Postelection analyses show that concerns about immigration largely drove the Brexit referendum, the U. In government, the media, and major metropolitan areas, technological change has spurred the growth and consolidation of an education-based meritocracy, giving rise to new class divisions.
For citizens with less formal education, particularly those in rural areas and smaller towns, the dominance of this new elite has led to feelings of marginalization. Too often, individuals who have prospered in this meritocracy are seen as harboring a sense of superiority to their fellow citizens. Denying the equal dignity and worth of others is self-defeating: Insult does even more than injury to fuel resentment, one of the most dangerous of all political passions.
With these developments, divisions among citizens based on geography, formal-education levels, and value systems are growing sharper. Supporters of dynamism and diversity increasingly clash with proponents of stability and homogeneity, beneficiaries of technological change with those harmed by the resulting economic shifts.
The combination of economic dislocation, demographic change, and challenges to traditional values has left many less educated citizens feeling that their lives are outside their control. The national and international governing institutions they thought would step in to help seemed frozen or indifferent. In the United States, partisan polarization gridlocked the system, preventing progress on critical issues.
In Europe, the opposite phenomenon—a duopoly of the center-left and center-right that kept important issues off the public agenda—had much the same effect. In light of this apparent inability to address mounting problems, governments across the West face growing public ire.
Many citizens, their confidence in the future shaken, long instead for an imagined past that insurgent politicians have promised to restore. As popular demand for strong leaders grows, rising political actors are beginning to question key liberal-democratic principles such as the rule of law, freedom of the press, and minority rights. The door seems to be opening for a return to forms of authoritarianism written off by many as relics of the past.
To clarify what these developments may mean for liberal democracy, it is helpful to distinguish among four concepts—the republican principle, democracy, constitutionalism, and liberalism. William A. Galston Ezra K. By the republican principle I mean popular sovereignty. The people, this principle holds, are the sole source of legitimacy, and only they can rightly authorize forms of government. Democracy, at the most basic level, requires both the equality of all citizens and broadly inclusive citizenship.
A society in which all citizens are equal but only 10 percent of all adults are citizens would not, today, count as a democracy. Together with equal and inclusive citizenship, the other key pillar of democratic governance is majority rule. This means, first, that public decisions are made by popular majorities of citizens whose votes all count equally; and second, that democratic decision making extends to a maximally wide range of public matters.
Majoritarianism is limited only by the imperative of preserving the liberties and powers—freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, among others—that citizens need to influence public decisions. In this conception of democracy unmodified by any adjective, there is nothing essentially undemocratic about majoritarian decisions that systematically disadvantage specific individuals and groups or invade privacy rights.
If it wishes, a democratic public may embrace the maxim that it is better for ten guilty individuals to go free than for one innocent individual to be found guilty—but it is no less democratic if it adopts the opposite view. Nor is it undemocratic per se to conduct judicial proceedings in the same manner as legislative affairs. The Athenian assembly that condemned Socrates may have been wrong, but it was fully democratic.
The third concept, constitutionalism, denotes a basic, enduring structure of formal institutional power, typically but not always codified in writing.
In addition to organizing power, constitutions also establish boundaries for the institutions that wield it. These limits need not constrain public power in the aggregate. This is why the decision to limit public power in all its aspects marks the line between constitutionalism in general and the specific type of constitutionalism we call liberal.
This bring us to the fourth and final concept: liberalism. The sheer size of modern political communities, however, makes this impossible, even for those communities founded on republican principles. One might conclude, then, that the liberty of the moderns consists in the selection of representatives through free and fair elections in which all may participate on equal terms.
But this is only part of the story. We have now reached the core idea of liberalism: recognizing and protecting a sphere beyond the rightful reach of government in which individuals can enjoy independence and privacy.
In this spirit, the U. Declaration of Independence not only invokes but also limits the republican principle. We can now venture a more precise characterization of liberal democracy. This type of political order rests on the republican principle, takes constitutional form, and incorporates the civic egalitarianism and majoritarian principles of democracy. At the same time, it accepts and enforces the liberal principle that the legitimate scope of public power is limited, which entails some constraints on or divergences from majoritarian decision making.
These distinctions also shed light on the populist challenge to liberal democracy. Populism is not merely, as some observers have suggested, an emotion-laden expression of disappointment over frustrated economic expectations, resentment against rigged rules and special interests, and fear of threats to physical and cultural security. From this perspective, populism is a threat not to democracy per se but rather to the dominant liberal variant of democracy.
Of our four key concepts, populism accepts the principles of popular sovereignty and democracy, understood in straightforward fashion as the exercise of majoritarian power. It is skeptical, however, about constitutionalism, insofar as formal, bounded institutions and procedures impede majorities from working their will. It takes an even dimmer view of liberal protections for individuals and minority groups.
These observers argue that elites, by taking important issues such as economic, monetary, and regulatory policies off the public agenda and assigning them to institutions insulated from public scrutiny and influence, have invited precisely the popular revolt that now threatens to overwhelm them.
But to stop here would be to leave half the story untold—the more important half, in my view. Because populism embraces the republican principle of popular sovereignty, it faces the question inherent in this principle: Who are the people? It may shatter you beyond redemption. It may make you forfeit, continuity of comfort with your own being and the world you live. But, the rewards are mesmerizing. It unravels mysteries you thought humanity could never. Who doesn't know the meaning of Love?
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He also shares tips and strategies on how to have difficult conversations on polarizing topics like gun rights, abortion, and climate change. Adam encourages the reader to prop their identity on their values, not opinions and beliefs.
He highlights the importance of having confidence in your ability to learn and accomplish, but steadfastly to your solutions or tools. And the West should improve its own coordination and effectiveness, and back strong multilateral partnerships — with the involvement of regional powers where they are willing to collaborate. The alternative is to be pulled back into full-blown proxy wars, at great human cost.
This report is being released after the swift fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in August marked an inglorious end to 20 years of American presence in that country. Events there may feel like a metaphor for a wider phenomenon of shifting Western attention away from fragile states; they should also serve as a cautionary tale. Executive Summary.
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