What are the main features of liberal political system?
Answers
Answered by
2
There is no equation that Liber=Democracy, nor reasons one would lead to another.
Liberal usually is linked to Democracy mainly because they both originated from the Western school of thinking. However, Democracy was coined way earlier than “western political environment”.
Democracy was a system that is more to stabilize larger society and make majority people’s opinion and interest count - the idea was pretty simple and straight forward — if more people want it this way, let's do it this way, there are evidence that Democracy (or some crude similarity of it) *may* even exist in other primates “societies”
The Liberal on the other hand was originally formed to “free people from tyranny and undue hardship”. The key idea is “those who are in power put undue hardship on people, it’s unnecessary, meaningless, and unfair, such restrictions, should be abolished. So for Liberal to succeed, there have to be “undue restriction” in place first — such undue restriction are more associated with other forms of government like dictatorship, so Democracy was commonly used by Liberals around the world, to defeat tyranny. However, there is no garuantee that Democracy itself won’t lead to undue suffering for some members, or lead to another tyranny.
The mere term Liberal Democracy is a quasi-democracy, because “what if majority of people choose a non-Liberal approach”? So if you pre-determined it has to be Liberal, then it is not true democracy. That being said, if Liberal stays true to its root, which means strive to minimize undue hardship of all people (not just a small group), then Liberal is likely be the favored approach most Democracy choose. However, there are very few Liberal to its real root.
This is mainly a human nature problem — while Liberal fight against undue hardship, no one in this world is able to acquire all knowledge, know each and every individual and learn about their sufferings. So Liberals can only base their judgement of “what to fight against” based on their own limited knowledge, limited number of members of society that they are familiar (or care about) more. So this always lead to system-wide resource allocation bias - Liberals can only help those people who are suffering IF they are made aware of such, and made to pay attention to such. A typical example is the recent refugee crisis — people from Syria did not “suffer once arrived at European boarder” —- they started their suffering even long before the civil war in Syria started. However, they didn’t get help (at least not enough) to free them from suffering. Once they arrived at the door steps of European countries, their suffering is made very public and people started to rush to help — this is not something based on “people in need for help”, rather it is something based on “knowing people in need for help”. Actually for every single Syria refugee been admitted to western countries, there are thousands more suffering in their home — one could even argue - those who were able to make out of the country and to Europe, are actually “stronger” ones who were able to make it — most ailing, older, or weaker Syrian weren’t even able to make the trip.
So a true Liberal in the above case should try anything they can to stop Syria civil war and bring peace to millions of people. A “Liberal Democracy” on the other hand would try to accept as much as Syria refugee as possible because that what majority of people know and care about.
There is a very interesting thing in the western politics that Libertarian is probably what closest to a “Liberal Demcoracy” although those who identify themselves as Liberal strongly oppose Libertarian, and vice Versa - it basically ask for a system where
Majority have the right to select a form of government
whoever is selected as government is heavily restricted in their power
Rules are set so people know clearly what is expected out of them - minimize need for “special experts” to interpret “what can be done, what cannot”.
Rules are only set when it is necessary
Unless a power is explicitly delegated to the government, people will retain freedoms to do anything they want (even if the government do not like it), things like near-complete freedom of speech, including criticizing the very nature of this system
Private property is respected
Highly transparent public/political operation
not seeking to be an external super power (if you want to liberate all people within or outside your country, being a super power is totally against that because you are trying to put undue influence on other countries hence their people
Liberal usually is linked to Democracy mainly because they both originated from the Western school of thinking. However, Democracy was coined way earlier than “western political environment”.
Democracy was a system that is more to stabilize larger society and make majority people’s opinion and interest count - the idea was pretty simple and straight forward — if more people want it this way, let's do it this way, there are evidence that Democracy (or some crude similarity of it) *may* even exist in other primates “societies”
The Liberal on the other hand was originally formed to “free people from tyranny and undue hardship”. The key idea is “those who are in power put undue hardship on people, it’s unnecessary, meaningless, and unfair, such restrictions, should be abolished. So for Liberal to succeed, there have to be “undue restriction” in place first — such undue restriction are more associated with other forms of government like dictatorship, so Democracy was commonly used by Liberals around the world, to defeat tyranny. However, there is no garuantee that Democracy itself won’t lead to undue suffering for some members, or lead to another tyranny.
The mere term Liberal Democracy is a quasi-democracy, because “what if majority of people choose a non-Liberal approach”? So if you pre-determined it has to be Liberal, then it is not true democracy. That being said, if Liberal stays true to its root, which means strive to minimize undue hardship of all people (not just a small group), then Liberal is likely be the favored approach most Democracy choose. However, there are very few Liberal to its real root.
This is mainly a human nature problem — while Liberal fight against undue hardship, no one in this world is able to acquire all knowledge, know each and every individual and learn about their sufferings. So Liberals can only base their judgement of “what to fight against” based on their own limited knowledge, limited number of members of society that they are familiar (or care about) more. So this always lead to system-wide resource allocation bias - Liberals can only help those people who are suffering IF they are made aware of such, and made to pay attention to such. A typical example is the recent refugee crisis — people from Syria did not “suffer once arrived at European boarder” —- they started their suffering even long before the civil war in Syria started. However, they didn’t get help (at least not enough) to free them from suffering. Once they arrived at the door steps of European countries, their suffering is made very public and people started to rush to help — this is not something based on “people in need for help”, rather it is something based on “knowing people in need for help”. Actually for every single Syria refugee been admitted to western countries, there are thousands more suffering in their home — one could even argue - those who were able to make out of the country and to Europe, are actually “stronger” ones who were able to make it — most ailing, older, or weaker Syrian weren’t even able to make the trip.
So a true Liberal in the above case should try anything they can to stop Syria civil war and bring peace to millions of people. A “Liberal Democracy” on the other hand would try to accept as much as Syria refugee as possible because that what majority of people know and care about.
There is a very interesting thing in the western politics that Libertarian is probably what closest to a “Liberal Demcoracy” although those who identify themselves as Liberal strongly oppose Libertarian, and vice Versa - it basically ask for a system where
Majority have the right to select a form of government
whoever is selected as government is heavily restricted in their power
Rules are set so people know clearly what is expected out of them - minimize need for “special experts” to interpret “what can be done, what cannot”.
Rules are only set when it is necessary
Unless a power is explicitly delegated to the government, people will retain freedoms to do anything they want (even if the government do not like it), things like near-complete freedom of speech, including criticizing the very nature of this system
Private property is respected
Highly transparent public/political operation
not seeking to be an external super power (if you want to liberate all people within or outside your country, being a super power is totally against that because you are trying to put undue influence on other countries hence their people
Similar questions
Social Sciences,
6 months ago
Biology,
6 months ago
Science,
6 months ago
Social Sciences,
1 year ago
Math,
1 year ago