Crisis Of Liberal Democracy Research Articles

The revolution of values and the crisis of liberal democracy

One domain of global political economy (GPE) that warrants more serious scholarly attention is the plane of what Jessop (2010) calls ‘cultural political economy’ (CPE). This article connects GPE and CPE, through an exploration of the production and exchange of meaning (semiosis) in the global politics of ‘values’. The point of departure for this exploration is a series of overlapping crises in GPE. From the Great Recession to the global COVID-19 pandemic, these crises are often associated with the rise of dangerous new reactionary forces. Conspiracist far-right and increasingly authoritarian centre-right movements continue their ascendancy. Meanwhile, a (neo)liberal self-proclaimed ‘centre’ decries this ‘rise of populisms’, lamenting a perceived backlash against liberal democracy itself. This article offers a novel reading of the present conjunctural crisis, through the cultural theory of bell hooks. Specifically, hooks’ ([1984] 2000) identification of ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ as the real Western social model, her analyses of the political-economic crises of the 1990s and her development of Martin Luther King’s notion of a ‘revolution of values’ are all crucial to explaining the present crisis, and exploring the potential of progressive politics today. Reframing ‘liberal democracy’ as white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, it is argued, enables a number of further insights. In particular, this analysis allows us to understand our present moment as a confrontation between truly progressive values – including anti-racist, anti-capitalist and feminist values – and what turn out to be the shared regressive and reactionary values of (neo)liberalism and the far right. The aim of the article is to show, in the terms of Stuart Hall’s Gramscian analysis, ‘how different forces come together, conjuncturally, to create the new terrain, on which a different politics must form up’ (Hall, 1987: 16).

National-Populism, Post-Truth, and the Logic of Postmodernism: A Multidisciplinary Insight into the Crisis of Liberal Democracy

2024 is said to be a decisive year for liberal democracy in the world. The national-populist phenomenon that has been on the rise in recent years occasions renewed and sustained academic debate on the existential challenges faced by liberal democracy. It is a paradigmatic assumption of the liberal mainstream that the rise of national-populist leaders and their constituency pose a fundamental threat to democratic survival. But are national-populism and the Western model of liberal democracy divorced in any essential way? If, as the liberals maintain, national-populism rests and thrives upon the post-truth condition of societal fragmentation and individual psycho-cognitive isolation characterizing contemporary society, we must investigate whether this condition is something foreign to liberal democracy and therefore removable as such. By mobilizing a multidisciplinary corpus, this article shows that postmodernism, defined as the cultural superstructure of consumerist capitalism, is what underpins and perpetuates the interrelated phenomena of infinitely increasing social fragmentation and individual isolation. In the most advanced contemporary stage, called “late postmodernity,” the subjects of Western consumerist capitalist societies are purely driven by a hedonist-narcissistic pleasure principle that defuses all potential for the radical contestation of the existing hegemonic power structure of the liberal-democratic state. The post-truth condition, of which national-populism is an outgrowth, poses no essential threat to liberal democracy as long as both are sustained and promoted, at the structural level, by the hegemonic mode of production.

Contemporary Autocratisation of Democracies in the Context of “a Paradox of Democracy”

After the fall of the “Iron Curtain,” Francis Fukuyama formulated a thesis on structural victory of liberal democracy and its fundamental values, such as freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of worldview, freedom of the press etc. This thesis was demonstrably erroneous, as at the beginning of the 21st century, the crisis of liberal democracy in relation to the growth of populist movements is mentioned more and more frequently. While seizing power through democratic means, populist parties abandon the ideals of liberal democracy and values and pivot towards an autocratic governance model while ostensibly adhering to the rules of formal democracy. It was Hannah Arendt, who warned against such a situation saying that tendencies to move towards autocracy within democracies are specific for multi-party systems, while two-party systems in democracies are relatively less prone to such transformation. With regard to the above, the problem which philosophy of politics calls a “paradox of democracy” reappears. Among other things, it is related to the question on the limit of tolerance the liberal democracy has for thoughts, attitudes, actions and words which are substantially opposed to democracy and may lead to autocracy. At the same time, we are observing the fact of reappearance of the militant democracy theory, formulated by Karl Loewenstein. The aim of this article is to look closely at the theory and its suggested modifications (described as neo-militant democracy), as well as to answer the questions on what tools are needed and if they are even possible to be used to defend not only procedures, but also values of democracy from its progressive destabilisation in the face of digital revolution.

