Saving liberal democracy from the extremes https://t.co/WwDzHwwg63 @financialtimesさんから
— mozu (@mozumozumozu) 2018年9月26日
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.
Mr Mounk’s argument, moreover, is that undemocratic liberalism, notably economic liberalism, largely explains the rise of illiberal democracy: “vast swaths of policy have been cordoned off from democratic contestation”. He points to the role of independent central banks and to the way in which trade is governed by international agreements created by secretive negotiations carried out inside remote institutions. In the US, he also notes, unelected courts have decided many controversial social issues. In such areas as taxation, elected representatives retain formal autonomy. But the global mobility of capital restricts the freedom of politicians, reducing the effective differences between established parties of the centre-left and centre-right.
How far does such undemocratic liberalism explain illiberal democracy? The answer is: it does, up to a point.
It is surely true that the liberal economy has not delivered what was hoped, the financial crisis being a particularly severe shock. One aspect of such liberalism — migration — has, as the British writer David Goodhart argues in his book, The Road to Somewhere, persuaded many “people from somewhere” — those anchored to a place — that they are losing their countries to unwelcome outsiders. Moreover, institutions that represented the bulk of ordinary people — trade unions and left-of-centre parties — have ceased to exist or ceased to do their job. Finally, politics has been taken over by “people from anywhere” — the mobile and the highly educated.
A view that the economic dimension of undemocratic liberalism has driven the people towards illiberal democracy is exaggerated. What is true is that poorly managed economic liberalism helped destabilise politics. That helps explain the nationalist backlash in high-income countries. Yet the kind of illiberal democracy we see in Hungary or Poland, which is rooted in their specific histories, is not an inevitable outcome in established democracies. It will be hard for Donald Trump to become a US version of Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
Yet we cannot just ignore the pressures. It is impossible for democracies to ignore widespread public anger and anxiety. Elites must promote a little less liberalism, show a little more respect for the ties binding citizens to one another and pay more tax. The alternative of letting a large part of the population feel disinherited is too dangerous. Is such a rebalancing conceivable? That is the big question.
自由民主主義とは、自由公正な選挙をし、市民として政治参加を認め、国民全員に人間として、そして国民としての権利を認め、法の支配で国民すべて平等に扱うことであり、政府や多数派に制限を加えているところに特徴がある、と。
しかし、独立した中央銀行の存在や、貿易に関する国際的な協議が秘密裏になされること、また、選挙されたわけでない裁判所が、社会問題について、決定を下してしまうなどから、社会から民主主義が薄れてしまっている。また、自由経済で金融危機は起こるし、グローバリズムにより、移民が増加して、地元民は、地元が余所者に奪われたと感じ、労働組合や中道左派政党は壊滅ないし、機能不全に陥り、政治は、一握りのエリートによって掌握されてしまっている、と。
経済的自由主義がしっかりと管理されてこなかったので、政治状況は不安定化し、民族主義者の台頭化を許すようになった。民主主義社会では、公衆の怒りや不安を無視することはできず、政治家は、経済自由主義に制限をかけて、国民の絆をもっと尊重するようにしなければ、国民の大多数が剥奪感を感じるようになり、危険だ、
・・・・・みたいなかんじか？
