Conclusion to The Substance in Liberal Democracy

Daryl Glaser

Chapter 11 in The Substance in Liberal Democracy, 2026, pp 197-206 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Chapter 11 recaps key themes. These include the distinction between substantive democracy and substantivism; the insistence that liberal democracy possesses substance, but that there is a case for its further substantiation; that there are different ways of augmenting liberal democracy's substance, some of them compatible with liberal democracy, some not; that substantivism, anti-formalism and democratic minimalism would substantiate liberal democracy in the wrong way, primarily by privileging certain ideologies either actively or by default; that liberalism itself can overload procedural democracy with liberal substance, whether by way of prohibitions or directives; and that there is a tension between procedure-independent liberalisms and liberalism's theory of ideologically open proceduralism. The chapter summarises arguments concerning which types of substantiation liberal democracy welcomes or accommodates and which it necessarily resists. Thus liberal democracy requires substantively true democratic design, including ideologically open proceduralism; faithful implementation of designs and a certain animating minimum of participation; and it welcomes a supportively liberal society but paradoxically cannot engineer it beyond narrow limits. Liberal democracy, understood as ideologically open proceduralism, is responsive primarily to subjective preferences, requires majority rule and favours proportional representation. It welcomes or accommodates a wide range of democratic models and the democratisation of a range of sites, but only on certain terms, and it grants primacy to conventional electoral democracy at the highest level of jurisdiction. It accommodates group representation on certain terms but privileges individual representation. Finally, the book argues that, confronted with illiberal and authoritarian threats, liberal democracy must avoid recourse in repression or in redoubled elite vanguardism.

Keywords: Formal; Procedural and substantive democracy; Liberalism and liberal democracy; Democratic innovation; Majority rule and proportional representation; Direct; Participatory and deliberative democracy; Group representation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035333011
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