Liberalism
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KEY CONCEPT FEDERALISM
example, the USA, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada and Australia. However, many more states have federal-type features. Most federal, or federal- type, states were formed by the coming together of a number of established political communities; they are often geographically large and may have culturally diverse populations. Federalism may nevertheless also have an international dimension, providing the basis, in particular, for regional integration, as in the case of ‘European federalism’.
Federalism (from the Latin foedus , meaning ‘pact’ or ‘covenant’) usually refers to legal and political structures that distribute power between two distinct levels of government, neither of which is subordinate to the other. Its central feature is therefore the principle of shared sovereignty. ‘Classical’ federations are few in number: for
Democratic rule Democracy literally means rule by the demos or people (although the Greeks originally used demos to mean ‘the poor’ or ‘the many’). However, the simple notion of rule by the people is vague and has been subject to a bewildering variety of interpretations. Perhaps a more helpful starting point is Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered in 1863, which extols the virtues of what he called government ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’. Whereas all government is government ‘of ’ the people, government ‘by’ and ‘for’ the people highlight core democratic principles while also suggesting contrasting models of democratic governance. Government by the people emphasizes the need, at some level, for the participation of citizens in the tasks of government. In the case of what are called direct, classical or radical democracy, popular participation is direct, unmediated and continuous, thus obliterating the distinction between the state and civil society . Government for the people, in contrast, implies that the essence of democracy is rule in the public interest. This notion is typically associated with the need for representatives to act on behalf of the people (using their allegedly superior knowledge and wisdom), with their right to rule deriving from success in a competitive struggle for the popular vote. This model of democracy is usually called representative democracy , and its most common form is liberal democracy. The hybrid nature of liberal democracy reflects a basic ambivalence within liberalism towards democracy. In many ways, this is rooted in the competing implications of individualism, which both embodies a fear of collective power and leads to a belief in political equality. In the nineteenth century, liberals often saw democracy as threatening
or dangerous. In this respect, they echoed the ideas of earlier political theorists, such as Plato and Aristotle, who viewed democracy as a system of rule by the masses at the expense of wisdom and property. The central liberal concern has been that democracy can become the enemy of individual liberty. This arises from the fact that ‘the people’ are not a single entity but rather a collection of individuals and groups, possessing different opinions and opposing interests. The ‘democratic solution’ to conflict is a recourse to numbers and the application of majority rule: the principle that the will of the majority or the greatest number should prevail over that of the minority. Democracy thus comes down to the rule of the 51 per cent, a prospect that the French politician and social commentator Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) famously described as ‘the tyranny of the majority’. Individual liberty and minority rights can thus be crushed in the name of
Civil society: A realm of autonomous associations and groups, formed by private citizens and enjoying independence from the government; civil society includes businesses, clubs, families and so on. Representative democracy: A limited and indirect form of democracy, in which people do not exercise power themselves, but merely select those who will rule on their behalf.
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