From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Liberal democracy, also referred to as Western democracy, is a political ideology and a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of liberalism. It is characterised by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified (such as in the United States) or uncodified (such as in the United Kingdom), to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract.
After a period of expansion in the second half of the 20th century,
liberal democracy became a prevalent political system in the world.
A liberal democracy may take various constitutional forms as it may be a constitutional monarchy or a republic. It may have a parliamentary system, a presidential system or a semi-presidential system.
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 as those in the United Kingdom 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 countries provided for universal suffrage. Many nations
require positive identification before being allowed to vote. For
example, in the United States 2/3 of states require their citizens to
provide identification to vote.
The decisions made through elections are made not by all of the
citizens but rather by those who are members of the electorate and who
choose to participate by voting.
The liberal democratic constitution defines the democratic
character of the state. The purpose of a constitution is often seen as a
limit on the authority of the government. Liberal democracy emphasises
the separation of powers, an independent judiciary
and a system of checks and balances between branches of government.
Liberal democracies are likely to emphasise the importance of the state
being a Rechtsstaat, i.e. a state that follows the principle of rule of law. Governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedure. Many democracies 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 (e.g. Germany, where the federal government assumes the main legislative responsibilities and the federated Länder assume many executive tasks).
Origins
Liberal democracy traces its origins—and its name—to the European 18th-century, also known as 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 much 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 inspired the American Revolution and the French Revolution, which gave birth to the ideology of liberalism
and instituted forms of government that attempted to apply the
principles of the Enlightenment philosophers into practice. Neither of
these forms of government was precisely what we would call a liberal
democracy we know today (the most significant differences being that
voting rights were still restricted to a minority of the population and
slavery remained a legal institution) and the French attempt turned out
to be short-lived, but they were the prototypes from which liberal
democracy later grew. Since the supporters of these forms of government
were known as liberals, the governments themselves came to be known as
liberal democracies.
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, reorganised 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. The research institute Freedom House today simply defines liberal democracy as an electoral democracy also protecting civil liberties.
Rights and freedoms
In practice, democracies do have limits on certain freedoms. 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 organisations 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.
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, allowing free speech for those advocating mass
murder undermines the right to life and security. 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 emphasise that democracies are different. At
least in theory, opponents of democracy are also allowed due process
under the rule of law.
However, many governments considered to be democratic have restrictions upon expressions, such as Holocaust denial
and hate speech, including prison sentences, ofttimes seen as anomalous
for the concept of free speech. Members of political organisations with
connections to prior totalitarianism (typically formerly predominant
communist, fascist or National Socialists) may be deprived of the vote and the privilege of holding certain jobs. Discriminatory
behaviour may be prohibited, such as refusal by owners of public
accommodations to serve persons on grounds of race, religion, ethnicity,
gender or sexual orientation. For example, in Canada a printer who
refused to print materials for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives was
fined $5,000, incurred $100,000 in legal fees and was ordered to pay a
further $40,000 of his opponents' legal fees by the Human Rights
Tribunal.
Other rights considered fundamental in one country may be foreign
to other governments. For instance, the constitutions of Canada, India,
Israel, Mexico and the United States guarantee freedom from double jeopardy, a right not provided in other legal systems. Also, legal systems that use politically elected court jurors, such as Sweden,
view a (partly) politicised court system as a main component of
accountable government, distinctly alien to democracies employing trial by jury designed to shield against the influence of politicians over trials. Similarly, many Americans consider the right to keep and bear arms to be an essential feature to safeguard the right to revolution
against a potentially abusive government, while other countries do not
recognise this as fundamental (the United Kingdom, for example, having strict limitations
on the gun ownership by individuals). Overall, some rights are
dependant on the country but the fundamental rights and freedoms shared
by all liberal democracies can be summarised into eight necessary
rights, which are:
- Freedom to form and join organisations.
- 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
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 often seen as pre-conditions for liberal democracy (Lipset 1959).
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. This is tied to another key concept of democratic cultures, the protection of minorities (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012),
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.
Liberal democracies around the world
Countries designated "
electoral democracies" in Freedom House's
Freedom in the World 2021 survey, covering the year 2020.
Map reflecting the findings of
Freedom House's 2021 survey concerning the state of world freedom in 2020.
Free
Partly free
Not free
Percentage of countries in each category from Freedom House's 1973 through 2021 reports
Free (86) Partly free (59) Not free (50) Electoral Democracies (114)
Several organisations 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.
There is agreement amongst several intellectuals and organisations such as Freedom House that the states of the European Union
with Poland and Hungary exception, United Kingdom, Norway, Iceland,
Switzerland, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Korea, Taiwan, the
United States, India, Canada, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Israel, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand are liberal democracies, with India currently having the largest population among the democracies in the world.
Most liberal democracies are Western societies (with exception of
Japan, Taiwan, Israel, Philippines, Thailand, South Africa, Namibia,
Botswana, Seychelles, Mauritius, Cape Verde, India and South Korea).