“I am not a Post-Marxist: I am a Neo-Marxist”: Interview with Nancy Fraser

Fraser is one of the most important American philosophers and one of the leading figures of contemporary critical theory. From the 1980s to the present, Fraser has published on political philosophy and social theory, reflected upon feminism, justice, and capitalism, and has participated in public debates on current issues. The interview aims at retracing the main themes of her thought, underlining the persisting link which joins her understanding of political philosophy with social critique and public engagement. The interview also emphasizes the developments of her thought, starting from her formation in the American New Left, the encounter with feminism and the neo-Marxist cultural critique of capitalism, and the discussion of Habermas’s thought. Also discussed is Fraser’s complex feministic theory and her post-Westphalian and three-dimensional model of global justice. Another crucial topic is the recent elaboration of an enlarged view of capitalism, based on a combination of Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi, aimed at highlighting its structural crisis tendencies: not only economic, but also ecological, political, and social. The recent debate on the crisis of liberal democracy, the emergence of populism, the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the Ukrainian war, become an opportunity to test how a renewed critical theory of society can develop a social diagnosis of the time, without abandoning the task of a reconstruction of the emancipatory potential present in the existing social reality. Finally, Fraser recalls her link with the Italian philosophical tradition, stressing in particular her debt to Antonio Gramsci.

Den liberala demokratins konstkritiska protest

Claims that liberal democracy is in crisis need to reckon with the fact that it is a social system historically premised on crisis and criticality. Protest and protesting can, from this standpoint, be viewed as constitutive boundary phenomena of liberal democracy. By considering liberal democracy as a critical life form from a biopolitical perspective, the aim of the article is to suggest how liberal democracy itself can protest art-critically and that this indicates a crisis of its critical life form that is rarely acknowledged. The article argues that the crisis of liberal democracy in Sweden is made visible in the racial aspects of art-critical protests. The claim is also that these art-critical protests, in their turn, must be understood through an analysis of the relationship between, on the one hand, art criticism and citizenship and, on the other, the class relation and capital accumulation. In the article, this is demonstrated through an account of the biopolitical function of the aesthetic culture of the critical tradition, followed by two recent examples of the art-critical protest of liberal democracy. Whereas one of these examples represents a liberal critique of identity politics in art, the other demonstrates a transgression of the liberal principle of arm’s length distance in culture policy. The article concludes that the aesthetic culture of the critical tradition, strategically taken over by the Social Democrats at the dawn of liberal democracy, enabled a continuous reformation of how politics in liberal democracy is organically developed, and that the art-critical protest of liberal democracy today challenges this critical life form.

Ewolucja przywództwa politycznego od ujęcia tradycyjnego do neoprzywództwa

EVOLUTION OF POLITICAL LEADERSHIP: FROM THE TRADITIONAL APPROACH TO NEO-LEADERSHIP Political leadership seems to be one of the fundamental concepts of the social sciences. The crisis of liberal democracy has brought numerous changes in the relationship between the leader and the followers. Crises have affected many areas: social trust, political communication, political elites, the economy and so on. With the emergence of new populisms, a new paradigm of new leadership has also appeared. When analyzed in evolutionary terms, we can identify traditional leadership (in the era before the mediatization of politics), marketing leadership (1980s and 1990s), and neo-leadership based on modern propaganda and associative communication.

