Essay on Liberal Democracy

Since the dawn of human civilization, individuals have been constantly immersed in conflict with each other. Whether these conflicts stemmed from socio-economic inequalities, political disputes, property rights, religious disagreements, or any other contentious matter, the creation of human governments has necessarily been to handle, organize, and resolve conflicts between people within communities in the least destructive manner possible. Governments act as a formal instrument through which individuals in a society can agree upon shared rules, solve problems, and engage in cooperative behavior, and it helps avoid the severe repercussions resulting from revolutionary social upheaval. The purpose of government – as spelled out in the Preamble of the Constitution – is to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” While countless forms of government have sprung up over the centuries, only one has been resilient enough and has had the pervasive influence necessary to stand the test of time: democracy. While there are many different types of democracies, this paper will focus on liberal democracy specifically. A liberal democracy is a form of representative democracy that operates under the paradigm of classical liberalism. According to the Center for Research on Globalization, liberal democracy is defined as:

Democracy, as most people think of it today, did not exist during the first few decades of U.S. history.

Since the middle ages, corporatism has taken a leading role in countries by involving different organizations into a group of people to develop cooperative associations on the basis of shared interests. In Europe, corporatism was the main objective of people in a country. For example, Lewis Mumford note that the basic society "was based on classes and ranks" and there was no guaranteeing demand through security and no power that did not recognize the legal obligations of a corporate profile (Mumford). Once democracy began to spread and become definite in the United States, the Americans began to experiment with new ideas and values. In America, corporatism began to evolve into a new system where the knowing of freedom and justice was

In his concept, Adam Smith explains that in a free market no regulation of any type would be needed to ensure that the mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services can take place, since the ”invisible hand” would guide market participants to trade in the most mutually beneficial manner. (www.investorwords.com)

A Direct Democracy is where the people rule the country themselves. Getting all together and hashing out how their country will be ran. A Representative Democracy is where the people vote on someone to make their decisions for them. Obviously a direct democracy is favorable but when you grow to size of thousands than millions of people it becomes an unrealistic expectation to get everyone to agree to do it one way or another. A representative democracy or a republic is a much more feasible option for highly populated areas. Republics are countries that have no monarch and are governed by the people. (Magleby, D)

American democracy is a key factor when looking into rights. Most rights are given to people in the United States Constitution. While some are just rights every American should have without being defined by law. Rights come in many shapes and sizes and are sectioned into groups like civil rights, economic rights, and natural rights. Rights are moral and social standards that people follow to ensure that everyone gets equal happiness and freedoms. Meaning that there are things that every person is entitled to, for example being able to talk about what they want, when they want (within certain principles), or follow the religion of their choice, whatever they may chose. Rights can conflict in many different ways, like when someone wants to protest

Democracy is a unique type of government, and the purpose of this essay is to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses that a democratic government provides. I will detail that many components of this type of society are both strengths and weakness as each component has beneficial aspects as well as unavoidable pitfalls.

It is without a doubt that the United States of America is not a true democracy. By definition a democracy is a form of government by the people for the people, in which everyone is entitled to equality of rights and privileges. Never has a nation been able to truly withhold these political ideas, including the U.S.. Simple aspect such as economic values, references to religion, and the adaption of the common core have caused large separation between the people of the state and the leader of the state.

A free market is a type of market that the government is not involved in. Since the government does not care about what happens, the free market is also called “hands-off” or “let it be economics”. The government is limited to protect the citizens from the danger and that is the major goal for the government. In the free market economy, there are three components of the free market economy: competition, active but limited government, and the self-interest. Competition is one of the main components of the free market economy. Competition means that the companies compete with one another to make more benefits to themselves. According to the concept of the free market economy, the competition means a good thing because it is a basic

In an ideal liberal society, complete autonomy from the state would be desirable and fundamental rights would be completely protected though a codified constitution. This would allow for defence of liberty, but also a small state, seemingly a perfect balance. However, even in the most liberal society we must exercise pragmatism. David Anderson QC recently published A Question of Trust, Report of the Investigatory Powers Review, in which “Mr Anderson stated: “Modern communications can be used by the unscrupulous for purposes ranging from cyber attack, terrorism, and espionage to fraud, kidnap, and child sexual exploitation,”” and there must be a response to these threats. For our response to be successful we must allow “respected independent

However, since direct participation was not possible in large societies, Mill thought the `ideal type of a perfect government would be a representative government'.

Realism and Liberalism are two extremely prominent theories of international relations. These doctrines exhibit sagacious perceptions about war, foreign affairs and domestic relations. The fundamental principles of protocol in which we rely upon aren’t always apprehensive (Karle, Warren, 2003). By interpreting the data one could fathom these ideas. The assessment of these faculties wield noteworthy dominance about the concepts of international affairs. In analyzing this data, you will comprehend the variant relationship between Realism and Liberalism.

within the confinements of liberalism and with respect to traditional human rights, however, the central governments have managed to bypass the creed of liberalism and human rights. 2) Redrawing the boundaries, or reducing the powers, of internal political subunits controlled by the national minority; decisions on the boundaries and powers of internal political subunits. Some liberal democratic states engaged in redrawing boundaries which are within the confinement of liberalism and the liberal state, but encroaches the rights of national minorities. The central states draw boundaries to disempower national minorities. For instance, a minority 's territory are divided into several units to make cohesive political action impossible. For example, the division of France into 83 ‘departments’ after the Revolution, which intentionally subdivided the historical regions of the Basques, Bretons, and other linguistic minorities; or the division of Catalonia region in Spain. 3) Language policies; decisions on official languages. In many liberal democratic states, the majority language is adopted as official or de facto official language where it is used in government, bureaucracy, courts, schools, and business. While there are exceptions to this – many liberal democratic states allow for multilingualism – yet the policies related to language should be more robustly clarified within the human rights creed of democratic liberalism. Because the human rights creed adopted by several

Prior to engaging with the examples is is necessary to outline the characteristics of the two political economy paradigms. Liberal-Pluralism is relatively optimistic in its perspectives of capitalist society. Several different interest groups compose society, according to Liberal-pluralism (Louw, 14-15) and within that society, Media can be considered an agent of democracy because the relationship between media and audience is seen as even, in that, media requires large audiences to generate revenue and thus must provide content according to the demands of the consumer. This paradigm’s key conceptions include invisible hand competition (explain), rationality and positive assumptions about modernity and technology. One key criticism of this paradigm in relation to this essay is its tendency to overestimate the power of consumer demand and assume that market is a natural condition.

A society could not function well if no one worried about the outcomes of the market and if the market was left alone to run by itself. This is why a self-regulating market is a concept that, according to Polanyi, is absurd. According to Margaret Somers and Fred Block, “Polanyi’s central argument is that a self-regulating economic system is a completely imaginary construction; as such, it is completely impossible to achieve or maintain” (2014). With Polanyi’s insight, it is easy to see that one way to obtain a “good society” is the need for government interference. The government, however, should not take advantage of its people if it is working