City on a
Hill—that they too could find success in this unlikeliest of places.
His domestic policies would lead to
recession; his foreign policies would make America and the world less
safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president,
and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a
shining city on a hill.
During the 2016 presidential race, Texas Senator Ted Cruz used the phrase during his speech announcing the suspension of his campaign.
President Barack Obama also alluded to President Ronald Reagan's use
of the phrase, during his speech at the Democratic National Convention
the same year, as he proposed a vision of America in contrast to that of
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
In 2017, former FBI director James Comey used the phrase in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election:
...[W]e have this big, messy,
wonderful country where we fight with each other all the time, but
nobody tells us what to think, what to fight about, what to vote for,
except other Americans, and that's wonderful and often painful. But
we're talking about a foreign government that [...] tried to shape the
way we think, we vote, we act. [...] [They]'re going to try to run it
down and dirty it up as much as possible. That's what this is about. And
they will be back, because we remain — as difficult as we can be with
each other, we remain that shining city on the hill, and they don't like
it.
On November 10, 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
used the phrase while delivering an address at the inauguration of the
Ronald Reagan Institute Center for Freedom and Democracy.
...But I am equally confident that
America will overcome any challenge, from Communist China to the
terrorist regime in Tehran.
Because that’s what free people do. We come together; we solve
problems; we win, they lose; and we execute our foreign policy confident
that we are that shining city on a hill.
In Australian politics, the similar phrase "the light on the hill" was famously used in a 1949 conference speech by Prime Minister Ben Chifley, and as a consequence this phrase is used to describe the objective of the Australian Labor Party. It has often been referenced by both journalists and political leaders in that context since this time.
Governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws
adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedure. To
define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. A liberal democracy may take various and mixed constitutional forms: it may be a constitutional monarchy or a republic. It may have a parliamentary system, presidential system, or semi-presidential system. Liberal democracies are contrasted with illiberal democracies and dictatorships. Some liberal democracies, especially those with large populations, use federalism
(also known as vertical separation of powers) in order to prevent abuse
and increase public input by dividing governing powers between
municipal, provincial and national governments. The characteristics of
liberal democracies are correlated with increased political stability, lower corruption, better management of resources, and better health indicators such as life expectancy and infant mortality.
Liberal democracy traces its origins—and its name—to the Age of Enlightenment. The conventional views supporting monarchies and aristocracies were challenged at first by a relatively small group of Enlightenment intellectuals, who believed that human affairs should be guided by reason and principles of liberty and equality. They argued that all people are created equal,
that governments exist to serve the people—not vice versa—and that laws
should apply to those who govern as well as to the governed (a concept
known as rule of law), formulated in Europe as Rechtsstaat. Some of these ideas began to be expressed in England in the 17th century. By the late 18th century, leading philosophers such as John Locke had published works that spread around the European continent and beyond. These ideas and beliefs influenced the American Revolution and the French Revolution.
After a period of expansion in the second half of the 20th century,
liberal democracy became a prevalent political system in the world.
Liberal democracy traces its origins—and its name—to 18th-century Europe, during the Age of Enlightenment. At the time, the vast majority of European states were monarchies, with political power held either by the monarch or the aristocracy. The possibility of democracy had not been a seriously considered political theory since classical antiquity
and the widely held belief was that democracies would be inherently
unstable and chaotic in their policies due to the changing whims of the
people. It was further believed that democracy was contrary to human nature,
as human beings were seen to be inherently evil, violent and in need of
a strong leader to restrain their destructive impulses. Many European
monarchs held that their power had been ordained by God and that questioning their right to rule was tantamount to blasphemy.
These conventional views were challenged at first by a relatively small group of Enlightenment intellectuals, who believed that human affairs should be guided by reason and principles of liberty and equality. They argued that all people are created equal
and therefore political authority cannot be justified on the basis of
noble blood, a supposed privileged connection to God or any other
characteristic that is alleged to make one person superior to others.
They further argued that governments exist to serve the people—not vice
versa—and that laws should apply to those who govern as well as to the
governed (a concept known as rule of law).
Some of these ideas began to be expressed in England in the 17th century. There was renewed interest in Magna Carta, and passage of the Petition of Right in 1628 and Habeas Corpus Act
in 1679 established certain liberties for subjects. The idea of a
political party took form with groups debating rights to political
representation during the Putney Debates of 1647. After the English Civil Wars (1642–1651) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Bill of Rights
was enacted in 1689, which codified certain rights and liberties. The
Bill set out the requirement for regular elections, rules for freedom of
speech in Parliament and limited the power of the monarch, ensuring
that, unlike almost all of Europe at the time, royal absolutism would not prevail. This led to significant social change in Britain in terms of the position of individuals in society and the growing power of Parliament in relation to the monarch.
By the late 18th century, leading philosophers of the day had
published works that spread around the European continent and beyond.
One of the most influential of these philosophers was English empiricist
John Locke, who refuted monarchical absolutism in his Two Treatises of Government. According to Locke, individuals entered into a social contract with a state, surrendering some of their liberties in exchange for the protection of their natural rights. Locke advanced that governments were only legitimate if they maintained the consent of the governed and that citizens had the right to instigate a rebellion against their government if that government acted against their interests. These ideas and beliefs influenced the American Revolution and the French Revolution, which gave birth to the philosophy of liberalism and instituted forms of government that attempted to put the principles of the Enlightenment philosophers into practice.
