Not so Liberal Foundations of Postwar European Democracies

It is commonplace to assume that "Liberal Democracy" has been established and stabilized in the Western World throughout the postwar era. However, it is not so straightforward if we delve into contemporary discussions over conceptions of democracy in the 1940s. Democracy in postwar Europe was not so much a system of neutral rules built on free individuals. Rather, it was influenced by a conception that presupposed a certain value system and a certain image of natural social order. This is quite different from models of "Liberal Democracy", which current scholars of Political Theory and Comparative Politics construct. This paper examines blueprints for postwar democracy from several countries and shows that postwar democracy was not built on the premise of "liberalism" as we usually think of it. First, the influence of Christian Democracy, especially that of "Personalism" should be emphasized. There, "individualism" and "liberalism" are often the targets of criticism. This applies not only to seemingly conservative currents, but also to some leftist currents. Second, a general reorganization of the political and social order, both international and domestic, was envisioned and partially realized. In that system, postwar democracies were constrained from the beginning. This echoes the argument of Jan-Werner Müller but it should be noted that such vision of "constrained democracy" was not widespread. In the UK, France, and the Scandinavian countries, such constraint had not been institutionalized. Third, even formal and legal equality of individual was not realized in the 1940s and the 1950s. The rights of women were still circumscribed by various civil law stipulations. All in all, it was not "Liberal Democracy" in current usage of words that was established in the postwar Europe. Rather, it is more properly described as "democratic pluralism", in contrast to "totalitarianism" in the East.