How to Salvage Democracy: A Reading

Stein Ringen’s How Democracies Live takes us on a lucid intellectual journey through the works of many thinkers whose contribution Ringen considers decisive for grasping what democracy is, how it works, and what is needed to preserve it. Resonating with contemporary purpose, the book draws on Aristotle and Machiavelli, Tocqueville and Max Weber, Alfred Marshall, Isaiah Berlin, and Robert Dahl (among many others) to discuss the whys and hows of democratic government. This extraordinary range is anything but willfully promiscuous. “The greats” (21), as Ringen calls them, are summoned to testify on issues to the understanding of which they have made game-changing contributions. Refreshingly little attention is given to their identities as we tend to ascribe these today (often to excuse the lack of substantive engagement). More than origins, it is their ideas that matter and their time-tested accounts of five fundamental political concepts: power, statecraft, freedom, poverty, and, last but foremost, democracy.

To be sure, none of these testimonies is taken without a critical cross-examination. Finding few of them to be beyond reproach, Ringen is not shy to supply correctives where most needed—for example, supplementing Weber’s sources of legitimacy, recovering Marshall’s credentials as a neoclassical economist, or critiquing Berlin’s idea of freedom. Rather than treating past lore as infallible authority, Ringen insists that to benefit from its guidance, we must put in the slow, patient work of understanding and judgment—work that can succeed only in the context of robust conversation. Learning how to converse with the past is all the more critical since a culture of conversation is how Ringen defines democracy itself.

Democracy, Stein Ringen assures us, is not reducible to free and fair elections. Indeed, for elections to be free and fair, they need to be embedded in a broader culture that cherishes freedom and fairness above will to power or economic success. Nor is democratic culture defined, let alone sustained, by a list of constitutional provisions. Rather, “culture is the foundation upon which sits the constitutional architecture” (23). More than a precondition for democratic government, culture for Ringen is part and parcel of what democracy is.

The essence of democratic culture is the broad-based commitment to an ethos of deliberation. “It is on a foundation of continuous deliberation that good laws can be shaped and law accepted as legitimate” (111). While doubling down on representative legislatures in the face of widespread skepticism about their effectiveness, Ringen makes clear that if parliaments are to do a decent job, the norms, habits, and preconceptions that enable their deliberation need to be upheld and practiced across the body politic: from informal dinner conversations among family and friends, through neighborhood and municipal affairs, to the grand institutions of national politics and of international organizations. To be well governed, a democratic polity must not only enshrine the right but also be suffused with the practice of broad-based deliberation.

Put differently, a viable democratic culture is structured (to echo Hahrie Han) rather like a fractal: the ideas, practices, and norms embodied in any formal institutional setting must be patterned and reproduced on smaller scales across society in all its parts (Han, Forthcoming; see also Han, McKenna, and Oyakawa 2021). The quality of democratic deliberation, and of political life as a whole, vitally depends on sustaining these pervasive commitments and practices. Conversely, Ringen warns, democracy withers when democratic culture withers.

Attractive though this idea of democracy as culture may appear, it carries troubling implications. For one, it urges the question of how much institutional and moral diversity such a system can sustain—an issue I return to below. Also, if democracy is a complex cultural formation, what can be done to revive it when it begins to wither? Noting the “shattered state of democratic culture in the US” (14), Ringen acknowledges that no policy or constitutional reform is likely to be effective without a corresponding change in the cultural foundations. Just how to understand and approach this conundrum is Fukuyama’s main concern.

While Ringen’s main object of analysis is democracy, for Francis Fukuyama it is liberalism. What Fukuyama means by liberalism is neither left-of-center progressivism nor what is now commonly referred to as neoliberalism, but their common ancestor. Classical liberalism, as he calls it, is a long tradition of thinking about the institutional and moral preconditions of a free society. Dating back to the early modern period, liberalism has evolved over the centuries into a rich and quarrelsome philosophical discourse on the one hand, and on the other into a complex institutional system—the so-called checks and balances—that rests on the pillars of individual rights, independent judiciary, and the rule of law. Predating the rise of modern democracies that it helped propel, liberalism stands fundamentally opposed to any form of unlimited rule, including the rule of the people.

