Modus Vivendi, Toleration, and the Politicised Relationship between Liberal Democracy and its Critics

Liberal democracies have always had critics. However, what gives observers of the current situation reason to speak of a crisis of liberal democracy is, among other things, the fact that the group of critics has grown and become politically active: right-wing populist parties are supported by a significant number of citizens and have considerable electoral success, sometimes they are even able to form a government. While some commentators read these developments as pointing to the possibility of an ‘illiberal democracy’ (e.g. Mounk 2018), there is broad agreement that they at least face liberal democracies with severe and possibly novel challenges. As part of the task to approach answers to these challenges, it is vital to assess the relationship between liberal democracies and its critics. What are the qualities of this relationship and what does the politicization of this relationship mean for prospects of liberal democracies to respond to the current crisis? This paper addresses these issues from a modus vivendi perspective. David McCabe, for instance, suggests to understand “liberalism as a modus vivendi among citizens who remain deeply divided on the basic norms that would ideally govern political life” (2010: 9). Such a view has the advantage of being realistic about the degree of disagreement that accompanies the acceptance of liberal democracies even in stable times. Some people do not endorse liberal values but nevertheless have reasons to accept the arrangements of liberal democracies as the terms of social and political cooperation. Under such conditions, the relationship between liberal democracy and its critics can be described as one of toleration: the parties put up with each other’s views and practices even though they disapprove of them. In the current situation, however, this relationship has transformed into confrontation and political dispute. Regarding the question for responses to the crisis, this implies that a new modus vivendi must be built. The paper argues that liberal democracies should not take the task of such a process to consist in a mere re-instantiation of the previous conditions. There is reason to assume that liberal democracies should critically consider and possibly reinvent some of its institutions. Importantly, however, such a self-reflective attitude would not imply a non-critical view of the critics of liberal democracy. Rather, a distinction should be made between two groups of critics, namely those who reject important values of liberal democracies, on the one hand, and those who reject specific arrangements on the basis of which liberal democracies have claimed to realise these values, on the other. It is only the former group with which liberal democracies should aim to re-instantiate a relationship of ‘mere’ toleration. The latter group should be addressed as a constituency that could possibly identify positively with a newly built modus vivendi.