Guide to Citizens’ Rights and Responsibilities
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- H I S T O R I C A L M I L E S T O N E S
- G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D 85 L i b e r a l D e m o c r a c y natural right
- G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D L i b e r a l D e m o c r a c y sovereignty
- G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D 87 L i b e r a l D e m o c r a c y WEST BERLINERS WATCH EAST GERMANS DISMANTLE THE BERLIN WALL ON NOVEMBER 12, 1989.
- E N D U R I N G P R O B L E M S A N D P R O S P E C T S
- G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D L i b e r a l D e m o c r a c y ideology
- G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D
- See also: Democracy. B I B L I O G R A P H Y
- G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D L i b e r i a commonwealth
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them, are essential elements and preconditions of liberal democracy. I N T E L L E C T UA L O R I G I N S O F L I B E R A L D E M O C R A C Y Democracy—literally meaning “rule by the people”—has historically taken many forms. In ancient Athens, democracy meant direct rule by free male citizens. In the twenty-first century democracy is generally understood to mean indirect rule, that is, popular rule through elected representatives. Liberal democracy owes its origins to particular philosophic doctrines and constitutional developments, which arose especially in England and the United States. The adjective liberal points to a set of philosophic doctrines emphasiz- ing human equality that were developed in the early modern period, beginning roughly in the seventeenth century. The English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) argued that legitimate government arises only from consent and the right to consent, in turn, stems from a fact of nature: human equality. For Locke, writing in his Second Treatise of Government (1690), the state of nature that predates all government is a state wherein “Creatures of the same species and rank . . . should also be equal one amongst another without Subordination or Subjection.” (Locke 1988, p. 269) According to Locke, because human beings are by nature political equals (although not equal in all respects), the only way in which anyone gains legitimate political authority over another is through the other’s consent. Government remains legitimate only so long as it protects the natural rights of individual citizens (i.e., those who have entered the social compact by consenting, explicitly or tacitly, to the particular government). Natural rights include some things to which individuals are entitled in the state of nature, such as life, liberty (including freedom of conscience), and property. A strong conception of rights of the person thus existed at the dawn of modern liberalism and continues to inform the practice of liberal democracy worldwide. Understanding rights is different, however, from preserving and protecting them in practice. Even majorities can only legitimately consent to pursue the com- mon good. As Locke maintained, no one is all-wise or all-powerful, and human reason is influenced by passion. A rudimentary separation of powers doctrine appeared in Locke, who argued that government by nature consists of the legisla- tive, executive, and judicial power, and that danger exists in combining these pow- ers in one set of hands. Such concern for separation also appears in the French philosopher Montesquieu (1689–1755), who, like Locke, was sympathetic to the relative moderation and tolerance embodied by English constitutionalism. Both of these philosophers would influence the thinking of the American founders. H I S T O R I C A L M I L E S T O N E S The constitutional history of England is often understood as the unfolding of liberal institutions and practices largely through the gradual limiting of royal power, from the Magna Carta (1215), to the Petition of Right (1628), through the growth of the common law and independent courts. Perhaps the most significant events surrounded the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and 1689, of which Locke gave, in part, a theoretical account. The Revolution centered on the flight of the G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D 85 L i b e r a l D e m o c r a c y natural right: a basic privilege intrinsic to all people that cannot be denied by the government liberalism: a political philosophy advocating individual rights, positive government action, and social justice, or, an economic philosophy advocating individual freedoms and free markets ■ ■ ■ Roman Catholic King James II (1633–1701) on the approach of the army of William of Orange (1650–1702). When parliament gave the crown to William of Orange and his wife Mary (1662–1694), it did so along with a Declaration of Right (1689), which, among other things, ended the royal power to suspend laws and required free and frequent elections for parliament. These moves, coupled with the barring of future Roman Catholic accession to the British throne, were seen in accordance with Locke’s theory that legitimate sovereign power only exists as a result of a social compact between the people—in the form of their representa- tives in parliament—and the monarch. By the mid 1760s, Lockean social compact theory was exercising considerable influence in British North America. Preachers, statesmen, and political activists in the American colonies argued that the king and parliament ruled America without the consent of the governed and concomitantly failed to protect the rights of colonists. Lockean doctrine found perhaps its most succinct expression in America in the Declaration of Independence (1776). In that document Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable, rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Despite relatively widespread agreement on the principles of just government, the Americans faced the practical problem of implementing these