Liberal Democracy

synonym for Open Society?

Liberal democracy is frequently used to describe the Political Philosophy of America (USA)

Fareed Zakaria on How to Wage the Peace (Apr'2003) - What is called democracy in the West is really liberal democracy, a Political System marked not only by free elections but also the Rule Of Law, the Separation Of Powers and basic Human Rights, including Private Property, Free Speech and Religious Tolerance. In the West, this tradition of liberty and law developed over centuries, long before democracy took hold... Over the last decade those countries that moved farthest toward liberal democracy followed a version of the Western pattern: first Capitalism and the rule of law, then democracy... Paddy Ashdown, the British politician who was appointed "czar" of Bosnia, admits that administrators there got the sequence wrong: "We thought that democracy was the highest priority, and we measured it by the number of elections we could organize. The result even years later is that the people of Bosnia have grown weary of voting. In addition, the focus on elections slowed our efforts to tackle Organized Crime and Corruption, which have jeopardized Quality Of Life and scared off foreign investment." "In hindsight," he wrote, "we should have put the establishment of the rule of law first, for everything else depends on it: a functioning economy, a free and fair political system, the development of civil society, public confidence in police and the courts."

• Daniel Drezner disagrees - 1) Stable democracies have emerged without the preconditions Zakaria spells out... 2) The slow processes stressed by Zakaria have equally adverse consequences.

"IsLam and Liberal Democracy" by BernardLewis in 1993. The economic basis of Western-style liberal democracy was early recognized in the West. British, American, and French democrats alike insisted on the right to property as one of the basic human rights that safeguard and are safeguarded by free institutions...

Economic Policy in a Liberal Democracy by Richard E Wagner ISBN:1858984017

• some comments