When the first prototypical liberal democracies were founded, the
liberals themselves were viewed as an extreme and rather dangerous
fringe group that threatened international peace and stability. The
conservative monarchists
who opposed liberalism and democracy saw themselves as defenders of
traditional values and the natural order of things and their criticism
of democracy seemed vindicated when Napoleon Bonaparte took control of the young French Republic, reorganized it into the first French Empire and proceeded to conquer most of Europe. Napoleon was eventually defeated and the Holy Alliance
was formed in Europe to prevent any further spread of liberalism or
democracy. However, liberal democratic ideals soon became widespread
among the general population and over the 19th century traditional
monarchy was forced on a continuous defensive and withdrawal. The Dominions of the British Empire
became laboratories for liberal democracy from the mid 19th century
onward. In Canada, responsible government began in the 1840s and in
Australia and New Zealand, parliamentary government elected by male suffrage and secret ballot was established from the 1850s and female suffrage achieved from the 1890s.
Reforms and revolutions helped move most European countries towards
liberal democracy. Liberalism ceased being a fringe opinion and joined
the political mainstream. At the same time, a number of non-liberal
ideologies developed that took the concept of liberal democracy and made
it their own. The political spectrum changed; traditional monarchy
became more and more a fringe view and liberal democracy became more and
more mainstream. By the end of the 19th century, liberal democracy was
no longer only a liberal idea, but an idea supported by many different
ideologies. After World War I and especially after World War II,
liberal democracy achieved a dominant position among theories of
government and is now endorsed by the vast majority of the political
spectrum.
Although liberal democracy was originally put forward by
Enlightenment liberals, the relationship between democracy and
liberalism has been controversial since the beginning and was
problematized in the 20th century. In his book Freedom and Equality in a Liberal Democratic State, Jasper Doomen posited that freedom and equality are necessary for a liberal democracy. In his book The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama says that since the French Revolution,
liberal democracy has repeatedly proven to be a fundamentally better
system (ethically, politically, economically) than any of the
alternatives, and that democracy will become more and more prevalent in
the long term, although it may suffer temporary setbacks. The research institute Freedom House today simply defines liberal democracy as an electoral democracy also protecting civil liberties.
Political freedom is a central concept in history and political thought and one of the most important features of democratic societies. Political freedom was described as freedom from oppression or coercion, the absence of disabling conditions for an individual and the fulfillment of enabling conditions, or the absence of life conditions of compulsion, e.g. economic compulsion, in a society. Although political freedom is often interpreted negatively as the freedom from unreasonable external constraints on action, it can also refer to the positive exercise of rights, capacities and possibilities for action and the exercise of social or group rights. The concept can also include freedom from internal constraints on political action or speech (e.g. social conformity, consistency, or inauthentic behaviour). The concept of political freedom is closely connected with the concepts of civil liberties and human rights, which in democratic societies are usually afforded legal protection from the state.
Laws in liberal democracies may limit certain freedoms. The
common justification for these limits is that they are necessary to
guarantee the existence of democracy, or the existence of the freedoms
themselves. For example, democratic governments may impose restrictions
on free speech, with examples including Holocaust denial and hate speech. Some discriminatory behavior may be prohibited. For example, public accommodations in the United States may not discriminate on the basis of "race, color, religion, or national origin." There are various legal limitations such as copyright and laws against defamation. There may be limits on anti-democratic speech, on attempts to undermine human rights and on the promotion or justification of terrorism. In the United States more than in Europe, during the Cold War such restrictions applied to communists.
Now they are more commonly applied to organizations perceived as
promoting terrorism or the incitement of group hatred. Examples include anti-terrorism legislation, the shutting down of Hezbollah satellite broadcasts and some laws against hate speech. Critics
claim that these limitations may go too far and that there may be no
due and fair judicial process. Opinion is divided on how far democracy
can extend to include the enemies of democracy in the democratic
process.
If relatively small numbers of people are excluded from such freedoms
for these reasons, a country may still be seen as a liberal democracy.
Some argue that this is only quantitatively (not qualitatively)
different from autocracies that persecute opponents, since only a small
number of people are affected and the restrictions are less severe, but
others emphasize that democracies are different. At least in theory,
opponents of democracy are also allowed due process under the rule of
law.
Since it is possible to disagree over which rights are considered
fundamental, different countries may treat particular rights in
different ways. For example:
The constitutions of Canada, India, Israel, Mexico and the United States guarantee freedom from double jeopardy, a right not provided in some other legal systems.
Legal systems that use politically elected court jurors, such as Sweden, view a (partly) politicized court system as a main component of accountable government. Other democracies employ trial by jury with the intent of shielding against the influence of politicians over trials.
Liberal democracies usually have universal suffrage, granting all adult citizens the right to vote regardless of ethnicity, sex, property ownership, race, age, sexuality, gender, income, social status, or religion. However, historically some countries regarded as liberal democracies have had a more limited franchise.
