To Liberal Democracy and Beyond?

Liberal democracy is everywhere. From politicians’ speeches to pundits’ op-eds and academics’ books, the concept has saturated the public sphere. The aim of this communication is two fold. First, to understand how did the expression "liberal democracy" get so popular? To do so, I summarize the findings of an ongoing project on the conceptual history of "liberal democracy" in France and the United-Kingdom from the 1920s to the 1990s. Second, to reflect on whether "liberal democracy" is worth defending, correcting or transforming. To that end, drawing on the previous historical investigation, I take a normative stance on current democratic issues and point at promising contemporary developments. In the first part, I highlight how the popularity of "liberal democracy" in political speeches is a recent phenomenon. While the concept was sometimes contrasted with fascism and communism in the 1930s, and used as a geopolitical tool in the Cold War and decolonization, I contend it is only in the 1970s that it became mainstream. In reaction to the New Left critique of representative democracy and capitalism, (right-wing) political actors rushed to the defense of "iberal democracy", reaffirming the supremacy of elected assemblies, of free(er) markets and of independent authorities as guarantees of the rule of law. After 1989, "liberal democracy" became the horizon: opposition to it is depicted as deviating from the norm – as attested by the new concept of "illiberal democracy". In the second part, I argue that most contemporary vindications of "liberal democracy" fail to address old criticisms and new threats. Highlighting the disjunction between an historically elitist political system and the democratic aspirations of many citizens, I contend that a triple transformation is necessary: i) Developing our democratic resilience by augmenting popular power. As a result of their history, current liberal democratic institutions are too focused on elections and centralized power. The best way to face shocks is still diversifying sources of power and legitimacy. One radical-reform solution would be to decouple representation from election, and to consider both social movements and randomly-selected citizens as representatives (Landemore, 2020). ii) Facing the climate crisis by integrating an ecological perspective in our institutions. While this has been increasingly (but not sufficiently) adopted in policy making, the next step is representing both future generations and the "living" more broadly (Gonzalez-Ricoy and Rey, 2019; Gray and Curry, 2020). Concrete institutional propositions are only burgeoning, but it is doubtful that the current framework of liberal democracy can accommodate them. iii) Reigning in economic inequalities, including through economic democracy (Akbar, 2020). It is no mystery that part of the rise of the far right is fueled by capitalism’s disastrous social and ecological consequences (Milner, 2021). As in the 1970s, proponents of liberal democracy’s refusal to envision an alternative political economy (even in the mild forms of ecological economic planification) is crystallizing part of the current tensions. Nonetheless, the democratic ideal of self-government is still transposable to the economic sphere – and more urgent than ever.