principles. Between the Declaration and the Constitutional Convention (1787), Americans real- ized that individual rights were being violated due to the weaknesses of state gov- ernments and the even greater weaknesses of the national government created by the Articles of Confederation (1781). Under the Articles, states retained their sover- eignty, and the federal government had no real power. Within states, laws lacked stability, and the executive and judicial branches were enfeebled because they were subservient to the legislative branches. The U.S. Constitution (1789) provided what its defenders called an “energetic” national government that was, however, constrained through numerous institutional mechanisms, including especially sep- aration of powers. The constitution provided the institutional framework for liberal democracy in the United States, although by contemporary standards participation was limited and minority rights were ill protected, especially by the states. However, widespread consensus existed among America’s founders that the natural rights principles of the Declaration of Independence made slavery illegitimate, even though it could not immediately be eliminated. During the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865), President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) claimed that America must remain a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” A liberal democratic core is the center of this definition of American republicanism, for it does not reduce to simple majoritarianism . In Lincoln’s terms, following Locke, no person is good enough to rule another person without the other’s consent. Even after the Civil War, however, black citizens could not reliably exercise rights to which they were entitled under the constitution, including the right to vote. The grandest rhetoric of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, as expressed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), was premised on univer- sal liberal understandings of natural rights. Likewise, the right to vote could be denied on the basis of sex prior to passage of the Twenty-ninth Amendment (1920). This eventual enshrinement, like much of the civil rights movement, was itself premised on embedded liberal understandings. Prior to women’s suffrage , women were often understood to be “virtually represented” by their husbands. A common view of America’s founders was that women, as human beings, pos- sessed natural rights, and the lack of suffrage was not necessarily thought to be a reflection of innate intellectual or moral disability. 86 G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D L i b e r a l D e m o c r a c y sovereignty: autonomy; or, rule over a political entity ■ ■ ■ majoritarianism: the practice of rule by a majority vote suffrage: to vote, or, the right to vote The French Revolution (1787–1799) followed closely on the heels of the American Revolution. Throughout the eighteenth century, many members of the French intellectual classes had found inspiration in the Glorious Revolution, and the American Revolution gave further impetus to democratic sentiments. The French Revolution, which overthrew the French monarchy, did promote democratic reforms, but it could hardly be called liberal insofar as individual rights were notoriously insecure throughout the revolutionary period. By reducing democracy to a sense of the popular will, the French Revolution seemed remarkably unconcerned—even in principle—with liberal rights. Nevertheless, France has, since the revolution, enjoyed a steady if uneven march toward liberal democracy. In its twenty-first century incarnation, French government is characterized by separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers and guarantees of individual rights. Many modern, apparently stable liberal democracies are of recent constitu- tional vintage. Few constitutional orders (with the notable exceptions of England and the United States) date back prior to the twentieth century. For example, Germany, Italy, and Japan owe their contemporary liberal institutions to their defeats on the battlefield in World War II (1939–1945). Spain and Portugal G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D 87 L i b e r a l D e m o c r a c y WEST BERLINERS WATCH EAST GERMANS DISMANTLE THE BERLIN WALL ON NOVEMBER 12, 1989. After the end of World War II in 1945, Germany’s capital, Berlin, was divided into the Soviet-controlled East Berlin and Western-occupied West Berlin and, in 1961, the East German government constructed the Berlin Wall to stop the mass exodus of its citizens to West Germany in search of a better life. (SOURCE: AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS) had highly autocratic forms of government (which were neither liberal nor dem- ocratic) as recently as the 1970s. The countries of Eastern Europe and those com- posing the former Soviet Union only began moving toward liberal democracy with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. With this historic event, some—including the American political theorist Francis Fukuyama (b. 1952)—argued forcefully that the liberal democratic idea had triumphed in world history. That is to say, when the Berlin Wall fell, so did the most serious remaining intellectual alterna- tive to liberal democracy, namely, Marxist communism. Like other challengers that had fallen by the wayside, communism denied human beings equal recognition at the level of both government and civil society. India is the world’s largest democracy, having imported parliamentary insti- tutions from England in a constitution of 1950. Yet India’s society is sometimes too traditional in nature to be truly liberal. Communal loyalties (often in oppo- sition to official state policy) stand in the way of a smoothly functioning civil society. Not only does serious religious strife between Hindus and Muslims continue, but also certain traditional religious beliefs prevent the development of a culture of trust and