Critique of Liberal Democracy: Canada and India

Mount Allison University





D.E.M O'Cracy- The story of my liberal Irish uncle and why he needs to be further educated





Saurabh Kulkarni








Liberal democracy is one of the most progressive and relevant forms of governance in the modern world. It has proved itself time and time again as to how it benefits the country that governs itself on liberal democratic ideals; especially in culturally diverse countries such as Canada, USA and India. Liberal democracy guarantees and works towards equality and many rights and freedoms that other forms of governance block access to. Yet, there are certain changes that need to be made in order for liberal democracy to be sustainable in a long term.
This paper will look into the ideals of liberal democracy, discuss them and service a detailed critique of the concept.

Liberal democracy is the most popular practice of democracy in the contemporary world. It became popular in the 20th century after many forms and aspects of governance failed. One such aspect of democracy in earlier days meant majoritarianism, where a majority (51%) is given the complete right to rule on and behalf of themselves and the 49% who did not want that. This ideal also meant suppression of the 49% by the 51% in a literal sense. Even though the concept of majority has been carried forward into the liberal democracy, majoritarianism has been done with for some time now. As Plattner explains in his article, 'But it is almost universally recognized that majoritarianism by itself does not capture the contemporary understanding of democracy. As Leszek Kolakowski wrote in 1990 in the very first issue of the Journal of Democracy, "The principle of majority rule does not by itself constitute democracy; we know of tyrannical regimes that enjoyed the support of a majority, including Nazi Germany and the Iranian theocracy. We do not call democratic a regime in which 51 percent of the population may slaughter the remaining 49 percent with impunity." To do away with harsh systems like majoritarianism, liberal democracy adopted new ideals, which are as follows- equality, universal adult suffrage, free and fair elections, idea and practicality of a constitution and rights and freedoms of the citizens of the country.
Equality necessarily means that all the citizens of the country are, in its crude form, equal before the law regardless of statues, race or gender.
Universal adult suffrage gives all the citizens above a certain age the right to vote and make choices. As Lenski identifies universal suffrage, 'an aspect of democratic rule, and the freedom of organized political organization, a reflection of political liberties, as basic to democracy. ' This idea describes how important universal adult suffrage is to liberal democracy in sense that without the existence of universal adult suffrage, a democracy cannot be called democracy.
A liberal democracy also holds free and fair election which, again, pertains to providing all citizens equal access and equal opportunities to have a say in the politics of the country.
A constitution is of utmost importance as it provides a defined framework for leaders and people to govern themselves better.
Rights and freedoms are the most vital aspects of a liberal democracy, as a liberal democracy becomes a democracy only when the virtue of rights and individual freedoms of the country are ensured. Other forms of governance work up their way to grabbing power by the means of suppression of rights and freedoms of its citizens. As Plattner says in article, which summarizes the point, 'For a regime to be considered democratic today, it must also protect the rights and freedoms of individuals and minorities- I other words, it must guarantee the freedom or liberty of its citizens.'
And lastly, a presidential or parliamentary system is central to liberal democracy as it provides an arena for deliberative discussions and collective effort so that almost everything can be accounted for while making a decision and the most agreeable decision be made.