DEI and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy

DEI and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy

자유민주주의의 위기와 민주주의의 두 가지 대안 - 숙의민주주의와 급진민주주의 연구 -

이 글은 자유민주주의의 위기를 진단하고 이를 극복할 수 있는 대안을 모색한 논문이 다. 현실 민주주의는 자유민주주의를 채택하고 있기 때문에 민주주의의 위기는 곧 자유민 주주의의 위기라고 하겠다. 자유민주주의는 방법론적으로 개인주의와 대의제를 채택하고 있다. 이 때문에 자유민주주의는 개인의 정치적 의사를 단순히 선호집합적으로 취합해서, 특정 시민을 대표자로 선출하지만 대표자는 시민으로부터 비교적 자유롭게 행동하기 때문 에 ‘대표성의 위기’를 낳는다. 자유민주주의의 위기를 극복할 수 있는 대안으로는 숙의민 주주의와 경합민주주의가 있다. 숙의민주주의는 합리성을 지나치게 신뢰하고 있고 또한 의견형성인지 의사결정인지 모호할뿐더러, 개인이나 집단의 다양성을 존중하기 어렵기 때 문에 자유민주주의의 위기를 극복하기 어렵다는 한계를 갖는다. 경합민주주의는 경합성 또는 다양성의 존중으로 말미암아 정치적 참여도를 높일 수 있고 개인이나 집단의 다양성 을 존중할 수 있다는 장점이다. 이 논문은 숙의 모델의 ‘배제 없는 합의’를 넘어 시민들의 다양한 정체성을 존중받을 수 있는 평등한 참여라는 경합 모델을 통해 자유민주주의의 위 기를 극복할 수 있는 이론적 가능성을 모색하고 있다.

The Crisis of Liberal Democracy vs. Political Knowledge

<p>W powszechnej opinii demokracja liberalna przechodzi bardzo poważny kryzys. Poszukując jego źródeł wyróżnić można trzy płaszczyzny: ekonomiczną, polityczną i kulturową. Przy czym w debacie publicznej dość rzadko, poza postawieniem diagnozy o kryzysie demokracji liberalnej, prezentuje się możliwe metody jego przezwyciężenia. Tym samym zapomina się, że podstawą dla właściwego funkcjonowania demokracji liberalnej jest obywatel posiadający polityczne kompetencje. Bowiem tylko zaangażowany obywatel jest w stanie przezwyciężyć kryzysy występujące w demokracji liberalnej poprzez wykorzystanie wiedzy politycznej, działając w oparciu o wartości polityczne i rozwijając kulturę zaufania społecznego, przy zachowaniu zasady nieufności w rozumieniu liberalnym i demokratycznym. Polityczne kompetencje obywatelskie, jako podstawa postaw obywatelskich wspierających demokrację i respektujących jej zasady stanowią jeden z trzech filarów jej konsolidacji, a przez to także mogą się stać instrumentem przezwyciężania kryzysu demokracji liberalnej. Przy czym uznając równoważność komponentów politycznych kompetencji obywatelskich szczególną uwagę należy zwrócić na poziom wiedzy politycznej obywateli, bowiem to on determinuje ich kolejne elementy.</p>

East German History and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy

On September 25, 2017, Germany awoke to the horrifying reality that the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right party founded in 2013, had romped to third place in the previous day's federal election. With 12.6% of the vote, the party became not only the official face of the opposition to Angela Merkel's not-so-grand coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), but also the first far-right party to enter the Bundestag since the 1950s. Election watchers soon noticed that the AfD had racked up stunning margins in the states that once made up the German Democratic Republic (GDR), coming in first on the second ballot (Zweitstimme) in Saxony and second in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. That the AfD, a racist and xenophobic party that campaigns against European integration and immigration, should do so well in once-socialist states bespoke East Germany's strange resonances in German culture and memory nearly thirty years after its dissolution.

서유럽 크리스찬 민주주의(Christian Democracy)의 역사적 공헌과 그 한계

The Catholic Church had not adapted successfully to the liberal democracy until World War Ⅱ. After the German Unification in 1870, Christian Democracy was initiated by the confessional party which was made by a historical accident. And its thought was developed based on the non-liberal ‘communitarian personalism’ in the inter-war period. After the World War II, the Christian Democratic Party appeared on the idea of ‘Ordo Liberalism’ and the ‘Social Market Economy’. They took the lead of the reconstruction of liberal democracy and the economic miracle of the Western European States. After the end of cold war Christian Democracy fell in danger but successfully recovered. This paper shows the prospects that the Christian Democracy based on the communitarian personality will play a major role in today’s crisis of liberal democracy.

Breakdown 2.0? Systemic Blockages in Late-Stage Statism and Late-Stage Liberal Capitalism

Castells’ analysis of the breakdown of Soviet statism is possibly more relevant now than when it was written. By identifying systemic blockages to necessary societal transformation—then from industrialism to informationalism—he offers a framework to analyze the contemporary crisis of liberal democracy. Then and now, the challenges are caused by the system’s inability to organize the complexity created by itself which creates more and more internal contradictions. Two current challenges threatening the stability of the liberal democracy are rising social inequality and the crossing of geophysical boundaries of the earth as an ecological system. The inability to address these challenges is related to systemic blockages within liberal democracies. Parallels to the late Soviet Union are drawn without predicting outcomes.