By distinguishing between democracy and liberalism as historically entwined yet analytically distinct and potentially antagonistic conceptions of political authority, Fukuyama proposes a different account of our situation. As he sees it, the contemporary attack on Western-type liberal democracy is more against “liberal” than against “democracy.” Coming into sharp focus with the invocation (notably by Hungary’s Victor Orban) of “illiberal democracy,” this attack is being fleshed out in various “post-liberal” proposals on the left as well as on the right—proposals that flirt “with the idea of overtly authoritarian government” (Fukuyama 2022, 121, 126).¹ For Fukuyama, then, what most needs defending today is not democracy as such or the idea of popular power, but the liberal norms and institutions that limit power whatever its source. If Ringen labors to explain why we want democracy, Fukuyama sets out to clarify the ways in which liberal democracy, for all its failings, is “superior to illiberal alternatives” (xiii).

Seeking to renew our commitment to the institutions that have defined the political West for the past two and a half centuries, Fukuyama acknowledges “that liberal societies were not living up to their own ideals of equal treatment of all groups” (viii). To address these charges, he engages in a critical rethinking both of liberalism’s philosophical justifications and of the evolution of American political culture post–World War II. Through a gripping sequence of ten chapters that leave little intellectual ground unturned, he canvasses a vast panorama of ideological currents, technological developments, and moral disagreements in an effort to diagnose why things came to be as they are, and how to begin to repair them.

Fukuyama corroborates Ringen’s view that institutional orders rest on a community of opinions and norms—a culture—by showing that, even if the term “liberal” is commonly reserved for one side of the political spectrum, in a free society everyone is a liberal of one kind or another. Historically, American political parties have supported a wide variety of liberal arguments, or liberalisms, each elevating a specific conception of freedom—economic on the right, identitarian on the left—over others. Revisiting the main thinkers and movements that have informed today’s dominant political creeds (Hayek and Reaganism on the right, Rawlsian liberalism on the left), Fukuyama’s book cross-examines their respective understandings. Antithetical as they may appear today, these understandings developed in mutual engagement and along parallel lines.

In tracing the evolution of the two dominant political outlooks, Fukuyama showcases a mechanism that serves as a leitmotif of his book: how ideas and policies that started as legitimate and much-needed correctives (for the stagflation of the 1970s or for persisting racial and gender discrimination) soon lost their pragmatic character and became entrenched as dogmas. On the one side, “a valid insight into the superior efficiency of markets evolved into something of a religion” (22). On the other, a concept of individual autonomy became so absolute that “the act of choice came to be seen as something separate from and more valuable than the substance of what was being chosen” (50).

This ideological entrenchment has issued into two opposed visions of the relation between state and society, each disavowing in one way or another their once overlapping liberal persuasion. While in the name of reviving individual responsibility, the right’s hostility to government has been “carried … to disastrous extremes” (27) that shrank and delegitimized the government’s ability to help individuals in need, the absolutization of individual autonomy prompts “progressive activists … to enlist social pressure and the power of the state to silence voices critical of their agenda” (47).

More intriguingly still, Fukuyama unearths how arguments developed by one side are seized and repurposed by the other. After recounting in eloquent detail the critique of modern natural science advanced by emblematic thinkers on the left, he observes that this very critique of scientific objectivity was embraced by the populist right to disavow evidence-based argumentation and a rational public sphere. In effect, both sides alike, if for different reasons, ended up repudiating the possibility of “universally valid modes of cognition” (97) and of reaching truth through debate on which liberal democratic institutions are premised.

In Fukuyama’s diagnosis, closely matching Ringen’s, the current crisis has its roots in reductive conceptions of freedom and rationality that elevated individual choice (be it economic or identitarian) over all human goods. Starting from plausible assumptions and legitimate concerns, and aiming to free individuals from one form of domination or another, in tandem these conceptions have eroded the institutional foundation. Stimulating the growth of “generalized social distrust” (60) that militates against any shared understanding of the common good, they have prepared the cultural soil on which healthy partisan competition becomes unwieldy and unsustainable political polarization.

The result is a dramatic decline not only in government capacity but in the very possibility of cross-partisan deliberation. The revolution of digital technology—which, in Fukuyama’s view, shared by Ringen, “rather than dispersing power … has concentrated it” (104)—further catalyzed the disintegration of the public sphere into warring tribes pursuing incommensurable visions and willing to use any means, constitutional or not, to promote them. When deliberation fails, force enters the picture. American society today is haunted by the specter of coercion and political violence epitomized by the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Successful treatment depends on proper diagnosis, which in turn relies on the concepts we use. In seeing liberal democracy as culture, and culture as crucially sustained by shared ideas, it is conceptual clarity that both Fukuyama and Ringen prescribe as first aid. As already flagged, the two authors disagree about what to call their object of concern. Ringen seeks to rehabilitate democracy. Fukuyama eulogizes liberalism. Yet while using different terms, they seem to mean much the same: not democracy in a formal sense of popular rule or periodic elections, but a particular version of it—Western-type liberal democracy guided by substantive understandings of reason, liberty, and human dignity.