Even today, some countries, considered to be liberal democracies, do
not have truly universal suffrage. In some countries, members of
political organizations with connections to historical totalitarian
governments (for example formerly predominant communist, fascist or Nazi
governments in some European countries) may be deprived of the vote and
the privilege of holding certain jobs. In the United Kingdom people
serving long prison sentences are unable to vote, a policy which has
been ruled a human rights violation by the European Court of Human Rights. A similar policy is also enacted in most of the United States. According to a study by Coppedge and Reinicke, at least 85% of democracies provided for universal suffrage. Many nations
require positive identification before allowing people to vote. For
example, in the United States two thirds of the states require their
citizens to provide identification to vote, which also provide state IDs
for free. The decisions made through elections are made by those who are members of the electorate and who choose to participate by voting.
In 1971, Robert Dahl summarized the fundamental rights and freedoms shared by all liberal democracies as eight rights:
Freedom to form and join organizations.
Freedom of expression.
Right to vote.
Right to run for public office.
Right of political leaders to compete for support and votes.
Freedom of alternative sources of information
Free and fair elections.
Right to control government policy through votes and other expressions of preference.
Preconditions
For
a political regime to be considered a liberal democracy it must contain
in its governing over a nation-state the provision of civil rights- the
non-discrimination in the provision of public goods such as justice,
security, education and health- in addition to, political rights- the
guarantee of free and fair electoral contests, which allow the winners
of such contests to determine policy subject to the constraints
established by other rights, when these are provided- and property
rights- which protect asset holders and investors against expropriation
by the state or other groups. In this way, liberal democracy is set
apart from electoral democracy, as free and fair elections – the
hallmark of electoral democracy – can be separated from equal treatment
and non-discrimination – the hallmarks of liberal democracy. In liberal
democracy, an elected government cannot discriminate against specific
individuals or groups when it administers justice, protects basic rights
such as freedom of assembly and free speech, provides for collective
security, or distributes economic and social benefits.
According to Seymour Martin Lipset, although they are not part of the system of government as such, a modicum of individual and economic freedoms, which result in the formation of a significant middle class and a broad and flourishing civil society, are seen as pre-conditions for liberal democracy.
For countries without a strong tradition of democratic majority
rule, the introduction of free elections alone has rarely been
sufficient to achieve a transition from dictatorship to democracy; a
wider shift in the political culture and gradual formation of the
institutions of democratic government are needed. There are various
examples—for instance, in Latin America—of
countries that were able to sustain democracy only temporarily or in a
limited fashion until wider cultural changes established the conditions
under which democracy could flourish.
One of the key aspects of democratic culture is the concept of a loyal opposition,
where political competitors may disagree, but they must tolerate one
another and acknowledge the legitimate and important roles that each
play. This is an especially difficult cultural shift to achieve in
nations where transitions of power have historically taken place through
violence. The term means in essence that all sides in a democracy share
a common commitment to its basic values. The ground rules of the
society must encourage tolerance and civility in public debate. In such a
society, the losers accept the judgement of the voters when the
election is over and allow for the peaceful transfer of power. According to Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira, this is tied to another key concept of democratic cultures, the protection of minorities,
where the losers are safe in the knowledge that they will neither lose
their lives nor their liberty and will continue to participate in public
life. They are loyal not to the specific policies of the government,
but to the fundamental legitimacy of the state and to the democratic
process itself.
One requirement of liberal democracy is political equality
amongst voters (ensuring that all voices and all votes count equally)
and that these can properly influence government policy, requiring
quality procedure and quality content of debate that provides an
accountable result, this may apply within elections or to procedures
between elections. This requires universal, adult suffrage; recurring,
free elections, competitive and fair elections; multiple political
parties and a wide variety of information so that citizens can
rationally and effectively put pressure onto the government, including
that it can be checked, evaluated and removed. This can include or lead
to accountability, responsiveness to the desires of citizens, the rule
of law, full respect of rights and implementation of political, social
and economic freedom.
Other liberal democracies consider the requirement of minority rights
and preventing tyranny of the majority. One of the most common ways is
by actively preventing discrimination by the government (bill of rights)
but can also include requiring concurrent majorities in several
constituencies (confederalism); guaranteeing regional government
(federalism); broad coalition governments (consociationalism) or
negotiating with other political actors, such as pressure groups
(neocorporatism).
These split political power amongst many competing and cooperating
actors and institutions by requiring the government to respect minority
groups and give them their positive freedoms, negotiate across multiple
geographical areas, become more centrist among cooperative parties and
open up with new social groups.
In a new study published in Nature Human Behaviour,
Damian J. Ruck and his co-authors take a major step toward resolving
this long-standing and seemingly irresolvable debate about whether
culture shapes regimes or regimes shape culture. This study resolves the
debate in favor of culture's causal primacy and shows that it is the
civic and emancipative values (liberty, impartiality and contractarianism) among a country's citizens that give rise to democratic institutions, not vice versa.
Countries designated electoral democracies in Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2023 survey, covering the year 2022
Map reflecting the findings of Freedom House's
2022 survey concerning the state of freedom by country in 2021. The
concept of freedom used in the survey is closely connected to liberal
democracy.