Liberal democracy has been very effective in many countries, but more significantly in diverse nations such as Canada and India. Canada, while adopting the nature of a welfare state has kept the essence of liberal democracy alive by emphasizing and exercising some of its vital concepts- such as a parliamentary democracy, free and fair elections, maintenance of a constitution and by ensuring rights and freedoms to all its citizens. India has also adopted liberal democracy with all of its ideals deeply imbedded in the Indian democracy; but instead of being a welfare state, India concentrates more on economic development and rapid growth to ultimately satisfy the goal of being an equal welfare society. In countries like Canada and India, multiculturalism plays a huge role and the country is serviced and run because of this diversity. Canada has been long known as the country of immigrants, whereas in the Indian society is historically known to be settled by various ethnic and cultural groups. Protection the rights and freedoms and equality in these multicultural countries was made possible only by liberal democracy, as other forms of democracy would have wrecked these countries apart- for example, classic democracy, where the concept of citizenship was only privileged to elite aristocratic males, which meant that women and slaves in ancient Athens were excluded. (Laurence, Sept 15, 2015) While classic democracy displays and advocates a clear social and gender bias in the society, this most certainly is not a good form of governance in modern societies, especially Canada and India. Liberal democracy makes the best effort to service equality and equal treatment to all the defined citizens, but it, along with many other aspects, still has criticisms and areas that need to be worked on and improved in order to provide people what is best for everyone.
Equality is the most crucial part of the liberal democratic theory. It perceives and works towards making everybody in the society equal, but comes of as very hypocritical when the distinction between substantive equality and formal equality is not clear. Liberal democracy assumes that people are and will be equal if it is written and recorded in the constitution; whereas in practicality, substantive equality or equality in actuality is barely visible. This can be explained through the concept of economic equality, where even in the modern era, a clear distinction between the more privileged and the less privileged is very relevant. Economic inequality means unequal access to resources to exercise the rights and freedoms. For example, a minimum wage worker and a CEO of a company are equal in the eyes of law and both are equal when it comes to sue or being sued in the court of law, but in practicality the later person has more access to better attorneys and influence than the first person, which can be used for personal benefit of oneself. This aspect power and influence shows the actual inequality in a liberal society.
The second reason how liberal democracy perpetuates inequality in the society is through the concept of citizenship. Citizenship has existed in the society from the Athenian times, but has evolved significantly over the years but has still maintained its conservative elitist phenomenon alive. Modern concept of citizenship reflects a class bias, where people who are born in the boundaries of a nation state are regarded to be privileged by the virtue of birth, whereas other people currently living within the boundaries of the country (for example international students, illegal immigrants, refugees, economic immigrants and imported labour) are perceived to be of a lower class in the country. For example, I am an international student in Canada (a liberal democracy) and have contributed immensely to the Canadian society in terms of providing labour, bringing in tremendous amount of money, paying taxes and overall by being an active member of the society. Even after all of these contributions, my status in the country is determined to be lower in the citizenship hierarchy compared to a criminal in Canada, who is a Canadian citizen. It can also be seen during the local elections where people living in the area for a significant amount of time aren't able to have a vote in what is best for them, even though the election results makes a heavy clear impact on their lives too. This hierarchy is hypocritical to the concept of equality that liberal democracy so heavily advocates for. These two agendas described and discussed above shows the traits of elitist democracy as equality is only promoted by and to the people who believe and have the access to the resources to practice and maintain equality. This high emphasis on formal equality creates a lot of problems for a liberal democratic society; it forgets that equality does not come only by writing or teaching that everyone is equal or by guaranteeing rights and freedoms, but by putting it into practice. An alternative to shift the practice from formal democracy to widely practiced substantive democracy can be done by getting the citizens to be highly engaged in the society- by putting them in the position of a stakeholder in the economy and country. This will empower and facilitate people to work towards making the society more equal; this is seen in the practices of Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, where he made the citizens of his country to buy their own house out of the public housing, ensuring that everyone has a stake in the economy, which led people to work harder to achieve equality by achieving higher standard of living, economic upgradation and at the same time boosting the economy of the country on a tremendous scale. This practice is not necessarily liberal, but is necessary to achieve equality in practice in a liberal democratic society. .
Rights and freedoms are the basic ideals of liberal democracy. These include many different rights and freedoms, but the most important is freedom of speech. These freedoms gives the right to an individual to speak, write, listen, access and deliver one's thoughts, as long as it doesn't impact others in a negative way. On the outside, it looks like a manageable and crucial freedom in a democratic society. But in practicality, in a liberal democratic society, people are policed for having a different ideology. Examples in the contemporary liberal democracy is India, when India censors media and films, and censors out profanity, homosexuality and words such as 'beef', and ban certain videos and websites which deviate from the societal ideology. As Slavoj Zizek says, "We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom." This quote clearly summarizes the hypocrisy of freedom of speech in a liberal democracy.
Even though liberal democracy tries best to advocate for equality, and the right to contest elections in order to get elected in the government. This gives an unfair edge to people who might not be best suited for this job, which would mean that there are high chances of poor decisions to be made which would, in a long term, harm the very structure of liberal democracy. Liberal democracy also does not give credit to merit, hence perpetuating its own destruction by allowing non-qualified people to become leaders in a field that they have least knowledge about. Plato's idea, only in this particular sense, of 'philosophers should be kings and kings should be philosophers' (Laurence, Sept 17, 2015) would make a lot of sense if implemented and would be very crucial in rapid economic and intellectual growth of the society. Having people of merit as the leaders in the field of their expertise would allow for a much stable, focused, equal, coherent and harmonious democracy.
Liberal democracy is by far the best form of democracy, but like any other, it needs a lot of improvements. Absolute equality can be achieved only after people are economically equal. This does not mean exercising communism, but rather enforcing and practicing equality on a new level in order to achieve practical equality. Rights and freedoms would have to be given a new meaning and any idea or thought other than the mainstream should not be policed upon, rather it should be critically discussed and be open to adopting any new ideas that may be coming from those deliberate discussions. This would give liberal democracy the ideal support, since it is very important for a concept, theory and a form of governance to continuously evolve in order to sustain itself over a period of time. Thus would ensure equality and protection of rights and freedoms of people for a long term.












