Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T08:27:20.238Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - End of Democracy or Recurrent Conflict: Minimalist Democracy, Legitimacy Crisis, and Political Equality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2022

Richard Ned Lebow
Affiliation:
King's College London
Ludvig Norman
Affiliation:
Stockholms Universitet
Get access

Summary

This chapter criticizes the strand of recent political science and political theory that claims liberal democracy is under threat from illiberal populism and that this is a wholly unique phenomenon of the present rather than part of recurrent crisis of liberal democracy tied to the political sociology of the Schumpeterian competitive party model. Viewed this way, this crisis is in fact a result of the failure of liberal democracy to offer citizens a defensible principle of legitimacy based on a robust notion political equality, the core principle of democracy. Precisely, what appears to be the source of its robustness, the competitive process of parties and politicians for the popular vote is—when viewed as a recurrent struggle to bring this model back under the control of citizens—the very source of its frailty. The dichotomy liberal democracy-populism blinds us in assessing the actual developments arising from the fragility of liberal democracy. Indeed, it may inform responses that will lead to outcomes quite at odds with the original intentions of those who deploy it.

Type
Chapter
Information
Robustness and Fragility of Political Orders
Leader Assessments, Responses, and Consequences
, pp. 54 - 91
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×