Few things, when observing the international political scene today, appear as clear as the deeply critical tensions facing Western democracies. What is unfolding before our eyes at the heart of one of the oldest and most established democratic systems – the United States – I believe serves as evidence of this, and should leave us far from reassured about the future of the democratic political system as it has developed in the West.
To introduce this session, I think it is helpful to briefly clarify the fundamental concept we will be discussing, even if we cannot be exhaustive. According to Mudde and Kaltwasser, democracy (without adjectives) is best defined as the combination of popular sovereignty and majority rule; nothing more, nothing less. Hence, democracy can be direct or indirect, liberal or illiberal. In fact, the very etymology of the term democracy alludes to the idea of self-government of the people, that is a political system in which people rule. Not by chance, most «minimal» definitions consider democracy first and foremost as a method by which rulers are selected in competitive elections. Free and fair elections thus correspond to the defining property of democracy. Instead of changing rulers by violent conflict, the people agree that those who govern them should be elected by majority rule. However, in most day-to-day usages the term democracy actually refers to liberal democracy rather than to democracy per se. The main difference between democracy (without adjectives) and liberal democracy is that the latter refers to a political regime, which not only respects popular sovereignty and majority rule, but also establishes independent institutions specialized in the protection of fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression and the protection of minorities.
When it comes to protecting fundamental rights, there is no one-size-fits-all approach, and, in consequence, liberal democratic regimes have adopted very different institutional designs. For instance, some of them have a strong written Constitution and Supreme Court (United States), while others have neither (United Kingdom). Despite these differences, all liberal democracies are characterized by institutions that aim to protect fundamental rights with the intention of avoiding the emergence of a «tyranny of the majority».
This interpretation is very close to the one proposed by the American political scientist Robert Dahl, probably one of the most important scholars on the subject, who maintained that liberal democratic regimes are structured around two separate and independent dimensions: public contestation and political participation. While the former refers to the possibility to freely formulate preferences and oppose the government, the latter alludes to the right (and to the duty) to participate in the political system. Moreover, to ensure the optimization of both dimensions, he believed a demanding set of so-called institutional guarantees is required.
In his seminal 1998 work On Democracy, Dahl identified five criteria that a governing process would have to meet to satisfy the requirement that all members of an association are equally entitled to participate in its policy decisions: (1) Effective participation (all the members must have equal and effective opportunities for making their views known to the other); (2) Voting equality (every member must have an equal and effective opportunity to vote, and all votes must be counted as equal); (3) Enlightened understanding (each member must have equal and effective opportunities for learning about the relevant alternative policies and their likely consequences); (4) Control of the agenda (the policies are always open to change by the members, if they so choose); (5) Inclusion of adults (all, or at any rate most, adult permanent residents should have the full rights of citizens that are implied by the first four criteria). Before the 20th century this last criterion was unacceptable to most advocates of democracy (it touches on the fundamental question: why should we treat others as our political equals?).
According to Dahl, each of these criteria is necessary if the members (however limited their numbers may be) are to be politically equal in determining the policies of the association. Are they really applicable on a large scale to the government of a State? Having clarified that no actual democracy can fully meet these criteria, the answer is positive. The political institutions of modern democratic government are as follows: (1) Elected officials (modern, large-scale democratic governments are representative); (2) Free, fair, and frequent elections; (3) Freedom of expression; (4) Access to alternative sources of information (not under the control of the government or any other single political group attempting to influence public political beliefs and attitudes, and these alternative sources are effectively protected by law); (5) Associational autonomy (the right to form relatively independent associations or organizations, including independent political parties and interest groups); (6) Inclusive citizenship (no adult permanently residing in the country and subject to its laws can be denied the rights that are available to others and are necessary to the political institutions listed above).
Bearing in mind Dahl’s five core criteria of the democratic process (ideal democracy) and the six political institutions that enable their implementation in a country’s governance (actual democracy), the pressures that threaten democratic systems stem from at least three phenomena: the question of citizenship, the rise of new populisms, and the transformation of information and the public sphere in the digital age (the three sections of our anthology).
Regarding citizenship, we refer to the work of Robert Bellamy (Citizenship: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2008), who emphasises its legal and political nature in particular. He defines citizenship as «a condition of civic equality. It consists of membership of a political community where all citizens can determine the terms of social cooperation on an equal basis. This status not only secures equal rights to the enjoyment of the collective goods provided by the political association but also involves equal duties to promote and sustain them – including the good of democratic citizenship itself».
In contemporary democracies, the question of citizenship faces challenges from various directions. On the one hand, «disenchantment with democratic politics has never been more pronounced, with voter turnout and trust in politicians in a slow but steady decline within all democracies. Political citizenship is rejected as both too demanding and of dubious worth». On the other hand, «citizenship involves a degree of solidarity and reciprocity between citizens. They need to see each other as equal partners within a collective enterprise in which they share the costs as well as the benefits». The widening social and economic divide between the rich and the poor, which has significantly grown over the past three decades, has slowly eroded the sense of solidarity and belonging to a political community of equals. It has also made the wealthier classes more reluctant to bear the costs of democracy, which assumes that the state is responsible for providing a range of fundamental services and goods to all citizens.
