The idea of liberal democracy is tied to the ideas associated with the 18th century Enlightenment.
And this idea is under attack in country after country. Concepts like individual rights and rule of law are in a political recession, as stated by writer Francis Fukuyama in his story "Liberalism of the Own: Liberalism Needs the Nation."
According to Freedom House, political rights and civil liberties around the world have fallen each year for the last 16 years. Liberalism's decline is evident in the growing strength of autocracies such as China and Russia, the erosion of liberalor nominally liberalinstitutions in countries such as Hungary and Turkey, and the backsliding of liberal democracies such as India and the United States.
Fukuyama describes the style of politics advocated by those politicians usually termed right-wing populist: "in each of these cases, nationalism has powered the rise of illiberalism. Illiberal leaders, their parties, and their allies have harnessed nationalist rhetoric in seeking greater control of their societies. They denounce their opponents as out-of-touch elites, effete cosmopolitans, and globalists. They claim to be the authentic representatives of their country and its true guardians. Sometimes, illiberal politicians merely caricature their liberal counterparts as ineffectual and removed from the lives of the people they presume to represent. Often, however, they describe their liberal rivals not simply as political adversaries but as something more sinister: enemies of the people."
These movements do draw support from religious conservatives. Religious right leaders supported Donald Trump in the US, the Russian Orthodox church supports Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the Polish Catholic Church supports Poland's Law and Justice Party. These movements oppose Western views on modern feminism, abortion rights, and gay marriage. In a nutshell, right-wing populism wants to take its followers back to a time when their religious views or ethic group had much more influence than they do now.
The specific beliefs of liberalism, or a liberal democracy, which the United States was founded on in the 1770's, are tolerance in the form of freedom of the press, religion, assembly, and the right of the people to elect representatives that govern them. The ideas of social democracy - or the extension of democracy into the economic sphere where needed in the form of economic rights that are achieved through social insurance, legalized collective bargaining, minimum wages, and other mechanisms - are an outgrow of liberal democracy. Working people develop such a consciousness when any country moves from an agrarian society of self-employed farmers to workforce employed by employers, usually large employers.
Democracy, if one is discussing liberal democracy or social democracy, is the act of people governing themselves while authoritarianism is giving up the right to govern through surrender to an authoritarian leader. Fukuyama made a wonderful statement on the ideas at work in various right-wing populist movements: "nationalists complain that liberalism has dissolved the bonds of national community and replaced them with a global cosmopolitanism that cares about people in distant countries as much as it cares for fellow citizens. Nineteenth-century nationalists based national identity on biology and believed that national communities were rooted in common ancestry. This continues to be a theme for certain contemporary nationalists, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has defined Hungarian national identity as being based on Magyar ethnicity. Other nationalists, such as the Israeli scholar Yoram Hazony, have sought to revise twentieth century ethnonationalism by arguing that nations constitute coherent cultural units that allow their members to share thick traditions of food, holidays, language, and the like. The American conservative thinker Patrick Deneen has asserted that liberalism constitutes a form of anticulture that has dissolved all forms of preliberal culture, using the power of the state to insert itself into and control every aspect of private life."
Liberal democracy claims to be able to manage political differences in a society and social democracy claims to be able to manage class differences by giving some power to the middle-to-lower income spectrum. Fukuyama recommends that advocates of liberal democracy see the nation-state as a positive and not a negative, and he paints a picture of our future if liberal democracy continues to fail: "if enough people reject liberal principles themselves and seek to restrict the fundamental rights of others, or if citizens resort to violence to get their way, then liberalism alone cannot maintain political order. And if diverse societies move away from liberal principles and try to base their national identities on race, ethnicity, religion, or some other, different substantive vision of the good life, they invite a return to potentially bloody conflict. A world full of such countries will invariably be more fractious, more tumultuous, and more violent." Fukuyama also criticizes some who claim to be "citizens of the world," as this ignores the accomplishments of the nation-state.
However, we live in a globalized world where organizations such as the United Nations, European Union, multinational corporations, and terrorist factions can project power. The greenhouse effect and future pandemics require global corporation. Neither the European Union nor the International Air Transport Association deploys its own police or army to enforce the rules it sets. Such organizations still depend on the coercive capacity of the countries that empowered them. Power comes from below and not above, a concept any advocate of liberal democracy or social democracy. There is no direct contradiction between the power of nation-states and the power of international law! International institutions such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court continue to rely on states to enforce their writs.
Mr. Fukyama draws from the theory of German philosopher Immanuel Kant: "the German philosopher Immanuel Kant imagined a condition of 'perpetual peace' in which a world populated by liberal states would regulate international relations through law rather than by resorting to violence. Putin's invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated, unfortunately, that the world has not yet reached this post-historical moment and that raw military power remains the ultimate guarantor of peace for liberal countries. The nation-state is therefore unlikely to disappear as the crucial actor in global politics." He also gives us an idea of values to be stressed in a liberal nationalism: "They need to prioritize public-spiritedness, tolerance, open-mindedness, and active engagement in public affairs if they are to cohere. They need to prize innovation, entrepreneurship, and risk-taking if they are to prosper economically. A society of inward-looking individuals interested only in maximizing their personal consumption will not be a society at all."
Liberal democratic states should celebrate their individual achievements (US, United Kingdom, France) but should not make war to make other states like them (what the US did in Iraq). These states should not recognize citizens based on race, ethnicity, or religious heritage and accept that those differences will exist in a free society. They should promote their democratic systems as a positive role model for countries that are not democratic.
Let's hope that Putin's Russia can be stopped by economic sanctions and support of democratic allies in Ukraine. If that is so, perhaps democracies will flourish and turn to the idea of international law and norms as a way of keeping the peace. If not, then the world will return to something like the early 20th century, a world defined by an aggressive and intolerant nationalism.
Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer for the Peace Economy Project.
