Off balance: Systematizing deformations of liberal democracy

Abstract

The project of liberal democracy is inherently marked by tensions between its liberal and democratic pillar. This means that liberal democracy needs to constantly strive for a balance between conflicting principles. If it does not contain these centrifugal forces, liberal democracies risk becoming subverted from within due to one principle clearly dominating the other. In this article, we start from the idea of liberal democracy depending on balance to systematically assess multiple endogenous challenges to democracy. We identify four types of deformations and show how they are qualitatively distinct phenomena, yet systematically relate to each other. We furthermore discuss what the co-existence of several such deformations means for the notion of liberal democracy understood as a state of balance. In sum, the proposed framework adds to existing research by providing a systematizing and theoretically grounded assessment of ongoing subversive tendencies in liberal democracy.