Fukuyama and Ringen agree that democracy’s current crisis has been prompted first and foremost by a confused notion of freedom. Freedom, as Ringen puts it, “is the ultimate value that gives meaning to democracy” (22). Yet freedom is not the same as unrestricted choice. “Free choice is in itself vacuous; what gives it meaning is that you put purpose to it” (112). While clarifying the proper meaning of freedom, both authors indicate that for democracies to flourish, such clarity must be the quest of every citizen. Ringen again nails the point: “Democracy depends on us, as we depend on it. It needs to be wanted; to be wanted it needs to be believed in; to be believed in, it needs to be understood” (191). How our societies understand freedom, then, is crucial for the kind of democracy we shall have.

Even if, conceptually speaking, the difference between Ringen and Fukuyama is merely rhetorical, in public discourse rhetoric matters a great deal. Historically, democracy has been on the banner of a great variety of political orders, including some that were either not liberal (such as the Athenian polis) or were expressly antiliberal (such as the Soviet-style people’s republics that once made up a third of the world). Historically and also today, democracy has been compatible with dictatorship and domination: of majorities over minorities, or of those speaking in the name of the people over these very people. This was a core insight of the American Founders. Nor is liberalism “a sufficient governing doctrine on its own” (Fukuyama 2022, 80). It needs democratic politics to supply corrections for the inequalities produced by meritocracy and markets. On the other hand, if distinguishing, as Fukuyama does, liberalism from democracy helps to raise our awareness about their respective merits and demerits, this analytical distinction may get in the way of sending a clear message. A major symptom of liberal democracy’s current crisis is that liberalism as a concept has lost its popular appeal. Young people no longer see why it matters. In policy circles, too, especially in Europe, it is difficult to get past equating liberalism with neoliberalism. At the current juncture, Ringen’s call that “we need to talk about democracy” (170) may stand a better chance of getting broad attention.

Just as conceptually the two authors are broadly on the same page, so, too, their policy orientations appear to be in fundamental agreement. Ringen and Fukuyama converge in insisting that rights are meaningless if they are not practiced, and if their practice is not protected. They agree that to be liberal, democracies require active publics on the one hand, and on the other competent governments able to enforce rules and sustain an institutional framework within which individuals can flourish. These two requirements are not easy to reconcile: for the more governments do, the more they wish to do, and the less space and urge will citizens have to participate in the task of governing. As Ringen puts it, “Governments will go autocratic if they can” (191). Echoing Tocqueville, Fukuyama adds that citizens’ getting absorbed in private affairs and abandoning public engagement is one of democracy’s built-in dangers.

Nevertheless, far from antithetical, under certain conditions strong government and active citizenry can be mutually reinforcing. Civic participation is a vital source of institutional legitimacy and the sine qua non of democratic culture. If individuals are to have the confidence and resources to exercise their political rights, these rights must be protected against economic deprivation and gerrymandering, or other kinds of adversity and scheming. For these reasons, both Ringen and Fukuyama maintain, capacious government and some form of welfare state are desirable in every democratic context. What this means in practice is contextual and will look very different in countries such as Sweden, the United States, Israel, or Japan. In other words, liberal democratic governance, well understood, cannot be one-size-fits-all. It is compatible with a wide variety of regulations, redistributive practices, and social protections. As Fukuyama puts the matter, more than size and scope, “[t]he issue rather is the quality of government” (147).

How to get quality government is the burden of Ringen’s many policy proposals. Starting with the premise that an effective government must wield vast powers, his book reads like a comprehensive manual, addressed to both governing and governed, for wielding power with skill and moral purpose. Yet even as he elaborates a long list of more or less controversial recommendations—from democratizing international institutions and containing judicial activism, to regulating party finance and the social media market, to restoring the dignity of local governments and extending the vote to minors—Ringen recognizes a major stumbling block: to be put into effect, each and all of these would require social trust and robust cross-partisan consensus, whose lack is precisely the cultural problem we face.²

Facing up to this problem is Fukuyama’s core concern. Conceptual clarity, while necessary, is not enough to address it. If our governments are to do what we want them to do, we must clarify not only the meaning of freedom and how free institutions work, but also who “we” are and what makes the government “ours.” Shared identity, in other words, is a crucial—perhaps the crucial—source of institutional legitimacy and social trust. Yet how to restore or create such a “we-feeling” once it has been lost?

