{"id":47122,"date":"2019-03-02T05:00:54","date_gmt":"2019-03-02T10:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=47122"},"modified":"2019-03-01T12:43:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-01T17:43:17","slug":"liberal-democracy-and-the-ungovernable-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/03\/02\/liberal-democracy-and-the-ungovernable-voters\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal democracy and the ungovernable voters"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Quillette<\/em>, Ross Stitt<\/a> discusses the apparent weakness of western liberal democracies and the rise of the ungovernables:<\/p>\n

2019 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Francis Fukuyama\u2019s seminal essay<\/a> for the National Interest<\/em> \u201cThe End of History?\u201d Its central hypothesis was that we were witnessing \u201cthe end point of mankind\u2019s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.\u201d That looked plausible in 1989, particularly when the Berlin Wall fell just months after the essay\u2019s release. Thirty years later \u2014 not so much. <\/p>\n

To be fair to Fukuyama, he never suggested that the world had seen the end of geopolitical conflict or that democracies would experience no more of Macmillan\u2019s \u201cevents.\u201d Today, he continues to view liberal democracy as the best form of government, but he is less optimistic about its robustness. It\u2019s hard to disagree with him. The Brexit chaos, the Trump presidency, the collapse of support for centrist parties across Europe, and the pervasive rise of populism and nationalism, all point to the growing fragility of liberal democracy. <\/p>\n

Why is this happening now? The usual response is to blame it all on the politicians. Leaders like Orban and Trump are subverting the institutions at the heart of liberal democracy. Political parties like Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland<\/em> and the National Rally are promoting illiberal and xenophobic policies. If only we had better leaders, democracy would flourish \u2014 so goes the argument. <\/p>\n

But bad politicians are hardly a novelty. Two thousand years ago, Cicero declared that \u201cPoliticians are not born: they are excreted.\u201d Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet described a politician as \u201cone who would circumvent God.\u201d If we\u2019ve always had bad politicians, then there must be other explanations for the current downward trajectory of liberal democracy. The four explanations most commonly proffered are greater competition from alternative political models, the increased complexity of modern democratic politics in a post-material world, the constraints on democratic states imposed by globalisation, and the emergence of a range of international threats like climate change and terrorism. <\/p>\n

But there is another explanation for liberal democracy\u2019s troubles that is much less talked about and, in my view, more powerful \u2014 the fact that voters have become more difficult to govern. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Quillette, Ross Stitt discusses the apparent weakness of western liberal democracies and the rise of the ungovernables: 2019 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Francis Fukuyama\u2019s seminal essay for the National Interest \u201cThe End of History?\u201d Its central hypothesis was that we were witnessing \u201cthe end point of mankind\u2019s ideological evolution and the universalization of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,53,13],"tags":[766,1171],"class_list":["post-47122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-politics","category-usa","tag-democracy","tag-populism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-cg2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47123,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47122\/revisions\/47123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}