Free
Partly free
Not free
Percentage of countries in each category from Freedom House's 1973 through 2021 reports:
Free Partly free Not free
Electoral democracies
Several organizations and political scientists maintain lists of free
and unfree states, both in the present and going back a couple
centuries. Of these, the best known may be the Polity Data Set and that produced by Freedom House and Larry Diamond.
Freedom House considers many of the officially democratic governments in Africa and the former Soviet Union
to be undemocratic in practice, usually because the sitting government
has a strong influence over election outcomes. Many of these countries
are in a state of considerable flux.
Officially non-democratic forms of government, such as single-party states and dictatorships, are more common in East Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
The 2019 Freedom in the World
report noted a fall in the number of countries with liberal democracies
over the 13 years from 2005 to 2018, citing declines in 'political
rights and civil liberties'. The 2020 and 2021 reports document further reductions in the number of free countries in the world.
Types
Proportional vs. plurality representation
Plurality voting system
award seats according to regional majorities. The political party or
individual candidate who receives the most votes, wins the seat which
represents that locality. There are other democratic electoral systems,
such as the various forms of proportional representation, which award seats according to the proportion of individual votes that a party receives nationwide or in a particular region.
One of the main points of contention between these two systems is
whether to have representatives who are able to effectively represent
specific regions in a country, or to have all citizens' vote count the
same, regardless of where in the country they happen to live.
Some countries, such as Germany and New Zealand, address the conflict between these two forms of representation by having two categories of seats in the lower house
of their national legislative bodies. The first category of seats is
appointed according to regional popularity and the remainder are awarded
to give the parties a proportion of seats that is equal—or as equal as
practicable—to their proportion of nationwide votes. This system is
commonly called mixed member proportional representation.
Recent
academic studies have found that democratisation is beneficial for
national growth. However, the effect of democratisation has not been
studied as yet. The most common factors that determine whether a
country's economy grows or not are the country's level of development
and the educational level of its newly elected democratic leaders. As a
result, there is no clear indication of how to determine which factors
contribute to economic growth in a democratic country.
However, there is disagreement regarding how much credit the
democratic system can take for this growth. One observation is that
democracy became widespread only after the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of capitalism.
On the other hand, the Industrial Revolution started in England which
was one of the most democratic nations for its time within its own
borders, but this democracy was very limited and did not apply to the
colonies which contributed significantly to the wealth.
Several statistical studies support the theory that a higher degree of economic freedom, as measured with one of the several Indices of Economic Freedom which have been used in numerous studies, increases economic growth and that this in turn increases general prosperity, reduces poverty and causes democratisation. This is a statistical tendency and there are individual exceptions like Mali, which is ranked as "Free" by Freedom House, but is a Least Developed Country,
or Qatar, which has arguably the highest GDP per capita in the world,
but has never been democratic. There are also other studies suggesting
that more democracy increases economic freedom, although a few find no
or even a small negative effect.
Some argue that economic growth due to its empowerment of
citizens will ensure a transition to democracy in countries such as
Cuba. However, other dispute this and even if economic growth has caused
democratisation in the past, it may not do so in the future. Dictators
may now have learned how to have economic growth without this causing
more political freedom.
A high degree of oil or mineral exports is strongly associated
with nondemocratic rule. This effect applies worldwide and not only to
the Middle East. Dictators who have this form of wealth can spend more
on their security apparatus and provide benefits which lessen public
unrest. Also, such wealth is not followed by the social and cultural
changes that may transform societies with ordinary economic growth.
A 2006 meta-analysis found that democracy has no direct effect on
economic growth. However, it has strong and significant indirect
effects which contribute to growth. Democracy is associated with higher
human capital accumulation, lower inflation, lower political instability and higher economic freedom. There is also some evidence that it is associated with larger governments and more restrictions on international trade.
If leaving out East Asia,
then during the last forty-five years poor democracies have grown their
economies 50% more rapidly than nondemocracies. Poor democracies such
as the Baltic countries, Botswana, Costa Rica, Ghana and Senegal have
grown more rapidly than nondemocracies such as Angola, Syria, Uzbekistan
and Zimbabwe.
Of the eighty worst financial catastrophes during the last four
decades, only five were in democracies. Similarly, poor democracies are
half likely as non-democracies to experience a 10 per cent decline in
GDP per capita over the course of a single year.
Justifications and support
Increased political stability
Several
key features of liberal democracies are associated with political
stability, including economic growth, as well as robust state
institutions that guarantee free elections, the rule of law, and individual liberties.
One argument for democracy is that by creating a system where the
public can remove administrations, without changing the legal basis for
government, democracy aims at reducing political uncertainty and
instability and assuring citizens that however much they may disagree
with present policies, they will be given a regular chance to change
those who are in power, or change policies with which they disagree.
This is preferable to a system where political change takes place
through violence.
One notable feature of liberal democracies is that their
opponents (those groups who wish to abolish liberal democracy) rarely
win elections. Advocates use this as an argument to support their view
that liberal democracy is inherently stable and can usually only be
overthrown by external force, while opponents argue that the system is
inherently stacked against them despite its claims to impartiality. In
the past, it was feared that democracy could be easily exploited by
leaders with dictatorial aspirations, who could get themselves elected
into power. However, the actual number of liberal democracies that have
elected dictators into power is low. When it has occurred, it is usually
after a major crisis has caused many people to doubt the system or in
young/poorly functioning democracies. Some possible examples include Adolf Hitler during the Great Depression and Napoleon III, who became first President of the Second French Republic and later Emperor.