Liberal democracies are susceptible to democratic backsliding and this is taking place or has taken place in several countries, including, but not limited to, the United States, Poland and Hungary.
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.
Most recently, the Freedom House 2019 report has noted a fall in
the number of countries with liberal democracies, citing declines in
'political rights and civil liberties' over the 13 years from 2005 to
2018.
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.
Australia incorporates both systems in having the preferential voting system applicable to the lower house and proportional representation by state in the upper house. This system is argued to result in a more stable government, while having a better diversity of parties to review its actions.
Presidential vs. parliamentary systems
A presidential system is a system of government of a republic in which the executive branch is elected separately from the legislative. A parliamentary system is distinguished by the executive branch of government being dependent on the direct or indirect support of the parliament, often expressed through a vote of confidence.
The presidential system of democratic government has been adopted
in Latin America, Africa and parts of the former Soviet Union, largely
by the example of the United States. Constitutional monarchies
(dominated by elected parliaments) are present in Northern Europe and
some former colonies which peacefully separated, such as Australia and
Canada. Others have also arisen in Spain, East Asia and a variety of
small nations around the world. Former British territories such as South
Africa, India, Ireland and the United States opted for different forms
at the time of independence. The parliamentary system is widely used in
the European Union and neighbouring countries.
Issues and criticism
Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
Marxists, communists, as well as some socialists and anarchists argue that liberal democracy under capitalist ideology is constitutively class-based and therefore can never be democratic or participatory. It is referred to as bourgeois democracy because ultimately politicians fight only for the rights of the bourgeoisie.
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, multi-party democracies
under capitalist ideology are always distorted and anti-democratic,
their operation merely furthering the class interests of the owners of
the means of production.
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. Thus, 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, 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".
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.
The cost of political campaigning in representative democracies favors the rich, a form of plutocracy where only a very small number of wealthy individuals can actually affect government policy in their favor and toward plutonomy.
Other studies predicted that the global trend toward plutonomies would continue, for various reasons, including "capitalist-friendly governments and tax regimes".
They do, however, also warn of the risk 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."
Liberal democracy has also been attacked by some socialists as a dishonest farce used to keep the masses from realizing that their will is irrelevant in the political process. Stringent Campaign finance laws can correct this perceived problem.
In 2006, United States economist Steven Levitt argues 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.
However, Levitt's response were also criticised as they miss the
socialist point of view, which is that citizens who have little to no
money at all are blocked from political office entirely. This argument
is not refuted merely by noting that either doubling or halving of
electoral spending will only shift a given candidate's chances of
winning by 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."
Authoritarianism
Liberal democracy has been also challenged as a concept and practice by author and researcher Peter Baofu.
Baofu contends that under some conditions a liberal democracy can be
more authoritarian than authoritarian regimes. He suggests that liberal
democracy "is neither authoritarian nor liberal democratic" and instead
it should be described as "authoritarian-liberal-democratic". Baofu
maintains that both authoritarianism and liberal democracy do not have
to be "mutually exclusive opposites".
Other authors have also analysed the authoritarian means that liberal
democracies use in order to defend economic liberalism and the power of
political elites.
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,
suggesting that liberal democracies introduce more authoritarian
measures to counter authoritarianism itself, citing 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.
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
Media commentators also point out that the influential early
champions of the media industry held fundamentally anti-democratic
views, opposing the general population's involvement in creating policy. Walter Lippmann writing in The Phantom Public
(1925) sought to "put the public in its place" so that those in power
would be "free of the trampling and roar of a bewildered herd" while Edward Bernays, originator of public relations, sought to "regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments their bodies".
Furthermore, the notion that the media is used to indoctrinate the
public is also sheared 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 assert 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 there is an interest for the ideas presented.
Limited voter turnout
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.
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.
Other alternatives include increased use of absentee ballots, or other measures to ease or improve the ability to vote, including electronic voting.
Ethnic and religious conflicts
For
historical reasons, many states are not culturally and ethnically
homogeneous. There may be sharp ethnic, linguistic, religious and
cultural divisions. In fact, some groups may be actively hostile to each
other. A democracy, which by definition allows mass participation in
decision-making, theoretically also allows the use of the political
process against 'enemy' groups.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the partial democratisation of Soviet bloc states was followed by wars in the former Yugoslavia, in the Caucasus
and in Moldova. Nevertheless, some people believe that the fall of
communism and the increase in the number of democratic states were
accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare,
interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars and the number of refugees and displaced people (worldwide, not in the countries of the former sovietic bloc).
However, this trend can be attributed to the end of Cold War and the
natural exhaustion of said conflicts, many of which were fueled by the
Soviet Union and the United States.
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".
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.
Anarcho-capitalist Hans-Herman Hoppe
explained short-termism of the democratic governments by the rational
choice of currently ruling group to over exploit temporarily accessible
resources, thus deriving maximal economic advantage to the members of
this group. He contrasted this with hereditary monarchy,
in which a monarch has an interest in preserving the long-term capital
value of his property (i.e. the country he owns) counterbalancing his
desire to extract immediate revenue. He argues that the historical
record of levels of taxation in certain monarchies (20–25%) and certain liberal democracies (30–60%) seems to confirm this contention.