The more affluent citizens, who can afford to contribute substantially to the common good (by paying high taxes), go to great lengths to avoid doing so. They «seek a more direct correlation, akin to that enjoyed by customers in the market, between what they pay and what they get as individuals. In consequence, they are inclined to accept a gradual privatization of many hitherto public services, such as health, education, and even the police. Privatization undermines civic attitudes not so much through private suppliers providing public goods and services, which in certain cases may produce gains in terms of efficiency compared to a state-run provider, as when such goods become perceived as private consumables rather than a collective responsibility, that ought by right to be supplied to all citizens on an equitable basis».
Another significant pressure on the issue of citizenship comes from the growing cultural diversity within democratic countries – a phenomenon that risks increasing fragmentation and weakening the political community and puts political equality under strain. Two are the main causes. Firstly, the numerical growth of certain minorities and their demand for recognition within democratic countries, such as black people, women, homosexuals, linguistic minorities and ethnic groups settled in certain territories. The demands of these consistent minorities tend to focus on the recognition and protection of their distinct identities – an expectation that does not easily foster the cohesion of a single political community of equals. On the other hand, the global phenomenon of migration, marked by people in search of a better future for themselves and their families, or fleeing for their lives from war, persecution, and hunger – many of whom end up in refugee camps under extreme conditions often for a long period of time – increases the presence of cultural, ethnic and religious differences within our democracies, raising questions about the enforcement of human rights and citizenship.
Regarding the phenomenon of new populism, we refer to the brief introduction by Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Kaltwasser (Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2017). They note that in the last decades the phenomenon has become widespread across the globe, affecting not only the political life of numerous Latin American countries, but also that of the United States and Europe (France, Slovakia, Poland, Italy, Germany, Hungary etc.). Although not new, the phenomenon is re-emerging today with some new elements. Rather than presenting itself as a systematic doctrine, it presents itself as a political and mental attitude that changes over time and in different territorial realities. In this attitude, there are two important poles: the «people» (who are not well defined, but are in a state of distress and lack political representation), and the leader, who presents himself as the only person capable of interpreting and politically expressing the «general will» of the (pure) people. The other pole consists of the «elites», the holders of cultural, economic, political and media power, who, in the populist narrative, hold the people hostage and exploit them for their own benefit.
The ambivalence of the phenomenon is also highlighted. «Populism exploits the tensions that are inherent to liberal democracy, which tries to find a harmonious equilibrium between majority rule and minority rights». By giving voice to constituencies that do not feel represented by the elite (the cultural, politics and economic power), «populism works as a democratic corrective. Populists often do this by politicizing issues that are not discussed by the elites but are considered relevant by the “silent majority”». But populism can also have a negative impact on liberal democracy. For instance, by claiming that no institution has the right to constrain majority rule, populist forces can end up attacking minorities and eroding those institutions that specialize in the protection of fundamental rights. As a matter of fact, here lays the main threat posed by populist radical right parties to liberal democracy in Europe. «As it tends to distrust any unelected institution that limits the power of the demos, populism can develop into a form of democratic extremism or, better said, of illiberal democracy».
Summarizing, Mudde and Kaltwasser claim that populism is essentially linked to democracy but is in contrast with the liberal democratic system. In fact, populism «holds that nothing should constrain “the will of the (pure) people” and fundamentally rejects the notions of pluralism and, therefore, minority rights as well as the “institutional guarantees” that should protect them. In practice, populists often invoke the principle of popular sovereignty to criticize those independent institutions seeking to protect fundamental rights that are inherent to the liberal democratic model. Among the most targeted institutions are the judiciary and the media». Besides, populist leaders – who oversimplify complex issues and present themselves as capable of solving everything immediately – tend to use exaggerated, exacerbating and polarising forms of communication especially by exploiting the social media.
This brings us to the third element of potential crisis in the democratic system: the transformation of information and public space in the age of digitalisation. We address this issue by referring to philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s short essay, Infocracy. Digitalisation and the Crisis of Democracy (Polity Press, 2022). Han’s arguments touch on one of the pillars of the democratic process: the right of citizens to be properly informed. In Western democracies, the relentless digitalisation of all aspects of life entails the transformation of public spaces into fragmented «private spaces», each personalised by the profiling systems of large digital platforms. In this «information regime», where individuals are surveilled based on the extensive information they generate and share (for instance, by using their smartphones), politics shifts to «psychopolitics» because voters’ actions can be unconsciously affected by targeted disinformation campaigns (such as fake news and conspiracy theories).
In the «information regime», political competition becomes a war based on false and misleading information. Han refers to this as the «infocratic distortion of democracy», which is carried out using all the technical and psychological means available to the new technocratic power. «In an infocracy, information is used as a weapon» to manipulate voters psychologically. Besides, the timing of information and the democratic process are no longer aligned: «democracy is a slow and drawn-out process. It takes time». The democratic process is seriously damaged by the speed and virality of information, which no longer passes through the public sphere for verification or debate. The arguments and justifications needed to develop the democratic debate cannot be conveyed through tweets or viral memes.
