Democracy, Liberalism, and Destabilization

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The fundamentals of liberalism have been challenged in recent years, both concretely and theoretically. Concretely, new and consolidated liberal democracies have seen the rise to power of populist parties. Authorized by democratic electoral victories, populists use distort democracy into “extreme majoritarianism” (Urbinati 2019). This democratic form retains formal elections. But it undermines traditionally liberal institutions like the separation of powers and individual basic rights, which populists argue obstruct the will of the “pure” people. Theoretically, political constitutionalists (Bellamy 2007), procedural democrats (Schwartzberg 2007), and weak constitutionalists (Hutchinson & Colón-Ríos 2011) argue that the function of a constitution is merely to facilitate democratic procedures and that “liberal constitutionalism…is an impoverished and disabling idea of democracy and one which has little place for the emancipatory potential of popular participation and democratic openness.” Both challenges focus on the tensions between an independent, unelected judiciary and a democratically elected legislature.

Although they are rooted in legitimate concerns about the power of unelected officials to stymie a democratic will, both challenges underappreciate the intended function of liberal constitutionalism. Constitutional practices and concepts like judicial review, guardianship of the constitution, and individual basic rights are theorized to be an intrinsic quality of a modern liberal democratic state. Counterintuitively, liberal theory argues that the authentic practice of democracy requires limits on the will of the people, such as those listed above. Mediating and limiting the electorate in this way ensures democratic institutions represent the actual plurality of the people and maintain political stability.

The tensions between liberal constitutionalism and these challenges to it invite us to reconsider the nature and legitimacy of liberal constitutionalism. This panel will analyze the meaning of liberalism and democracy – broadly construed – in light of imperatives of legitimacy and stability. It seeks to answer questions about the proper relationship between liberalism and democracy.

Luise Papcke’s paper analyzes how the design of online communication between citizens challenges liberal ideals of autonomy and citizenship. As citizens rely more on social media and online platforms for information gathering, opinion formation, and debate and exchange, liberal democracies’ dependence on the ‘fourth estate’ to mediate between citizens and political institutions is increasingly put into question. Papcke puts 18th and 19th century German debates about liberal sociability in discussion with Habermas’ discourse theory to assess how to design spaces for civic exchange.

Paul Linden-Retek’s paper examines the validity of liberalism by focusing on the legitimacy of judicial review. He argues that constitutional judgment must reflect the plural character of democratic public life and the conflicts that arise within it. . Judgment conceived neither in terms of Dworkinian categoricalism nor proportionality analysis successfully does so. Accordingly, Linden-Retek identifies a third way between the two, “narrative doctrinalism,” which better realizes the possibilities of change within citizens’ actual normative commitments by both mediating conflicts among citizens’ rights and by repairing the damages to their “common world” brought about by such conflicts.

Peter Verovšek’s paper analyzes the relationship between liberalism and democracy by looking at how a seminal constitutional debate informed Habermas’ commitment to the value of the liberal constitutional order. In the 1950s, German constitutional theorists debated whether the executive, the judicial, and the legislative served as ‘the guardian of the constitution,’ effectively holds sovereignty. Verovšek provides a genealogy of Habermas thought in order to show how Habermas’ 1950s defense of the supremacy of the democratically elected legislative branch shapes his later ideas, including his famous “co-originality” thesis of liberal rights and popular sovereignty.

Benjamin A. Schupmann’s paper analyzes classical and contemporary liberal theory in order to develop arguments about the validity of entrenching basic liberal principles. It examines how liberalism draws on principles of reasonability in order to theorize basic rights and the separation of powers as essential preconditions for democracy – essentials that should be “off the political agenda,” as Rawls argued. Schupmann argues that this strand of liberal thought provides a different, stronger justification for the constitutional mechanisms associated with militant democracy, such as the eternity clause and party ban.

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• “Off the Political Agenda”: Liberalism Constitutionalism and Democracy - Benjamin A. Schupmann, Yale-NUS College

• Peoplehood and the Location of Sovereignty after 1989 - Peter J. Verovšek, University of Sheffield

• Neither Trumps Nor Interests: Rights, Pluralism, and Constitutional Judgment - Paul Linden-Retek, University at Buffalo

• Rethinking Civic Exchange in the Age of Social Media - Luise Papcke, New York University

Chair

• Jennie Choi Ikuta University of Missouri-Columbia

Discussants

• Clara Picker Yale University

• Nica Siegel Yale