Bibliography-

Bollen, Kenneth. "Liberal Democracy: Validity and Method Factors in Cross-National Measures." Www.jstor.org. Midwest Political Science Association, 1 Nov. 1993. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.


Byrnes, Mark. "How Singapore Fixed Its Affordable Housing Problem." Citylab. The Atlantic, 23 Mar. 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015. .


Jaiswal, Nimisha. "In Censor-happy India, American TV Shows Have No Sex, Crime, or Cows." In Censor-happy India, American TV Shows Have No Sex, Crime, or Cows. The Week, 13 July 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.


Laurence, Michael. "Athenian Democracy." Mount Allison University, Sackville. 15 Sept. 2015. Lecture.


Laurence, Michael. "Plato and Classical Critique of Democracy." Mount Allison University, Sackville. 17 Sept. 2015. Lecture.


Plattner, Marc. "Populism, Pluralism and Liberal Democracy." Journal of Democracy. Journal of Democracy, 2010. Web. 30 Nov. 2015. .


Plattner, Marc. "Populism, Pluralism and Liberal Democracy." Journal of Democracy. Journal of Democracy, 2010. Web. 30 Nov. 2015. .


Slavoj Zizek Quotes." Slavoj Zizek Quotes (Author of The Sublime Object of Ideology). Web. 30 Nov. 2015. .








Plattner, Marc. "Populism, Pluralism and Liberal Democracy." Journal of Democracy. Journal of Democracy, 2010. Web. 30 Nov. 2015. .
Bollen, Kenneth. "Liberal Democracy: Validity and Method Factors in Cross-National Measures." Www.jstor.org. Midwest Political Science Association, 1 Nov. 1993. Web. 30 Nov. 2015. .
Plattner, Marc. "Populism, Pluralism and Liberal Democracy." Journal of Democracy. Journal of Democracy, 2010. Web. 30 Nov. 2015. .
Laurence, Michael. "Athenian Democracy." Mount Allison University, Sackville. 15 Sept. 2015. Lecture.
Byrnes, Mark. "How Singapore Fixed Its Affordable Housing Problem." Citylab. The Atlantic, 23 Mar. 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015. .
Jaiswal, Nimisha. "In Censor-happy India, American TV Shows Have No Sex, Crime, or Cows." In Censor-happy India, American TV Shows Have No Sex, Crime, or Cows. The Week, 13 July 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
"Slavoj Zizek Quotes." Slavoj Zizek Quotes (Author of The Sublime Object of Ideology). Web. 30 Nov. 2015. .
Laurence, Michael. "Plato and Classical Critique of Democracy." Mount Allison University, Sackville. 17 Sept. 2015. Lecture.