However, according to Han, the crisis of democracy is not solely related to the issues arising from the digital transformation of the public sphere. He argues that a major cause for the crisis is the progressive «disappearance of the other» in Western societies, which results in the end of democracy as a discursive practice where the presence of the other is essential for forming one’s own opinion. «Without the presence of the other, my opinion is neither discursive nor representative, but autistic, doctrinaire and dogmatic». The disappearance of the other implies the end of discourse because «it deprives opinion of communicative rationality and […] reinforces the self-propagandistic compulsion to indoctrinate oneself with one’s own ideas». Discourse presupposes «the distinction between one’s opinion and one’s identity». Without this discursive capacity, one can only cling to one’s own opinion to avoid feeling threatened in one’s identity. The crisis of democracy is, first and foremost, a crisis of listening. «The growing atomisation and narcissistic transformation of society makes us deaf to the voice of others and leads to a loss of empathy». What is responsible for the crisis of democracy, Han reiterates, «is the disappearance of the other, the inability to listen».
To conclude, I will recall the four challenges to democracy identified by Robert Dahl in 1998 as the 21st century began.
The first challenge was the bond between the democratic political system and the market economy. Historically, the development of democratic convictions and culture has been accompanied by a capitalist market economy. That is, an economy in which enterprises are primarily owned by private individuals rather than the state. However, this relationship contains an inherent tension, as a capitalist market economy inevitably produces inequalities in the distribution of resources accessible to individual citizens, thereby seriously undermining political equality. Seeing no viable alternatives on the horizon, Dahl identified the challenge for the twenty-first century as follows: «Are there better ways of preserving the advantages of market-capitalism while reducing its costs to political equality?».
The greatest challenge today stems from the ideology of neoliberalism, which is shared and practised by technocratic billionaires who are aligned with the current U.S. administration. Unsurprisingly, they have consistently voiced their support for far-right populist parties that oppose liberal democracy. In 2009, Peter Thiel, one of those digital billionaire, published the so-called «Political Manifesto of the Silicon Valley Oligarchy», in which he wrote: «I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible because subsidies and welfare for the poor, along with voting rights for women and groups hostile to libertarian ideas, make capitalist democracy impossible». He continued: «For the technological revolution, we need an oligarchy in which white male entrepreneurs can coordinate the lives of consumers, free from any form of bureaucracy». Should such views gain ground the consequences for liberal democracies are easy to imagine. Indeed, early warning signs are already visible. A recent study by the British consultancy firm FGS Global found that 21% of millennials and Gen Z in the UK would prefer a political system led by a strong leader to the traditional democratic model.
The second challenge was globalisation and the tendency to «expand the scope of decisions taken by political and bureaucratic elites at the expense of democratic control». As Dahl pointed out the challenge was to ensure that the costs to democracy of shifting certain decisions to the international level were fully taken into account, and that the instruments for holding political and bureaucratic elites accountable for their decisions were strengthened.
The third challenge concerned the increasing cultural diversity within our societies. As Dahl observed: «Democratic political institutions are more likely to develop and endure in a country that is culturally fairly homogeneous, and less likely in a country with sharply differentiated and conflicting subcultures». In times of severe and prolonged crisis, the risk grows that democracy may be overturned by authoritarian leaders who promise to resolve the crisis through decisive, dictatorial means. These methods, by their very nature, require setting aside core democratic institutions and procedures. The pressing question, then, is whether liberal democracies – under pressure both from within and without – can respond to the rise in cultural diversity in ways «consistent with democratic practices and values».
The final challenge concerned the civic education of citizens and the growth of a democratic culture. First and foremost, «within reasonable time limits, every citizen must have equal and effective opportunities to learn about the main political alternatives and their probable consequences». Dahl recalled the circumstances in which civic education took place at the end of the 20th century. In particular, the wide availability of information accessible at low cost through the media; the organisation of electoral competition through the political party system, that provided citizens with adequate information about the political line and programmes of a particular candidate; the existence of organized interest groups (lobbying organisations, pressure groups etc.) that provided citizens «with a special kind of representation in political life that is highly effective». As Dahl wrote: «One of the imperative needs of democratic countries is to improve citizens’ capacities to engage intelligently in political life. (…) In the years to come, traditional forms of education will need to be enhanced by new means for civic education, political participation, information and deliberation that draw creatively on the array of techniques and technologies available in the 21st century».
The final, and perhaps most decisive, challenge for a democracy was described by Dahl in the following terms: «The prospects for stable democracy in a country are improved if its citizens and leaders strongly support democratic ideas, values, and practices». The most reliable foundation for such support lies in the extent to which these beliefs and dispositions are embedded in the nation’s culture and passed down, in large part, from one generation to the next. In other words, if a country possesses a democratic political culture.
Whether liberal democracies will be able to overcome the current tensions and challenges and emerge from this crisis stronger and more resilient remains an open question.
Marco Bernardoni [Dehonian father, journalist for www.settimananews.it, talk at the seminar of the European Theological Commission of the Dehonian Fathers on the thought and social action of Father Leo Dehon, Clairefontaine, Belgium, 6-9 August 2025].
