How to Be a Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for its Survival

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One of the main points of contention between these two systems is whether to have representatives who are able to effectively represent specific regions in a country, or to have all citizens' vote count the same, regardless of where in the country they happen to live. Morlino L. (2004) "What is a 'good' democracy?", Demoocratization, 11(5), pp. 10-32. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13510340412331304589 There is agreement amongst several intellectuals and organizations such as Freedom House that sovereign states of the European Union (with the exception of Poland and Hungary), United Kingdom, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Korea, Taiwan, United States, India, Canada, [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] Uruguay, Costa Rica, Israel, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand [48] are liberal democracies.

In the 16th-century Kingdom of England, liberal could have positive or negative attributes in referring to someone's generosity or indiscretion. [26] In Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare wrote of "a liberal villaine" who "hath ... confest his vile encounters". [26] With the rise of the Enlightenment, the word acquired decisively more positive undertones, defined as "free from narrow prejudice" in 1781 and "free from bigotry" in 1823. [26] In 1815, the first use of liberalism appeared in English. [27] In Spain, the liberales, the first group to use the liberal label in a political context, [28] fought for decades to implement the Spanish Constitution of 1812. From 1820 to 1823, during the Trienio Liberal, King Ferdinand VII was compelled by the liberales to swear to uphold the 1812 Constitution. By the middle of the 19th century, liberal was used as a politicised term for parties and movements worldwide. [29] Kapur, Ajay, Niall Macleod, Narendra Singh: "Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer", Citigroup, Equity Strategy, Industry Note: March 5, 2006. p. 10.

Shearer, Elisa; Gottfried, Jeffrey (7 September 2017). "News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2017". Pew Research Center's Journalism Project. Archived from the original on 16 March 2021 . Retrieved 14 January 2021. If it were ever reasonable to wish that the usage of words had been other than it has been ... one might be inclined to wish that the term 'freedom' had been confined to the ... power to do what one wills. [87] These conventional views were challenged at first by a relatively small group of Enlightenment intellectuals, who believed that human affairs should be guided by reason and principles of liberty and equality. They argued that all people are created equal and therefore political authority cannot be justified on the basis of noble blood, a supposed privileged connection to God or any other characteristic that is alleged to make one person superior to others. They further argued that governments exist to serve the people—not vice versa—and that laws should apply to those who govern as well as to the governed (a concept known as rule of law).

Benhabib, Seyla, ed. (1996). Democracy and difference: contesting the boundaries of the political. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691044781. Rather than previous liberal conceptions viewing society as populated by selfish individuals, Green viewed society as an organic whole in which all individuals have a duty to promote the common good. [86] :55 His ideas spread rapidly and were developed by other thinkers such as Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse and John A. Hobson. In a few years, this New Liberalism had become the essential social and political programme of the Liberal Party in Britain, [86] :58 and it would encircle much of the world in the 20th century. In addition to examining negative and positive liberty, liberals have tried to understand the proper relationship between liberty and democracy. As they struggled to expand suffrage rights, liberals increasingly understood that people left out of the democratic decision-making process were liable to the " tyranny of the majority", a concept explained in Mill's On Liberty and Democracy in America (1835) by Alexis de Tocqueville. [88] As a response, liberals began demanding proper safeguards to thwart majorities in their attempts at suppressing the rights of minorities. [88] The liberal philosophical tradition has searched for validation and justification through several intellectual projects. The moral and political suppositions of liberalism have been based on traditions such as natural rights and utilitarian theory, although sometimes liberals even request support from scientific and religious circles. [48] Through all these strands and traditions, scholars have identified the following major common facets of liberal thought: Liberal democracy, substantive democracy, [1] or western democracy [2] is a form of government that combines the structure of a representative democracy with the principles of liberal political philosophy. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, universal suffrage, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. The purpose of a constitution is often seen as a limit on the authority of the government.

Liberal is commonly used as a label for political parties in a number of other countries, although the positions these parties take do not always correspond to the sense of liberal that people in the United States commonly give it. In the US, the word has been associated with both the Republican and Democratic parties (now it is more commonly attached to the latter), although generally it has been in a descriptive, rather than a titular, sense. Fukuyama, Francis (1989). "The End of History?". The National Interest (16): 3–18. ISSN 0884-9382. JSTOR 24027184. a b Pieke, Frank N; Hofman, Bert, eds. (2022). CPC Futures The New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. pp.60–64. doi: 10.56159/eai.52060. ISBN 978-981-18-5206-0. OCLC 1354535847.

The economic impact of colonialism". 2017. Archived from the original on 17 August 2022 . Retrieved 8 October 2022.

Diamond, Larry; Plattner, Marc F.; Walker, Christopher (2016) 'Authoritarianism Goes Global: The Challenge to Democracy' Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, p.23 Ross, Michael Lewin (2001). "Does Oil Hinder Democracy?". World Politics. 53 (3): 325–61. doi: 10.1353/wp.2001.0011. S2CID 18404. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. W. Ken Farr, Richard A. Lord, J. Larry Wolfenbarger, (1998). "Economic Freedom, Political Freedom, and Economic Well-Being: A Causality Analysis" (PDF). Archived from the original on 3 February 2007 . Retrieved 11 April 2005. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL ( link). Cato Journal, Vol 18, No 2.