Liberal democracy and the search for political stability

Abstract

Liberal political philosophers are beginning to seriously consider the prospects of democratic instability alongside the question of justice. This chapter explores how a recent development in liberal political theory, political liberalism, frames the problem of social stability. Political liberals think reasonable pluralism is the natural outcome of free and open democratic institutions. The permanent existence of diverse yet reasonable moral and religious comprehensive doctrines create theoretical and practical problems for liberalism. A theoretically coherent liberalism must find normative reasons all can endorse even though everyone grounds their reasons on radically different conceptions of the moral good. A practically stable liberalism must show how a society whose members tend naturally toward moral division can nonetheless share the same normative political conception of justice. Solving both problems in ways consistent with liberal political values is difficult because the permanent existence of reasonable pluralism creates two formulations of the problem of stability. This chapter characterizes the two problems in terms of a positive and negative formulations. It traces the progress political liberals make toward resolving the positive formulation. It also explains how the solution to the positive formulation of the problem of liberal stability simultaneously provides a solution to the theoretical problem of liberal coherency. However, the chapter also argues that the negative formulation of the problem of liberal stability remains unresolved. A key task for liberal theorists in the twenty-first century is resolving the negative formulation of the problem of stability, for without a solution, the ‘rule of law’ remains vulnerable to attacks from those willing to use the ‘will of the people’ against it.