Liberal Democratic Theory: Some Reflections on Its History and Its Present

Abstract

What this chapter seeks to do is to trace some of the lineages of liberal democratic theory from the point where it originated in liberal, constitutionalist opposition to the royal absolutism of the late seventeenth century. It seeks, further, to account for the threat posed to liberal theory by the imminence of democratic politics in the nineteenth century, and for the disillusionment with liberal democratic theory, as a normative enterprise, that resulted from the experience of the mass politics of radical right nationalism of the inter-war years of the twentieth century. Finally, it suggests that much, though by no means all, of the thrust of liberal democratic theory in recent years has been with how to make the theory more democratic, with a view to the reform and restructuring of existing liberal democracies.KeywordsCivil SocietyPolitical PowerLiberal DemocracyLiberal TheoryDemocratic PoliticsThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.