Ordoliberalism Revisited

The recent publication of Kenneth Dyson’s book Conservative Liberalism, Liberalism, Ordo-Liberalism, and the State offers an occasion to reconsider the body of ideas known as ordoliberalism. The books reviewed here represent much of the most recent scholarship in English on the subject. In this essay, I undertake two tasks: first, to clarify what the term properly refers to and in particular how it is related to “neoliberalism,” and, second, to consider its influence on postwar German policies and institutions. I argue that much of the recent discussion of ordoliberalism and neoliberalism overlooks important differences between early ordoliberal thinking and the ideas associated with neoliberalism. Over time, as neoliberalism evolved and particularly as it became an ideological justification for policies and institutions justifying the accumulation of concentrated market power, these differences have become wider even as they have been obscured by misreadings of ordoliberalism. A better understanding of ordoliberalism can also provide insights relevant to the contemporary debates about the crisis of liberal democracy and capitalism. Is it in fact a “third way” for ordering an economy, an alternative to neoliberalism and socialism?

Доктринальные основы смены внешней политики США в период президентства Д. Трампа: Мексика и Канада

Introduction. The research’s subject is the foreign policy’s theoretical foundations of D. Trump’s presidential administration in 2016–2020, which consist in changing the principles’ use of American liberal internationalism to the conservative nationalism’s principles under the motto which is called “Make America Great Again”. The theoretical approaches’ basis of intergovernmental interaction in the field of politics, economics and migration is considered on the example of relations between the United States, Canada and Mexico. The work’s purpose is to identify the doctrinal basis of D. Trump administration’s foreign policy and the impact of the adopted foreign policy settings on changes in intergovernmental interaction in the international arena. Methods. The theoretical bases’ methodology for the doctrinal provisions development of the U.S. foreign policy during the D. Trump’s administration was to use behavioral approach and special methods of political analysis. There were no major analytical studies on this topic at the time of writing. Therefore, the author of the article used the materials for his research from Russian and American scientific and periodical journals for 2019–2020. Analysis. The publications’ analysis by domestic and American authors has shown that the change in the U.S. foreign policy during the D. Trump’s presidency is due not so much to the personal qualities of the U.S. President, as some researchers believe, but to the objective conditions of the world process, where the United States want to but they can’t bear the burden of the world leader in the conditions of significant growth of other global power centers. Results. The author’s analysis of intergovernmental interaction between the United States, Canada and Mexico has shown the chosen path of using the conservative nationalism’s principles in relations with their closest allies is not so much due to the personal qualities of D. Trump how many objective changes taking place in the world political process, which led to an increase in mutual contradictions between these states. Overall, the author argues that the choice of a conservative nationalism’s policy in American foreign policy is associated with the crisis of liberal democracy.

Liberal Democracy Needs Religion: Kant on the Ethical Community

AbstractLiberal democracy has been experiencing a crisis of representation over the last decade, as a disconnect has emerged from some of the foundational principles of liberalism such as personal freedom and equality. In this article, I argue that in the third part of Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason we can find resources to better understand and counteract this crisis of liberal democracy. Kant gives a powerful argument to include an invisible ethical community under a political community, and this ethical community has to take the form of a church. Kant argues then that any political system, and so also liberal democracy, requires religion to ally citizens in a foundational way with the general principles of that system. This would commit liberal nations to having their foundational principles buoyed by religion. Towards the close of the essay, I attend to how this might impact on liberalism’s commitment to religious and ideological pluralism.

Eurasianism and Foreign Policy of Russia

In order to determine the possibilities of wider application of the ideas of Eurasianism in the foreign policy of Russia, including the EAEU, but not limited to it, an analysis of various methods and approaches used for integration processes is carried out. At the same time, the current geopolitical situation and the factors of multi-vector approach in international relations are taken into account. It is also proposed to take in attention the role of identity in a broad sense as a political attraction. At the same time, various problems at the organizational, social, humanitarian and economic levels are also considered. The broad security factors that also play a role in the Eurasian integration are also taken into account. The relevance of this study is due not only to the implementation of strategic directions within the EAEU, but also to the general course towards multipolarity that Russia is pursuing. In addition, the crisis of liberal democracy in the West provides an additional opportunity for Russia to implement its own ideas and doctrines at the international level. The author believes that Eurasianism, including its classical version, can become one of the imperatives of Russia’s foreign policy.