Fukuyama’s penultimate chapter explains the critical importance of fostering a broad-based national identity, and the challenges that stand in the way. For polarization to be brought down from its current levels of perilous intensity, citizens need to share a civic allegiance capacious enough to both contain and balance strong partisan commitments. Historically, the nation has served as the main locus of civic allegiance. It will continue to do so as long as nation-states retain what Weber called a monopoly on legitimate force. “For most people around the world, the nation remains the largest unit of solidarity, to which they feel an instinctive loyalty. Indeed, that loyalty becomes a critical underpinning of the state’s … ability to govern” (132). While Ringen asserts that to be meaningful, democratic freedom must have purpose to it, for our democracies to be governable, Fukuyama adds, that sense of purpose should be national.

Mindful of nationalism’s ugly history, Fukuyama notes that there are different ways of defining national identity, some of them incompatible with democratic principles. Liberalism’s commitments to equality and human rights, on the other hand, are often in tension with particularist attachments of any kind. Nevertheless, just as strong government and individual freedom can and must be harmonized, so, too, “there is no necessary contradiction between liberal universalism and the need for nations” (Fukuyama 2022, 131).

Even while insisting on the possibility of reconciling nationalism with liberal principles, Fukuyama cautions against underestimating the difficulties (136). Historically, democracies were built on top of preexisting nations whose unity was often attained through illiberal methods. How to relate to this violent history is the very battleground on which today’s culture wars are being fought. The sheer diversity of the warring parties presents no lesser challenge. Issuing from the gradual process of removing barriers to citizenship, this diversity is among liberal democracy’s proudest achievements and core values. Yet embracing it poses a problem to the progressive Left no less than to the populist Right. Whereas the right-wing ethnonationalists, who dominated the crowd that stormed the US Capitol, fear demographic diversity related to race, gender, and sexual orientation, the progressives struggle to accept the diversity of moral and religious opinions, writing off entire categories of persons as agents of “a racist patriarchal power that is illegitimately clinging to its former privileges” (145). And it is far from obvious what kind of inclusive national identity can bridge and contain these attitudes.

The defenders of liberal democracy, Fukuyama exhorts, should embrace the nation and offer liberal alternatives both to the radical Left’s rejection of nationhood and to the exclusionary nationalism of the radical Right. They should recognize that the liberal “tendency to downplay national identity has allowed the extreme right to claim this ground” (137). They should also keep in mind that they are in for the long haul. Though concerning the United States, Fukuyama’s observation that “the process of defining the nation in liberal political terms has been a long, arduous, and periodically violent” one (136) points beyond that particular context. Just like democratization, so, too, constructing and reconstructing liberal nationhood is an ongoing task whose challenges are recurring. “The unanswered question for the future,” Fukuyama concludes, “is whether liberal societies can overcome the internal divisions they have created” (140).

Distinguishing, as Fukuyama does, between democracy and liberalism takes the edge off Plato’s critique: there is no one-to-one translation between ancient preliberal democracy and its modern Western-type counterpart. And yet Fukuyama’s analysis, as well as that of Ringen, suggests that, nearly two and half millennia later, the core of this critique remains valid. Paradoxical as it may seem, when just and true principles are pushed to unsustainable extremes, the result is the very negation of these principles. The uncompromising zeal with which diverse democratic publics have pursued the promises of freedom and equality has led to mutual estrangement and antagonism. The return of geopolitics notwithstanding, it is the inner enemies of polarization and distrust that pose the most formidable threat to today’s liberal democracies (Todorov 2014). Beyond the diagnosis, Plato’s proposed cure, too, seems to have withstood the test of time. As Fukuyama and Ringen both submit, the main if not the only way to combat democracy’s inner enemies is through self-knowledge and its twin: self-restraint. Rather than happily ending, history seems set on repeating itself—let’s hope not as tragedy this time.

The author has no competing interests to disclose.

Ewa Atanassow is professor of politics at Bard College Berlin. She is the author of Tocqueville’s Dilemmas, and Ours: Sovereignty, Nationalism, Globalization (Princeton University Press, 2022) and the coeditor of When the People Rule: Popular Sovereignty in Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2023), among others.