Liberal Democracy

Liberal democracy is a form of government based on the general principles of freedom and equality for all people. Liberal democracies feature the rule of law, unrestricted economic markets, universal suffrage, the right to private property, constitutional protections of civil rights, and a legislature composed of representatives elected freely by the public. In the twenty-first century, most liberal democracies are located in the Westernized world, composing the governments of nations such as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Liberal democracies as they are known in the twenty-first century developed in the early eighteenth century. Drawing on the liberal political philosophies of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers, politicians in the American colonies and later France created new governments in which the people ruled themselves. Liberal democracy spread to other countries in Western Europe and elsewhere over the next few centuries. In the 2010s, however, less than half of the world's population lived in a democracy.

Background

Democracy and liberalism developed in different times and places in history. The ideas were then combined into a new kind of political philosophy in the West in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The first known incarnation of political democracy originated in ancient Greece in the late sixth century BCE. In 507 BCE, legal reformer Cleisthenes created a new form of government for the city-state of Athens. He called the new system demokratia, meaning "rule of the people."

Cleisthenes's democracy differed from the types of democracies that existed in the twenty-first century. Cleisthenes ensured the aristocratic class no longer held political power over the working class of Athens, but the legal equality promised by the system was not reserved for everyone. Only Athenian citizens could enjoy the privileges of a democracy, which included voting by simple majorities in governing bodies. Citizens were any men and women whose parents had been born in Athens. However, only male citizens older than eighteen could vote. Democracy later spread to other Greek city-states. The democratic form of government was suppressed after the kingdom of Macedonia conquered Greece in the fourth century BCE.

Traces of democracy appeared throughout history, mostly in the West, over the next nearly two thousand years. England's Magna Carta of 1215, for instance, was a landmark document in that it forced English monarchs to submit to written laws. Mostly, though, true democracy that permitted the people of a nation to govern themselves was not to exist until the early modern period of the eighteenth century.

In the meantime, the Western European thinkers of the Enlightenment era developed the concept of liberalism. The Enlightenment was a period of European history lasting from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century in which people significantly advanced humanity's understanding of science, philosophy, and politics. Liberalism was one philosophical idea to emerge from the Enlightenment, and its development later proved valuable to the concept of governmental democracy. The two ideologies merged in the eighteenth century to form a new type of government that would last into the modern era.

Overview

Liberalism is a political ideology calling for the rule of law, protection of individuals' rights to religion and free expression by means of a written constitution, people's legal ability to own property, economic markets that are permitted to operate freely, and free trade with foreign countries that fosters world peace.

Seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke chiefly developed the concept of liberalism during the Enlightenment. Later known as the father of liberalism, Locke asserted that every individual had the right to life, liberty, and property. These rights were important to Locke, for he considered them to belong naturally to every person.

Since Locke believed each individual was, by birth, free from political control by others, he asserted that only by giving their consent could people allow themselves to be governed by political systems. The purpose of these governments is to protect the people, Locke said, meaning no governments could ever enslave or steal from its people. This overall idea of governments operating for their people, by the will of their people, came to be known as liberalism.

The American people were among the first to combine the Enlightenment principles of liberalism with the democratic form of government to create a liberal democracy. Great Britain's American colonies had mostly governed themselves through democratic means for many years. In the late eighteenth century, politicians such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison incorporated ideas from the Enlightenment, Magna Carta, and other sources to found the United States as a liberal democracy. The country would be divided fairly into three branches of government, and the people would elect representatives to govern for them. The US Constitution described the laws to which everyone was subject, and all people were to be treated fairly under those laws. Freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and the press were among the American people's rights.

The French initiated the French Revolution in 1789 for approximately the same reasons. They thought the absolute monarchy of their country was suppressing the people's natural inclinations to love and treat one another fairly. The French people wanted fervently to eliminate the monarchy so they, the public, could govern themselves. The people eventually overthrew the monarchy and created a democracy.

Liberal democracies became more popular throughout the world over the next few centuries, replacing the absolute monarchies that had fallen out of public favor. In the 2010s, the British organization the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which compiles an annual democracy index, named the countries it found to be the most democratic. In 2016, the countries ranked most highly included Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, and Canada. The EIU lowly ranked countries that were either authoritarian regimes, in which people have no civil liberties, or hybrid regimes, in which elections exist but the people have no real power.

According to the EIU's findings, most democracies were located in Western Europe, North America, and South America. The countries of Australia, India, Japan, and South Africa were also open democracies. In 2016, the EIU reported that liberal democracy was declining in the world, due mostly to the United States having been downgraded to a flawed democracy. The downgrade was a result of the American people's lack of faith in their government.

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