The crisis of the classical concept of liberal democracy in the context of modern challenges


 
 
 The main aim of this paper is to examine the problem of the crisis of liberal democracy in the modern world, referring to the phenomenon of a loss of balance between social and personal good in a pluralistic society. There are several concepts of democracy in political science, including the classic liberal concept, which sees its core priorities collide with recent global challenges. Thus, the relevance of this problem refers to the recent disappointment in the idea of liberal democracy, which shows disillusionment in democracy as such. In response to this trend, some hybrid regimes offer an alternative in the form of so-called democracies with illiberal approaches. From the other side, the liberal democratic platforms are used by populist political forces, which results in dividing democratic societies about the questions hard to finally solve. The Brexit problem – the process of British exit from the European Union – shows recent examples of long-lasting social effects derived from the crisis of liberal democratic concept. The author of the article has come to the conclusion that when it comes to modern democratic processes, classic liberal approach brings the populism threat back to the table. When there is no balance between the totally free civil society with its direct democratic influences and the state structure with formal procedures aimed at total good of beneficial functioning, the liberal instruments would be used by populists. Populism can create severe divisions within liberal democratic societies providing dilemmas, such as Brexit, which are difficult to solve with the same liberal democratic procedures. This means that liberal democratic approach undermines itself with the very fact of the existing tendency to lose balance between the ideal personal freedom (that includes satisfying every citizen’s choice) and public good.
 
 

Humanism Under Siege: The Janus Face of the Modern Revolution of Dignity

The article interprets the crisis of liberal democracy in the 21st century as the result of an ongoing, dual revolution of dignity. One such revolution is the work of “humanist outliers”: small groups and individuals dedicated to compassionate social emancipation. Thus anti-authoritarian revolutions like that of Solidarity in Poland (1980–81) succeed in large part thanks to cultural and political innovations springing from the work of such small groups. However, the humanist revolution of dignity – featuring altruism and cooperation – has its “tribal doppelgänger”: a twin revolution that strives to reclaim national dignity and pride at the price of submission to authoritarian rule.

Promise and failure: Nationalism in the interwar thought of Carl Schmitt and Eric Voegelin

ABSTRACT This article analyses the role played by the concept of nation in the interwar writings of Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) and Eric Voegelin (1901–1985). It contends that, although these conservative thinkers were drawn in different ways to the anti-progressive potential of nationalist ideas, the centre of their political and theoretical horizons in that period is occupied by the problems of political unity and authority. Therefore, their nationalism is fundamentally determined by, and instrumental to, their adherence to a monistic and authoritarian conception of the state. This, in turn, leads them to embrace, though not without some reservations, the solutions put forward by the emergent far-right ‘strongmen’ to the interwar crisis of liberal democracy. Each author tested in his own way the porous borders between conservatism, nationalism, and fascism – a topic whose scholarly and political relevance is far from being exhausted.

Cross-partisanship and the vulnerability democracy: how civility and nonpartisanship undermined civil society in interwar Germany

ABSTRACT Exclusionary nationalist movements’ rise in recent years challenges liberal democracy’s trust in political institutions’ ability to neutralize and incorporate extremism. The crisis of liberal democracy likewise questions liberal civil society's emphasis on associational membership’s intrinsic democratic side-effects. The study proposes a partisanship spectrum integrating attitudes to conflict into civil society theory, suggesting the centrality of cross-partisanship in mediating modern society’s unavoidable conflicts, a question central to civil society theory and modern democracies. Germany’s first school of public affairs serves as a historical case study to better understand how cross-partisanship addressed the extreme political polarization, radicalization of public discourse, and violence challenging interwar Germany’s transition to democracy. While honouring political factionalism, cross-partisanship (Überparteilichkeit) countered extremism through a correct understanding of political facts and a common commitment to republican institutions. Relying on archival sources, I show that when cross-partisanship was equated to nonpartisanship, it favoured the penetration of extremism by emphasizing compromise and equal representation of all political parties, including the Nazi Party. The question of how to build a civil society is as crucial today as it was in interwar Germany.