Effective response in wartime
By
definition, a liberal democracy implies that power is not concentrated.
One criticism is that this could be a disadvantage for a state in wartime,
when a fast and unified response is necessary. The legislature usually
must give consent before the start of an offensive military operation,
although sometimes the executive can do this on its own while keeping
the legislature informed. If the democracy is attacked, then no consent
is usually required for defensive operations. The people may vote
against a conscription army.
However, actual research shows that democracies are more likely
to win wars than non-democracies. One explanation attributes this
primarily to "the transparency of the polities,
and the stability of their preferences, once determined, democracies
are better able to cooperate with their partners in the conduct of
wars". Other research attributes this to superior mobilisation of
resources or selection of wars that the democratic states have a high
chance of winning.
Stam and Reiter
also note that the emphasis on individuality within democratic
societies means that their soldiers fight with greater initiative and
superior leadership.
Officers in dictatorships are often selected for political loyalty
rather than military ability. They may be exclusively selected from a
small class or religious/ethnic group that support the regime. The
leaders in nondemocracies may respond violently to any perceived
criticisms or disobedience. This may make the soldiers and officers
afraid to raise any objections or do anything without explicit
authorisation. The lack of initiative may be particularly detrimental in
modern warfare. Enemy soldiers may more easily surrender to democracies
since they can expect comparatively good treatment. In contrast, Nazi
Germany killed almost 2/3 of the captured Soviet soldiers and 38% of the
American soldiers captured by North Korea in the Korean War were killed.
Better information on and corrections of problems
A
democratic system may provide better information for policy decisions.
Undesirable information may more easily be ignored in dictatorships,
even if this undesirable or contrarian information provides early
warning of problems. Anders Chydenius put forward the argument for freedom of the press for this reason in 1776.
The democratic system also provides a way to replace inefficient
leaders and policies, thus problems may continue longer and crises of
all kinds may be more common in autocracies.
Reduction of corruption
Research by the World Bank suggests that political institutions are extremely important in determining the prevalence of corruption:
(long term) democracy, parliamentary systems, political stability and
freedom of the press are all associated with lower corruption. Freedom of information legislation is important for accountability and transparency. The Indian Right to Information Act
"has already engendered mass movements in the country that is bringing
the lethargic, often corrupt bureaucracy to its knees and changing power
equations completely".
Better use of resources
Democracies
can put in place better education, longer life expectancy, lower infant
mortality, access to drinking water and better health care than
dictatorships. This is not due to higher levels of foreign assistance or
spending a larger percentage of GDP on health and education, as instead
the available resources are managed better.
Prominent economist Amartya Sen has noted that no functioning democracy has ever suffered a large scale famine.
Refugee crises almost always occur in non-democracies. From 1985 to
2008, the eighty-seven largest refugee crises occurred in autocracies.
Health and human development
Democracy correlates with a higher score on the Human Development Index and a lower score on the human poverty index.
Several health indicators (life expectancy and infant and
maternal mortality) have a stronger and more significant association
with democracy than they have with GDP per capita, rise of the public
sector or income inequality.
In the post-communist nations, after an initial decline those
that are the most democratic have achieved the greatest gains in life
expectancy.
Numerous studies using many different kinds of data, definitions and
statistical analyses have found support for the democratic peace theory.
The original finding was that liberal democracies have never made war
with one another. More recent research has extended the theory and finds
that democracies have few militarized interstate disputes
causing less than 1,000 battle deaths with one another, that those
militarized interstate disputes that have occurred between democracies
have caused few deaths and that democracies have few civil wars.
There are various criticisms of the theory, including at least as many
refutations as alleged proofs of the theory, some 200 deviant cases,
failure to treat democracy as a multidimensional concept and that
correlation is not causation.
Minimization of political violence
Rudolph Rummel's Power Kills
says that liberal democracy, among all types of regimes, minimizes
political violence and is a method of nonviolence. Rummel attributes
this firstly to democracy instilling an attitude of tolerance of
differences, an acceptance of losing and a positive outlook towards
conciliation and compromise.
A study published by the British Academy, on Violence and Democracy,
argues that in practice, liberal democracy has not stopped those
running the state from exerting acts of violence both within and outside
their borders. The paper also argues that police killings, profiling of
racial and religious minorities, online surveillance, data collection,
or media censorship are a couple of ways in which successful states
maintain a monopoly on violence.
Objections and criticism
Campaign costs
In
Athenian democracy, some public offices were randomly allocated to
citizens, in order to inhibit the effects of plutocracy. Aristotle
described the law courts in Athens which were selected by lot as
democratic and described elections as oligarchic.
Political campaigning in representative democracies can favor the rich due to campaign costs, a form of plutocracy where only a very small number of wealthy individuals can actually affect government policy in their favor and toward plutonomy. Stringent campaign finance laws can correct this perceived problem.
