Re-thinking Liberal Democracy in an Age of Democratic Crisis

Democracy is in decline worldwide and many worry not just about the decline in newly democratised societies but even about advanced democracies. Even theorists defending minimalist understandings of democracy worry about the current threats against democracy (Przeworski 2018). The threats against democracy are not just from phenomena such as populism, disinformation, and AI but also from how modern liberal democracies operate. Some have argued that our understanding of liberal democracy does not properly consider empirical research about voters (Achen and Bartels 2016), that we are overdoing democracy (Talisse 2018), or even argue against democracy and in favour of epistocracy (Brennan 2016). Given both the external and internal threats against liberal democracy, it is necessary to rethink what liberal democracy should be. In this paper, I discuss three threats against liberal democracy and what they might mean for how to understand liberal democracy in the current situation. Firstly, I discuss what it means that voters are disengaged from politics and lack interest and knowledge about politics. Secondly, I discuss the role of populism and polarisation and what these features might mean for liberal democracy. Thirdly, I discuss the threat against democracy from AI which has received a lot of attention recently. Taken together the many threats against current liberal democracies might appear overwhelming. Despite these threats, I argue that liberal democracy is resilient and contains elements that can be useful when confronting the current threats against democracy. One important element underlying liberal democracy is the understanding of society as an endeavour of mutual advantage (Rawls 1999 and Hardin 1999). By developing the idea of mutual advantage, I argue that a stronger emphasis on this often-missed element of liberal democracy can provide a key to re-thinking what liberal democracy can be in an age of democratic crisis.