The Undemocratic Future of 21st Century Liberal Democracy

• Authors: Fernando Lopez-Alves

Abstracts

EN

What is the future of liberal democracy? Is the “liberal” ingredient of 21st century democracy compatible with its “demos”? Are developed democracies more equalitarian and less stratified than other regimes? Or are present day democracies evolving into something different that needs a new definition? By the early 1990s liberal democracy appeared to have become the dominant system at a global scale. The hope of citizens, scholars, and observers was that the stride toward broader democratization and inclusion would continue. It did, but as this paper argues, the forms adopted by democratic regimes, especially under the fourth industrial revolution, are not necessarily democratic. Rather, liberal democracies have created a new aristocracy that includes high tech monopolies, extremely skilled professionals, and a selected intelligentsia that from social media, conglomerates, and many times Hollywood, supports this new stratified version of the democratic polity. Family dynasties, clientele networks, and mechanisms of reward and punishment reminds us of the pseudo democracies of the late 19th century. Surely the dwindling middle class in developed democracies still have some consumer power based on credit. Global markets offer many more available consumer goods than in the past, creating the illusion that all is going well. Comparatively, however, democracies are doing worse. As this paper shows, 21st century liberal democracies have concentrated wealth in fewer hands than in the recent past, have favored power centralization especially in the executive branch, have stimulated the formation of giant high-tech monopolies, and have generated more rigid forms of social stratification. Liberal democracies, therefore, are weaking, in many cases as the logical consequence of the natural evolution of the liberal doctrine, and in most cases because of profound changes at the global scale. Citizens’ confidence in their elected representatives has been in the decline for a long time. The increasing influence of populist nationalism is an indicator that confidence in traditional politicians continues to deteriorate. Democracy could not be democratic without the popular vote, but it has been precisely the popular vote that has empowered populist nationalist leaders, both from the right and the left. There is not very much that democracies can do about the coming to power via the ballot box of leaders who can rework the system in their favor and, in some cases, destroy it. As the paper shows, changes in the international system of power have not been favorable to liberal democracies, adding to its burdens. They are no longer the optimal model of choice, especially in the less developed world. Finally, I claim that the broken promises of political elites that have traditionally provoked voters’ apathy and loss of trust, have, In the 21st century, created new unintended consequences. They have generated illusions of entitlement and deservingness that, especially young voters, have converted into a sort anti-democratic culture that cares less for the collective and much more for themselves.

Keywords

EN

liberal democracy; globalization; United States; China; Fourth Industrial Revolution; populist nationalism

• Publisher: Academicus. International Scientific Journal publishing house
• Journal: Academicus. International Scientific Journal
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 24
• Pages: 39-59

Dates

published

2021

Contributors

author

Fernando Lopez-Alves

• University of California, USA
• Global and International Studies, University of Salamanca, Spain

• https://orcid.org/0000000193106012

References

• 1. Acemoglu, Daron and James A. Robinson, (2012) Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. New York. Random House.
• 2. Armstrong, John A. (1973) The European Administrative Elite, Princeton, University Press.
• 3. Bancroft, Timothy and Mark Hewitson ed. (2006). What is a Nation? Europe 1789-1914. Oxford University Press.
• 4. Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, 1966, Monthly Review Press.
• 5. James Burnham (1941) The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World, John Day Company.
• 6. Patrick Deneen, (2018) Why Liberalism Failed, Yale University Press.
• 7. Elizabeth C. Economy (2018) The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State, Oxford University Press.
• 8. Ferrarotti, F. (2021). Are the United States still the «God’s Country»?. Academicus International Scientific Journal, 12(23), 9-20.
• 9. Greenfeld, Leah (2001) The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth, Harvard: University Press.
• 10. Hastings, Marx (2013) Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Random House.
• 11. Hechter, Michael (2000) Containing Nationalism, Oxford University Press.
• 12. Kotkin, Joel (2020) The Coming of Neo Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. Encounter Books, New York.
• 13. Kirchick, James (2017) The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming of the Dark Age, Yale, University Press.
• 14. Schwab, Klaus The Fourth Industrial Revolution, (2016) World Economic Forum.
• 15. Ryszard Legutko (2018) The Demos in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies. Encounter Books, New York.
• 16. Lopez-Alves and Johnson, Globalization and Uncertainty, (2007). New York, Routledge.
• 17. Lopez-Alves Fernando and Johnson Diane (2018) Populist Nationalism in Europe and the Americas, London: Routledge.
• 18. Lopez-Alves, Fernando. 2019. “The United States, China, and Democracy’s Declining Appeal”. Current History (Historia Actual) November.
• 19. Lopez-Alves, Fernando (2000) Societies with No Future (Sociedades sin Destino) Sudamericana Editors, Buenos Aires.
• 20. Lopez-Alves, Fernando (2000) State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810-1930, Duke University Press.
• 21. Miller, Tom (2017) China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road, London, Zed Books.
• 22. McMillan, Margaret (2013) The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914, Alfred A. Knopf, Random House.
• 23. Moore, Barrington (1966). Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Bacon Press.
• 24. Piketty, Thomas (2012), Capital in the 21st Century. Harvard University Press.
• 25. Rokkan, Stein. (2007). State Formation, Nation Building, and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan. Based on his Collected Works, edited by.
• 26. Peter Flora, Stein Kuhnl, and Derek Urwine. Comparative European Politics Series, Oxford University Press.
• 27. Tyriakian, Edward & Ronald Rogowski (1985): eds. New Nationalisms of the Developed West. London: Allen & Unwin.
• 28. Rich, Norman. (1997). The Age of Nationalism and Reform. Norton & Company, New York.
• 29. Roshwald, Aviel (2001): Ethnic Nationalism & the Fall of Empires. Central Europe, Russia & the Middle East, 1914-1923. London: Routledge.
• 30. Rodrik, Dani. (2011) The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of The World Economy. Norton & Company, New York and London.
• 31. Todd, Emmanuel (2002) After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order. New York, Columbia University Press.
• 32. Tocqueville, Alexis (1997). Democracy in America, Yale University Press. From the1899 Henry Reeve Translation, revised and corrected.
• 33. Tuchman, Barbara W. (1966) The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914, New York, Ballantine Books.
• 34. Viu, Vicente Cacho (1990) El nacionalismo catalán como factor de modernización, Madrid, Fondo de Cultura Económica.
• 35. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, (2010) China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford, University Press.
• 36. Weber, Max. (2002) The Protestant Ethics and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and Other Writings, Penguin Classics.

Identifiers

DOI

10.7336/academicus.2021.24.03

Biblioteka Nauki

1968806