Majoritarianism
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.
In comparison to a direct democracy where every citizen is forced to
vote, under liberal democracies the wealth and power is usually
concentrated in the hands of a small privileged class who have
significant power over the political process (see inverted totalitarianism). 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.
Possible examples of a minority being oppressed by or in the name of the majority:
- Those potentially subject to conscription are a minority possibly because of socioeconomic reasons.
- The minority who are wealthy often use their money and influence to
manipulate the political process against the interests of the rest of
the population, who are the minority in terms of income and access.
- Several European countries have introduced bans on personal
religious symbols in state schools. Opponents see this as a violation of
rights to freedom of religion and supporters see it as following from
the separation of state and religious activities.
- Prohibition of pornography is typically determined by what the majority is prepared to accept.
- The private possession of various weapons (i.e. batons, nunchakus, brass knuckles, pepper spray, firearms
and so on) is criminalized in several democracies (i.e. the United
Kingdom, Belgium and others), with such criminalization motivated by
attempts to increase safety in the society, to reduce general violence,
instances of homicide or perhaps by moralism, classism and/or
paternalism.
- Recreational drug, caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol use is often criminalised
or otherwise suppressed by majorities. In the United States,
recreational drug use was popular in the United States throughout most
of the 19th century. By century’s end, drug abuse
became recognized as a significant social problem and source of concern
for the public, which pressured the federal government to intervene
legally.
Beginning in the late 20th century, American drug policy was criticized
for having potentially had racist, classist, religious, or
paternalistic origins.
- Society's treatment of homosexuals
is also cited in this context. Homosexual acts were widely criminalised
in democracies until several decades ago and in some democracies like
Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Tunisia, Nigeria, Malaysia, Singapore they still
are, reflecting the religious or sexual mores of the majority.
- The Athenian democracy and the early United States had slavery.
- The majority often taxes the minority who are wealthy at progressively higher rates, with the intention that the wealthy will incur a larger tax burden for social purposes.
- In prosperous western representative democracies, the poor form a
minority of the population and may not have the power to use the state
to initiate redistribution when a majority of the electorate opposes
such designs. When the poor form a distinct underclass, the majority may use the democratic process to in effect withdraw the protection of the state.
- An 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. Some might consider this an example of "tyranny of a minority"
since he never gained a majority vote, but it is common for a plurality to exercise power in democracies, therefore the rise of Hitler
cannot be considered irrelevant. 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 nondemocracies 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.
Political stability
The
political stability of liberal democracies depends on strong 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.
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".
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.
Economic growth and financial crises
Statistically, more democracy correlates with a higher gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
However, there is disagreement regarding how much credit the
democratic system can take for this. 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.
One objection might be that nations like Canada and Sweden today score
just below nations like Chile and Estonia on economic freedom, but that
Canada and Sweden today have a higher GDP per capita. However, this is a
misunderstanding as the studies indicate effect on economic growth and
thus that future GDP per capita will be higher with higher economic
freedom. Also according to the index, Canada and Sweden are among the
world's nations with the highest economic freedom rankings, due to
factors such as strong rule of law, strong property rights and few restrictions against free trade.
Critics might argue that the Index of Economic Freedom and other
methods used does not measure the degree of capitalism, preferring some
other definition.
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 nondemocracies to experience a 10 percent decline in GDP
per capita over the course of a single year.
Famines and refugees
Prominent economist Amartya Sen has noted that no functioning democracy has ever suffered a large scale famine.
Refugee crises almost always occur in nondemocracies. Looking at the
volume of refugee flows for the last twenty years, the first
eighty-seven cases occurred in autocracies.
Human development
Democracy correlates with a higher score on the Human Development Index and a lower score on the human poverty index.
Democracies have the potential to 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.
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.
Democratic peace theory
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.
Minimises political violence
Rudolph Rummel's Power Kills
asserts 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 British Academia, 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 there
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 way in which successful states
maintain a monopoly on violence.
The threat of populism
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.
Populism academically faces criticism as an ideology with calls from
Academics to abandon Populism 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 perhaps 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. The nature of Populism is to appeal to the people
against the 'elites' in an 'us against them' type mentality. As a
result, Populist movements often appeal to the Working Class and Middle
Classes as these are the demographics who form most of the population
and are in a position to 'punch up' in society against the 'elite'.
Moreover another reason why populism is a threat to Liberal Democracy
is because it exploits the inherent differences between 'Democracy' and
'Liberalism'. Furthermore, 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 the populist
ideology 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.
Examples of populist movements can include the Brexit Campaign, 2016. The role of the 'elite' in this circumstance was played by the EU and 'London centric Liberals',
while the Brexit campaign appealed to Working class industries, such as
fighting, agriculture and industrial, who were worse off due to EU
Membership. This case study also illustrates the potential threat
Populism can pose a Liberal Democracy with the movement heavily relying
on disdain for the media, this was done by labelling criticism of Brexit
as 'Project Fear'.
