Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Democratization

In: Political studies: the journal of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, Band 40, Heft 1_suppl, S. 40-53

Abstract

Liberalism has provided both a necessary basis for modern democracy and also a constraint upon it. This duality makes a democratic critique of liberalism both imperative and also problematical, in so far as it threatens the conditions of liberal democracy itself. Two of these conditions are examined – the institution of representation and the principle of the limited state – to discover what limits they might impose on the justifiable ambitions of democratizers, to extend political participation on the one hand, and the social agenda for democratization on the other.