Abstract

Liberal democracy is often considered to be unstable, consisting of two markedly different ideals (i.e., liberalism and democracy) that remain in tension. Yet the thesis regarding the alleged instability of liberal democracy is itself ambiguous, for it may refer to two senses of instability: empirical or conceptual. After introducing this, in our view, important distinction (though overlooked in the relevant literature where both senses of ‘stability’ are usually mixed up) we argue that while liberal democracy is indeed empirically unstable, it is, contrary to the implicitly assumed dominant opinion, conceptually stable. In the first part of the paper, we introduce several arguments supporting the thesis about the conceptual stability of liberal democracy; the arguments appeal to the ideas of the (constitutional) precommitment, intrinsic equality, and liberty. In the second part, we provide arguments for the claim about the empirical instability of liberal democracy, identifying its main causes, viz. several anthropological-psychological propensities, in particular the weakness of the propensity for freedom, hierarchical proclivities, and inclinations to adopt extreme normative convictions.

摘要

自由民主通常被认为是不稳定的，由两个明显不同的理想（即自由主义和民主）组成，它们仍然处于紧张状态。然而，关于所谓的自由民主不稳定性的论点本身就是模棱两可的，因为它可能指的是两种不稳定性：经验的或概念的。在介绍了这一点之后，我们认为，重要的区别（尽管在相关文献中被忽视，其中两种“稳定”的含义通常混合在一起）我们认为，虽然自由民主在经验上确实是不稳定的，但它与隐含假设的主流观点相反，概念上稳定。在本文的第一部分，我们介绍了几个支持关于自由民主概念稳定性的论点的论点；这些论点诉诸于（宪法）预先承诺、内在平等、和自由。在第二部分，我们为关于自由民主的经验不稳定性的主张提供论据，确定其主要原因，即。一些人类学 - 心理学倾向，特别是自由倾向的弱点，等级倾向以及采用极端规范信念的倾向。