It was 25 years ago that Fareed Zakaria warned against a new and growing threat: the rise of “illiberal democracy” around the world. Democratically elected governments were routinely flouting liberal principles, openly violating the rule of law, and depriving their citizens of basic rights and liberties.



Today, many believe that we stand on the precipice of an existential crisis. Liberal democracy is “closer to collapse than we may wish to believe”, writes Ed Luce of the Financial Times. In a bracing new book, the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright even warns of a revival of fascism.

There is a growing consensus that American democracy itself is at risk. The Economist’s index categorizes the United States as a “flawed democracy”. There is a danger within: Americans are becoming complacent about democracy, losing interest in their traditional ideals. Liberalism has failed, writes Patrick Deneen. The problem, says David Brooks of the New York Times, is that liberals have forgotten how to defend their “liberal democratic values”. They must go back to first principles; they must remember “the canon of liberal democracy”.

The trouble is that we don’t really know what liberal democracy is. A spate of books, articles and opinion pieces talk about its demise, but their authors speak past each other or around in circles, because they are using different definitions of the term. Ed Luce defines liberalism one way, David Brooks another and Patrick Deneen yet another. How can we have a proper discussion about liberal democracy when we are not speaking about the same thing?

The problem concerns more than semantics. The confusion of terms leads to confused thinking. It impairs liberals’ understanding of their own principles and weakens their politics. Their opponents easily exploit the verbal ambiguities. It is high time, therefore, that we clarify what the term “liberal democracy” means and what it stands for. For this we need to understand its history.

One common mistake is to conflate liberalism with democracy. The two concepts are not synonyms. For most of their history, they have not even been compatible. From the time of the ancient Greeks, “democracy” has meant “rule by the people”. Some have interpreted this to mean direct political participation by all male citizens. Others have taken it to mean a representative system based on the suffrage of all male citizens. Either way, however, well into the 19th century, the majority of liberals were hostile to the very idea of democracy, which they associated with chaos and mob rule. It is hard to find a liberal who was enthusiastic about democracy during the heyday of what is often called “classical liberalism”. Indeed, it would not be wrong to say that liberalism was originally invented to contain democracy.

Certainly, the founders of liberalism were no democrats. Benjamin Constant stood for strict property qualifications for both voting and officeholding. The French revolution proved to liberals like him that the public was utterly unprepared for political rights. People were ignorant, irrational and prone to violence. Under their pressure, the rule of law had been suspended, “enemies of the people” guillotined, rights trampled upon. The most democratic phase of the revolution had also been the most bloody.

Napoleon’s despotism, which was legitimized repeatedly by plebiscites based on universal male suffrage, only confirmed the liberals’ apprehensions about democracy. The emperor’s popularity demonstrated in no uncertain terms that French citizens had an unhealthy predilection for authoritarian rulers and were fatally susceptible to propaganda. New words were invented to name his pseudo-democratic regime. Some called it “democratic despotism”. Others used the terms “Bonapartism” or “Caesarism”. Constant called it “usurpation”. “Usurpers” are constantly compelled to justify their positions, so they use lies and propaganda to manufacture support. They form alliances with religious authorities to prop up their regimes. They take their countries into useless wars to distract people from their treachery, while they enhance their own power, line their own pockets and enrich their friends. Worst of all, they corrupt their people by tricking them into participating in their lies.

Alexis de Tocqueville also had deep misgivings about democracy. Two additional French revolutions, one in 1830 and the other in 1848, followed by another Napoleon, depressed him greatly. It proved once again that the masses were easy prey for demagogues and would-be dictators catering to their lowest instincts. Democracy fostered a pernicious form individualism, another word for selfishness in Tocqueville’s lexicon.

Early liberals like Constant and Tocqueville spent much time thinking about how to counter the perils of democracy. Limits had to be placed on the sovereignty of the people, the rule of law and individual rights guaranteed. But good laws would never be enough, since a popular strongman could easily pervert or simply ignore them. The survival of liberal democracies required a politically educated citizenry. Constant travelled around France instructing French citizens about the principles of their constitution, their rights and their duties. He published articles and delivered speeches for the same purpose. He fought valiantly for the freedom of the press.

Both men also believed that the survival of a liberal democracy depended on certain moral values. It required public spiritedness and a sense of community. Tocqueville thought deeply about fostering “public morality” and “public virtue”. Constant agonized over the political complacency, moral apathy, and selfishness that he saw all around him. Only dictators profited from such vices.

How to counter the moral degradation? They thought about this as well. The commitment of public-spirited elites was essential. “The enlightened classes” and “well-meaning men” must be the “missionaries of truth”, wrote Constant. They must redouble their efforts to counter the cynicism that was turning people away from the public good. As Tocqueville said, it was essential to “educate democracy.” And this, he said, was “the primary duty imposed on the leaders of society today”.

It is a sad sign of the times that such statements sound so naive or ring hollow today. The truth is that we still have much to learn from the founding fathers of liberalism, who lived through an existential crisis of their own. They knew about the tendency that democracies have to become illiberal. Let us heed their lessons.