How to Be a Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for its Survival

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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. [ citation needed] In contrast, the Liberty of the Moderns was based on the possession of civil liberties, the rule of law, and freedom from excessive state interference. Direct participation would be limited: a necessary consequence of the size of modern states and the inevitable result of creating a mercantile society where there were no slaves, but almost everybody had to earn a living through work. Instead, the voters would elect representatives who would deliberate in Parliament on the people's behalf and would save citizens from daily political involvement. [81] The importance of Constant's writings on the liberty of the ancients and that of the "moderns" has informed the understanding of liberalism, as has his critique of the French Revolution. [83] The British philosopher and historian of ideas, Sir Isaiah Berlin, has pointed to the debt owed to Constant. [84] British liberalism 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. [64] Yellow is the political colour most commonly associated with liberalism. [33] [34] [35] In Europe and Latin America, liberalism means a moderate form of classical liberalism and includes both conservative liberalism ( centre-right liberalism) and social liberalism ( centre-left liberalism). [36] In North America, liberalism almost exclusively refers to social liberalism. The dominant Canadian party is the Liberal Party, and the Democratic Party is usually considered liberal in the United States. [37] [38] [39] In the United States, conservative liberals are usually called conservatives in a broad sense. [40] [41] Philosophy Amin, Ash (September 2019). "Violence and Democracy" (PDF). The British Academy. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 March 2023 . Retrieved 25 January 2021. {{ cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= ( help)

Morlino L. (2004) "What is a 'good' democracy?", Demoocratization, 11(5), pp. 10-32. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13510340412331304589

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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. [8] Justification [ edit ] Increased political stability [ edit ] 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.

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. [8] 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. [98] 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. [99] Fitzgibbon, John. "Populists are not anti-democratic, they are anti-liberal democracy". London School of Economics. See for example, Renato Cristi, Carl Schmitt and authoritarian liberalism: strong state, free economy, Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 1998; Michael A. Wilkinson, 'Authoritarian Liberalism as Authoritarian Constitutionalism', in Helena Alviar García, Günter Frankenberg, Authoritarian constitutionalism: comparative analysis and critique, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2019. Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce; Downs, George W. (September–October 2005). "Development and Democracy". Foreign Affairs. Council on Foreign Relations (September/October 2005). Archived from the original on 22 October 2018 . Retrieved 22 October 2018.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. [35] He, Jiacheng (8 January 2022). "The Patterns of Democracy in Context of Historical Political Science". Chinese Political Science Review. Springer Science and Business Media LLC. 7 (1): 111–139. doi: 10.1007/s41111-021-00201-5. ISSN 2365-4244. S2CID 256470545.

Some socialists, such as The Left party in Germany, [95] 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. [96] 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. [96] 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. [97] Vulnerabilities [ edit ] Authoritarianism [ edit ]The liberal philosophical tradition has searched for validation and justification through several intellectual projects. The moral and political suppositions of liberalism have been based on traditions such as natural rights and utilitarian theory, although sometimes liberals even request support from scientific and religious circles. [48] Through all these strands and traditions, scholars have identified the following major common facets of liberal thought: The word's meaning kept shifting. By the 18th century, people were using liberal to indicate that something was “not strict or rigorous.” The political antonyms of liberal and conservative began to take shape in the 19th century, as the British Whigs and Tories began to adopt these as titles for their respective parties. Galston, William A. (William Arthur) (2018). Anti-pluralism: the populist threat to liberal democracy. Hunter, James Davison, Owen, John M. (John Malloy). New Haven. ISBN 978-0300235319. OCLC 1026492265. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) 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. [65]