Other studies predicted that the global trend toward plutonomies
would continue, for various reasons, including "capitalist-friendly
governments and tax regimes".
However, they also say that, since "political enfranchisement remains
as was—one person, one vote, at some point it is likely that labor will
fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be
a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich."
Economist Steven Levitt says in his book Freakonomics
that campaign spending is no guarantee of electoral success. He
compared electoral success of the same pair of candidates running
against one another repeatedly for the same job, as often happens in
United States congressional elections, where spending levels varied. He
concludes:
A winning candidate can cut his spending in half and lose only 1
percent of the vote. Meanwhile, a losing candidate who doubles his
spending can expect to shift the vote in his favor by only that same 1
percent.
On September 18, 2014, Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page's study
concluded "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and
organized groups representing business interests have substantial
independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens
and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite
Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of
Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."
Media
Critics of the role of the media in liberal democracies allege that concentration of media ownership leads to major distortions of democratic processes. In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky argue via their Propaganda Model
that the corporate media limits the availability of contesting views
and assert this creates a narrow spectrum of elite opinion. This is a
natural consequence, they say, of the close ties between powerful corporations and the media and thus limited and restricted to the explicit views of those who can afford it.
Furthermore, the media's negative influence can be seen in social media
where vast numbers of individuals seek their political information
which is not always correct and may be controlled. For example, as of
2017, two-thirds (67%) of Americans report that they get at least some
of their news from social media, as well as a rising number of countries are exercising extreme control over the flow of information.
This may contribute to large numbers of individuals using social media
platforms but not always gaining correct political information. This may
cause conflict with liberal democracy and some of its core principles,
such as freedom, if individuals are not entirely free since their
governments are seizing that level of control on media sites. The notion
that the media is used to indoctrinate the public is also shared by
Yascha Mounk's The People Vs Democracy which states that the
government benefits from the public having a relatively similar
worldview and that this one-minded ideal is one of the principles in
which Liberal Democracy stands.
Defenders responding to such arguments say that constitutionally protected freedom of speech
makes it possible for both for-profit and non-profit organisations to
debate the issues. They argue that media coverage in democracies simply
reflects public preferences and does not entail censorship. Especially
with new forms of media such as the Internet, it is not expensive to
reach a wide audience, if an interest in the ideas presented exists.
Low voter turnout, whether the cause is disenchantment, indifference
or contentment with the status quo, may be seen as a problem, especially
if disproportionate in particular segments of the population. Although
turnout levels vary greatly among modern democratic countries and in
various types and levels of elections within countries, at some point
low turnout may prompt questions as to whether the results reflect the
will of the people, whether the causes may be indicative of concerns to
the society in question, or in extreme cases the legitimacy of the electoral system.
Get out the vote
campaigns, either by governments or private groups, may increase voter
turnout, but distinctions must be made between general campaigns to
raise the turnout rate and partisan efforts to aid a particular
candidate, party or cause. Other alternatives include increased use of absentee ballots, or other measures to ease or improve the ability to vote, including electronic voting.
Several nations have forms of compulsory voting,
with various degrees of enforcement. Proponents argue that this
increases the legitimacy—and thus also popular acceptance—of the
elections and ensures political participation by all those affected by
the political process and reduces the costs associated with encouraging
voting. Arguments against include restriction of freedom, economic costs
of enforcement, increased number of invalid and blank votes and random
voting.
Bureaucracy
A persistent libertarian and monarchist
critique of democracy is the claim that it encourages the elected
representatives to change the law without necessity and in particular to
pour forth a flood of new laws, as described in Herbert Spencer's The Man Versus The State.
This is seen as pernicious in several ways. New laws constrict the
scope of what were previously private liberties. Rapidly changing laws
make it difficult for a willing non-specialist to remain law-abiding.
This may be an invitation for law-enforcement agencies to misuse power.
The claimed continual complication of the law may be contrary to a
claimed simple and eternal natural law—although
there is no consensus on what this natural law is, even among
advocates. Supporters of democracy point to the complex bureaucracy and
regulations that has occurred in dictatorships, like many of the former
communist states.
The bureaucracy in liberal democracies is often criticised for a
claimed slowness and complexity of their decision-making. The term "red tape" is a synonym of slow bureaucratic functioning that hinders quick results in a liberal democracy.
Short-term focus
By
definition, modern liberal democracies allow for regular changes of
government. That has led to a common criticism of their short-term
focus. In four or five years the government will face a new election and
it must think of how it will win that election. That would encourage a
preference for policies that will bring short term benefits to the
electorate (or to self-interested politicians) before the next election,
rather than unpopular policy with longer term benefits. This criticism
assumes that it is possible to make long term predictions for a society,
something Karl Popper has criticised as historicism.
Besides the regular review of governing entities, short-term
focus in a democracy could also be the result of collective short-term
thinking. For example, consider a campaign for policies aimed at
reducing environmental damage while causing temporary increase in
unemployment. However, this risk applies also to other political
systems.
The tyranny of the majority
is the fear that a direct democratic government, reflecting the
majority view, can take action that oppresses a particular minority. For
instance, a minority holding wealth, property ownership or power (see Federalist No. 10),
or a minority of a certain racial and ethnic origin, class or
nationality. Theoretically, the majority is a majority of all citizens.
