“Nothing to excess”. This motto, also known as “the golden mean”, was displayed in the ancient shrine of Delphi. Such restraint is particularly crucial for the preservation of liberal democracy, which is a fragile synthesis of personal freedom and civic action. Today, the balance between these two elements has to be regained.
Larry Diamond of Stanford University has argued that liberal democracy has four necessary and sufficient elements: free and fair elections; active participation of people, as citizens; protection of the civil and human rights of all citizens; and a rule of law that binds all citizens equally. The salient feature of the system is the restraints it imposes on the government and so on the majority: any victory is temporary.
It is easy to see why this system is so fragile. Today, that truth is, alas, not theoretical. In its 2018 report, Freedom House, a well-regarded federally funded, non-profit US organisation, stated that: “Democracy is in crisis. The values it embodies — particularly the right to choose leaders in free and fair elections, freedom of the press, and the rule of law — are under assault and in retreat globally.” This “democratic recession”, as Prof Diamond has called it, is not restricted to emerging or former communist countries, such as Hungary or Poland. The commitment to norms of liberal democracy, including the right to vote and equal rights for all citizens, is in retreat even in the established democracies, including the US. Why has this happened?