Like any democracy, liberal democracy is a political ideology and form of government of the state, in which representative power operates in accordance with the principles of liberalism. This type of worldview prioritizes the rights and individual freedoms of each individual, in contrast to totalitarianism (authoritarianism), in which the rights of the individual are considered secondary compared to the needs of individual social groups or the whole society and can be suppressed.
What does the concept of "liberal democracy" include?
It is characterized by the presence of fair, free, and competitive elections between many separate political parties, the separation of powers in different branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial), the rule of law in everyday life, civil andpolitical freedoms for all members of society, as well as the steadfast protection by the state of fundamental human rights enshrined in the constitution of a given country. After a period of steady growth throughout the 20th century, it was democracy that became the main global ideology. Liberal democracy has thus become the dominant political system worldwide.
The origins of liberal democracy
Readers of the older generation will surely remember how in Soviet universities they were forced to study and outline Lenin's article "Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism". Among the sources of this ideology, adopted at one time by the socialist revolutionaries, their leader included French utopian socialism, German classical philosophy and English political economy. But all these concepts denote some theories that explain certain aspects of the life of human society. And what could be the source of such a phenomenon as democracy, liberal democracy in particular? After all, this is not a theoretical concept, but a real form of organizing the life of most modern human communities. How did this form of organization come about?
According to one of the most common views, the phenomenon of liberal democracy arose after the community of North American citizens, created in the 18th century on the principles of representative democracy, adopted the ideology of liberalism as their ideology.
Thus liberalism, democracy,liberal democracy is, figuratively speaking, “links of the same chain”, in which the combination of the first two concepts in the practice of organizing human society gave rise to the third.
What is democracy
Democracy is a system of government or government in which all people participate in deciding its affairs, usually electing their representatives to parliament or a similar body by voting (this type of democracy is called representative, in contrast to direct democracy, when all citizens exercise their power directly). Modern political scientists identify the following main features of the democratic structure of the state:
- a political system to elect and replace a government through free and fair elections (to parliament);
- active participation of citizens in politics and public life;
- human rights protection for everyone;
- rule of law when it applies equally to all.
The birth of liberalism
The history of liberal democracy began in the 16th-17th centuries. in Europe. In previous centuries, the vast majority of European states were monarchies. It was also commonly believed that democracy, known since the days of ancient Greece, is contrary to human nature, since human beings are inherently evil, prone to violence and need a strong leader who mustrestrain their destructive impulses. Many European monarchs believed that their authority was ordained by God and that it was blasphemy to question their authority.
Under these conditions, the activity of European intellectuals (John Locke in England, the French enlighteners Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot and others) began, who believed that relations between people should be based on the principles of freedom and equality, which form the basis of liberalism. They argued that all men are created equal, hence political power cannot be justified by "noble blood", supposed privileged access to God, or any other characteristic that claims one person is better than others. They also argued that governments exist to serve the people, not the other way around, and that laws should apply to both rulers and their subjects (a concept known as the rule of law). Some of these ideas found expression in the English Bill of Rights of 1689.
Founders of liberalism and democracy
The attitude of the founders of liberalism towards democracy was, oddly enough, negative. Liberal ideology, especially in its classical form, is very individualistic and aimed at limiting the power of the state over the individual. A society based on the principles of classical liberalism is a community of citizen-owners, holders of intellectual freedoms and natural human rights, who conclude a social contract among themselves aboutcreation of state institutions to protect their rights from external encroachments. The citizens of such a state are self-sufficient, that is, they do not need any support from the state for their survival, and therefore are not inclined to give up their natural rights in exchange for guardianship on its part. As such citizens-proprietors, the founders of liberalism considered, first of all, representatives of the bourgeoisie, the spokesmen of whose interests they were. In contrast, democracy was viewed during the rise of liberalism as a collectivist ideal aimed at empowering the masses, made up mainly of the poor, who, in exchange for guarantees of survival, tend to give up their civil rights.
Therefore, from the point of view of liberals, granting the masses, for example, voting rights and the opportunity to participate in the development of laws, meant the threat of the loss of private property, which is a guarantee of the freedom of the individual from the arbitrariness of the state. On the other hand, bottom-line democrats saw the liberals' rejection of universal suffrage for the masses as a form of enslavement. The conflict between liberals and Jacobin democrats during the French Revolution led to bloody feuds between them and contributed to the establishment of Napoleon's military dictatorship.
Democracy in America
The formation of liberal democracy as the ideological basis for building a real state took place in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. in AmericanUnited States. The specific conditions for the formation of this country, which were characterized by the presence of huge untapped natural resources, primarily land, guaranteeing the survival of the masses of free citizens without any guardianship from the state, created the conditions for the peaceful coexistence of popular democracy and private property, and hence liberal ideology.
Throughout the 19th century, while America's natural resources were sufficient for the survival of a growing population, there were no particular contradictions between American democratic public institutions and the privately owned nature of the economy. They began in the first half of the 20th century, when economic crises began to shake America, which led to the fact that a democratically formed state began to actively interfere in the economic life of society, limiting the private property interests of its possessing members in favor of the have-nots. Thus, modern American liberal democracy can be seen as a compromise between liberal individualism based on private property and democratic collectivism.
Liberal democracy in Europe
The evolution of liberal democracy on the European continent took place under conditions different from those in America. At the beginning of the XIX century. the source of liberal views in Europe was Napoleonic France, in which, in a bizarre way, an authoritarian state structure was combined with liberal ideology. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, liberalism spread throughout Europe, and fromFrench-occupied Spain and Latin America. The defeat of Napoleonic France slowed down this process, but did not stop it. In the first half of the 19th century, numerous European absolute monarchies collapsed, giving way to parliamentary republics with limited suffrage. In the second half of the XIX century. in Europe there were political processes (for example, the Chartist movement in England) aimed at ensuring that suffrage became universal. As a result, in all European countries, except Russia, a regime of liberal democracy was established. It took the form of either a constitutional republic (France) or a constitutional monarchy (Japan, UK).
Liberal democracy, examples of which can be seen today in countries located on every continent, is usually characterized by universal suffrage for all adult citizens, regardless of race, gender or property. In many countries of Europe, the adherents of liberal democracy today merge with the supporters of the evolutionary socialist path of development of society in the person of European social democracy. An example of such a bond is the current "broad coalition" in the German Bundestag.
Liberal democracy in Russia
The establishment of this form of government took place with particular difficulties. The trouble is that by the time of the almost complete domination of liberal democracy in Europe and America at the beginning of the 20th century, Russia continued to retain significant vestiges of feudalism in the form of autocracy andclass division of citizens. This contributed to the creation of a strong left-wing wing in the Russian revolutionary movement, which seized power in the country shortly after the liberal-democratic February Revolution of 1917. A one-party communist regime was established in Russia for seven decades. Despite obvious successes in the economic development of the country and in defending its independence, he slowed down the development of civil society for a long time and stopped the adoption of civil liberties generally recognized in the rest of the world.
In the 90s, a political regime was established in Russia, which carried out broad liberal democratic reforms: the privatization of state property and housing, the establishment of a multi-party system, etc. However, they did not lead to the creation of a large class of owners who would become the backbone of Russian liberal democracy, but rather contributed to the creation of a narrow layer of oligarchs who established control over the main we alth of the country.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the Russian leadership, headed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, limited the role of the oligarchs in the economy and politics of the country by returning to the state a significant part of their property, especially in the oil and gas sector. The question of choosing a further direction for the development of Russian society is currently open.