If citizens are not compelled by law to vote, it is usually a majority
of those who choose to vote. If such of group constitutes a minority,
then it is possible that a minority could in theory oppress another
minority in the name of the majority. However, such an argument could
apply to both direct democracy or representative democracy. Several de facto
dictatorships also have compulsory, but not "free and fair" voting in
order to try to increase the legitimacy of the regime, such as North Korea.
In her book World on Fire, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua
posits that "when free market democracy is pursued in the presence of a
market-dominant minority, the almost invariable result is backlash.
This backlash typically takes one of three forms. The first is a
backlash against markets, targeting the market-dominant minority's
wealth. The second is a backlash against democracy by forces favorable
to the market-dominant minority. The third is violence, sometimes genocidal, directed against the market-dominant minority itself".
Cases that have been cited as examples of a minority being oppressed by or in the name of the majority include the practice of conscription and laws against homosexuality, pornography, and recreational drug use.
Homosexual acts were widely criminalised in democracies until several
decades ago and in some democracies like Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania,
Tunisia, Nigeria, and Malaysia, they still are, reflecting the religious
or sexual mores of the majority. The Athenian democracy and the early
United States practiced slavery,
and even proponents of liberal democracy in the 17th and 18th century
were often pro-slavery, which is contradictory of a liberal democracy.
Another often quoted example of the "tyranny of the majority" is that Adolf Hitler came to power by "legitimate" democratic procedures. The Nazi Party gained the largest share of votes in the democratic Weimar Republic
in 1933. However, his regime's large-scale human rights violations took
place after the democratic system had been abolished. Furthermore, the Weimar Constitution in an "emergency" allowed dictatorial powers and suspension of the essentials of the constitution itself without any vote or election.
Proponents of democracy make a number of defenses concerning "tyranny of the majority". One is to argue that the presence of a constitution
protecting the rights of all citizens in many democratic countries acts
as a safeguard. Generally, changes in these constitutions require the
agreement of a supermajority
of the elected representatives, or require a judge and jury to agree
that evidentiary and procedural standards have been fulfilled by the
state, or two different votes by the representatives separated by an
election, or sometimes a referendum. These requirements are often combined. The separation of powers into legislative branch, executive branch and judicial branch
also makes it more difficult for a small majority to impose their will.
This means a majority can still legitimately coerce a minority (which
is still ethically questionable), but such a minority would be very
small and as a practical matter it is harder to get a larger proportion
of the people to agree to such actions.
Another argument is that majorities and minorities can take a
markedly different shape on different issues. People often agree with
the majority view on some issues and agree with a minority view on other
issues. One's view may also change, thus the members of a majority may
limit oppression of a minority since they may well in the future
themselves be in a minority.
A third common argument is that despite the risks majority rule
is preferable to other systems and the tyranny of the majority is in any
case an improvement on a tyranny of a minority. All the possible
problems mentioned above can also occur in non-democracies with the
added problem that a minority can oppress the majority. Proponents of
democracy argue that empirical statistical evidence strongly shows that
more democracy leads to less internal violence and mass murder by the
government. This is sometimes formulated as Rummel's Law, which states that the less democratic freedom a people have, the more likely their rulers are to murder them.
Marxists and communists, as well as some non-Marxist socialists and anarchists, argue that liberal democracy under capitalism is constitutively class-based and therefore can never be democratic or participatory. They refer to it as "bourgeois democracy" because they say that ultimately, politicians fight mainly for the interests of the bourgeoisie. As such, liberal democracy is said to represent "the rule of capital".
According to Karl Marx,
representation of the interests of different classes is proportional to
the influence which a particular class can purchase (through bribes,
transmission of propaganda through mass media, economic blackmail,
donations for political parties and their campaigns and so on). Thus,
the public interest in so-called liberal democracies is systematically
corrupted by the wealth of those classes rich enough to gain the
appearance of representation. Because of this, he said that multi-party democracies
under capitalism are always distorted and anti-democratic, their
operation merely furthering the class interests of the owners of the
means of production, and the bourgeois class becomes wealthy through a
drive to appropriate the surplus-value
of the creative labours of the working class. This drive obliges the
bourgeois class to amass ever-larger fortunes by increasing the
proportion of surplus-value by exploiting the working class through
capping workers' terms and conditions as close to poverty levels as
possible. Incidentally, this obligation demonstrates the clear limit to
bourgeois freedom even for the bourgeoisie itself. According to Marx,
parliamentary elections are no more than a cynical, systemic attempt to
deceive the people by permitting them, every now and again, to endorse
one or other of the bourgeoisie's predetermined choices of which
political party can best advocate the interests of capital. Once
elected, he said that this parliament, as a dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie, enacts regulations that actively support the interests of
its true constituency, the bourgeoisie (such as bailing out Wall St
investment banks; direct socialisation/subsidisation of business—GMH,
US/European agricultural subsidies; and even wars to guarantee trade in commodities such as oil).
Vladimir Lenin
once argued that liberal democracy had simply been used to give an
illusion of democracy whilst maintaining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,
giving as an example the United States's representative democracy which
he said consisted of "spectacular and meaningless duels between two
bourgeois parties" led by "multimillionaires".
Socialist and communist criticism
Some socialists, such as The Left party in Germany,
say that liberal democracy is a dishonest farce used to keep the masses
from realizing that their will is irrelevant in the political process.
The Chinese Communist Party political concept of whole-process people's democracy
criticizes liberal democracy for excessively relying on procedural
formalities without genuinely reflecting the interests of the people.
Under this primarily consequentialist concept, the most important
criteria for a democracy is whether it can "solve the people's real
problems", while a system in which "the people are awakened only for
voting" is not truly democratic. For example, the Chinese government's 2021 white paper China: Democracy that Works criticizes liberal democracy's shortcoming based on principles of whole process people's democracy.
Vulnerabilities
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
is perceived by many to be a direct threat to the liberalised democracy
practised in many countries. According to American political
sociologist and authors Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner and Christopher Walker, undemocratic regimes are becoming more assertive.
They suggest that liberal democracies introduce more authoritarian
measures to counter authoritarianism itself and cite monitoring
elections and more control on media in an effort to stop the agenda of
undemocratic views. Diamond, Plattner and Walker uses an example of
China using aggressive foreign policy against western countries to
suggest that a country's society can force another country to behave in a
more authoritarian manner. In their book 'Authoritarianism Goes Global:
The Challenge to Democracy' they claim that Beijing confronts the
United States by building its navy and missile force and promotes the
creation of global institutions designed to exclude American and
European influence; as such authoritarian states pose a threat to
liberal democracy as they seek to remake the world in their own image.
Various authors have also analysed the authoritarian means that
are used by liberal democracies to defend economic liberalism and the
power of political elites.
War
There
are ongoing debates surrounding the effect that war may have on liberal
democracy, and whether it cultivates or inhibits democratization.
War may cultivate democratization by "mobilizing the masses, and
creating incentives for the state to bargain with the people it needs to
contribute to the war effort". An example of this may be seen in the extension of suffrage in the UK after World War I.
War may however inhibit democratization by "providing an excuse for the curtailment of liberties".
Terrorism
Several studies have concluded that terrorism is most common in nations with intermediate political freedom,
meaning countries transitioning from autocratic governance to
democracy. Nations with strong autocratic governments and governments
that allow for more political freedom experience less terrorism.
There is no one agreed upon definition of populism, with a broader
definition settled upon following a conference at the London School of
Economics in 1967. Academically, the term "populism" faces criticism that it should be abandoned as a descriptor due to its vagueness.
It is typically not fundamentally undemocratic, but it is often
anti-liberal. Many will agree on certain features that characterize
populism and populists: a conflict between 'the people' and 'the
elites', with populists siding with 'the people' and strong disdain for opposition and negative media using labels such as 'fake news'.
Populism is a form of majoritarianism, threatening some of the
core principles of liberal democracy such as the rights of the
individual. Examples of these can vary from freedom of movement via control on immigration, or opposition to liberal social values such as gay marriage.
Populists do this by appealing to the feelings and emotions of the
people whilst offering solutions - often vastly simplified - to complex
problems.
Populism is a particular threat to the liberal democracy because
it exploits the weaknesses of the liberal democratic system. A key
weakness of liberal democracies highlighted in 'How Democracies Die',
is the conundrum that suppressing populist movements or parties can be
seen to be illiberal. Another reason that populism is a threat to
liberal democracy is because it exploits the inherent differences
between 'Democracy' and 'Liberalism'. For liberal democracy to be effective, a degree of compromise is required
as protecting the rights of the individual take precedence if they are
threatened by the will of the majority, more commonly known as a tyranny
of the majority. Majoritarianism is so ingrained in populism that this
core value of a liberal democracy is under threat. This therefore brings
into question how effectively liberal democracy can defend itself from
populism.
According to Takis Papas in his work Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis,
"democracy has two opposites, one liberal, the other populist". Whereas
liberalism accepts a notion of society composed of multiple divisions,
populism only acknowledges a society of 'the people' versus 'the
elites'. The fundamental beliefs of the populist voter consist of: the
belief that oneself is powerless and is a victim of the powerful; a
"sense of enmity" rooted in "moral indignation and resentfulness"; and a
"longing for future redemption" through the actions of a charismatic
leader. Papas says this mindset results in a feeling of victimhood
caused by the belief that the society is "made up of victims and
perpetrators". Other characteristic of a populist voter is that they are
"distinctively irrational" because of the "disproportionate role of
emotions and morality" when making a political decision like voting.
Moreover, through self-deception they are "wilfully ignorant". In
addition, they are "intuitively… and unsettlingly principled" rather
than a more "pragmatic" liberal voter.
An example of a populist movement is the 2016 Brexit campaign. The role of the 'elite' in this circumstance was played by the EU and 'London-centric liberals',
while the Brexit campaign appealed to workers in industries such as
agriculture who were allegedly worse off due to EU membership. This case
study also illustrates the potential threat populism can pose to a
liberal democracy with the movement heavily relying on disdain for the
media. This was done by labeling criticism of Brexit as 'Project Fear'.
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