voluntary cooperation. From the mid- to late twentieth century, India experienced serious problems at the government level in main- taining separation of powers and of preserving individual rights. All liberal democratic nations today recognize, explicitly or implicitly, the inseparable philosophic principles of human freedom and political equality and their significance for government and society. Liberal democratic principles might be universal, but this does not imply they can be implemented universally or immediately. That many nations remain outside the family of liberal democracies is a testament to the enduring importance of cultural, religious, political, and moral traditions that cut against liberal democracy. E N D U R I N G P R O B L E M S A N D P R O S P E C T S For the newest liberal democracies and those nations that aspire toward liberal democracy, some problems seem obvious, including lack of experience with liberal democratic institutions and the remnants of sometimes hostile political cultures. Even in the longest established and most powerful liberal democracies, theoretical and practical problems abound, both from within and from without. Of the obvious problems from within, protecting minority rights is a peren- nial concern, because of the basic tension between the claims of liberalism on the one hand and democracy, or majority rule, on the other. Of the obvious problems from without, liberal democracies have from their earliest days been challenged on the battlefield and in the world of ideas. At first, resistance came from clerical establishments and then later from powerful illiberal ideologies such as Nazism and communism. Less obvious challenges from within have to do with the status of the consent principle itself. At least partly from the French Revolution came a version of liberalism that opposes traditional moral and social authority but not the over- all power of the state. The French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) in his work Democracy in America (1840) warned of the dangers of governmental power and centralization coupled with a weak civil society. He suggested that people who crave or acquiesce to such government power for the sake of immediate comfort lose the capacity for self-government. As government takes over the traditional workings of the marketplace and civil society, people are expected to do less for themselves and for the common good and so less can be expected of them politically. It is “difficult to imagine,” he claimed, “how 88 G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D L i b e r a l D e m o c r a c y ideology: a system of beliefs composed of ideas or values, from which political, social, or economic programs are often derived centralize: to move control or power to a single point of authority autocracy: a political system in which one individual has absolute power ■ ■ ■ G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D 89 L i b e r a l D e m o c r a c y people who have entirely given up managing their own affairs could make a wise choice of those who are to do that for them. One should never expect a liberal, energetic, and wise government to originate in the votes of a people of servants.” (Tocqueville 1988, p. 694.) In this view, liberal democracy needs freedom in the form of spontaneous, non-governmental activities and organizations, which also provide social cohesion. In the absence of such activities and organizations, hyperindividuality and moral libertinism necessitate more and more state con- trol, which encourages still less active citizenship. In the twenty-first century, those on the liberal right (or “classical liberals,” as they are sometimes called) are inclined to share de Tocqueville’s concerns and support the market and limited government not simply for economic reasons but also as a check on state power and as a means of developing citizenly virtues. On the other hand, those on the liberal left often see state power in its modern, administrative incarnation to be a positive good. In their view, such power is necessary for social justice and to tame the worst effects of the marketplace. Whatever the merits of these arguments, it is clear that liberal democracy requires freedom to be political in a meaningful consensual way but also neces- sitates freedom from politics, that is, freedom to engage in one’s own pursuits. Democracy would be totalitarian rather than liberal if citizens were constantly occupied by obligations to the state and were able without constraint to impose on other citizens similar obligations. The ability to impose nonconsensually one’s views on matters of fundamen- tally contested moral and constitutional principles raises yet another challenge to liberal democracy. Such impositions are invariably linked to questions of over- all government power, who exercises it, and the manner in which it is exercised. In the United States this problem has taken the form of concern over the limits of judicial power. Of all branches of government, the judiciary is, by design, the least consensual. It is subject to popular control only very indirectly. To the extent modern liberalism exalts the individual qua individual, certain concep- tions of rights might well be in tension with conceptions of the common good. The power of the state in the form of nonconsensual courts can be used to over- turn laws that might be seen as legitimate consensual decisions of the popular branches of government. See also: Democracy. B I B L I O G R A P H Y Ceaser, James W. Liberal Democracy and Political Science. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Connolly, William. The Terms of Political Discourse, 3rd ed. Oxford, U.K: Blackwell, 1993. Dahl, Robert A. Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989. Deutsch, Kenneth L., and Walter Soffer. The Crisis of Liberal Democracy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992. Glendon, Mary Ann. Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. New York: Free Press, 1991. Hayek, Friedrich A. The Road to Serfdom (1942). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Holden, Barry. Understanding Liberal Democracy, 2nd ed. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. totalitarianism: a form of absolute govern- ment that demands complete subjugation by its citizens ■ ■ ■ Jaffa, Harry V. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government, in Two Treatises of Government, (1690), ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Macpherson, C. B. The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1977. Mill, John Stewart. On Liberty (1859). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1978. Muncie, Mitchell S., ed. The End of Democracy? Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing Company, 1997. Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. (1835), ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence. Reprint, New York: HarperPerennial, 1988. Watson, Bradley C. S. Civil Rights and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1999. Bradley C. S. Watson Liberia Liberia is located on the western tip of Africa. It is bordered on the east by Côte d’Ivoire, on the west by Sierra Leone, on the north by Guinea, and the south by the Atlantic Ocean. Liberia has a total land area of 69,187 square kilometers (43,000 square miles), encompassing fifteen political subdivisions called counties. Liberia as a nation was founded in the nineteenth century by the American Colonization Society as a refuge for liberated slaves from the United States. The population was estimated at 3.4 million in July 2004. Due to two civil wars (1989–1997 and 1999–2003), about half of the population is in Monrovia, the capital city. Prior to the war, Monrovia had an estimated population of 250,000. About 1 million people are internally displaced throughout the coun- try and about another 1 million are living abroad, including in various refugee camps in the West African belt. Facing the Atlantic Ocean, the coastline is characterized by lagoons, mangrove swamps, and major river-deposited sandbars; the inland grassy plateau supports limited agriculture. There are also dense forests rich in various tree species. Four major periods can be used to examine the history of Liberia: precolo- nial (before 1820), colonial (1820–1839), commonwealth (1839–1847), and independence (1847–present). During the precolonial era, Liberia was known as the “Grain Coast.” The name was given to the area by Portuguese explorers to reflect the abundance of grain on the territory. Various indigenous ethnic groups occupied the area, each with its own political system. When the settlers from the United States arrived at the beginning of the colonial period, their indigenous kin initially greeted them warmly. However, conflict ensued between the settlers and the various indigenous ethnic groups when it became apparent that the settlers were not interested in forging a part- nership with the indigenes in the state-building project. The attitude of the set- tlers was conditioned by their belief that because they were repatriated from the United States, they were therefore superior to the indigenes. The settlers attempted to recreate the American Southern plantation system under which they would be the overlords and the indigenes would be the serfs. The ideolog- ical foundation for the settlers-indigenes divide was provided by a caste and class system. Under this system, social groups were defined by two theoretically 90 G O V E R N M E N T S O F T H E W O R L D L i b e r i a commonwealth: a government created to advance the common good of its citizens indigene: a person who has his origin in a specific region ■ ■ ■ repatriate: to return to the country of one’s birth or citizenship distinct, but in reality overlapping, characteristics. Very often obvious caste distinctions, based on skin color and ancestral origin, coincided with differences defined by the relationship of each group to the means of production. However, there was a major conflict among the settlers between the light-skinned and the dark-skinned settlers. The former espoused the idea of being superior to the latter on the basis of skin pigmentation; hence, the light-skinned settlers wanted to dominate the polity. There was also conflict between the settlers and the American Colonization Society, which gov- erned Liberia from 1820 to 1837. The central issue revolved around the control of the colony. The Liberian Colony was con- trolled by a bureaucracy headed by the agent of the American Colonization Society, who served as the governor. The dynamics of the political system reflected a typical colonial situation in which the colonizers suppressed and dominated the colonized. By 1837 the American Colonization Society had delegated some authority over most domestic matters to the settlers (especially the light-skinned settlers), except in judicial matters. The emergence of the light-skinned settlers as the colonial agents further fueled the conflict between them and their dark- skinned kin in the settler stock. In 1847 the light-skinned settlers led the efforts to declare Liberia an independent and sovereign state. The indigenes, who constituted the overwhelming majority of the population, were denied citizenship under the 1847 Constitution of Liberia but were forced to pay taxes and to perform sundry public works tasks. The post-independence period was marked by various epochal events. In 1926 the intervention of the Firestone Plantations Company as a private investor introduced wage labor and the subsequent establishment of a modern class system in the Liberian political economy (the ruling and worker classes). The “Open Door Policy” enunciated in 1944 by the regime of President William V. S. Tubman (1895–1971) spurred the influx of multinational corporations and other foreign busi- nesses into the Liberian economy. Also during the Tubman presidency (1944–1971), the indigenes were granted citizenship, and women were granted the right to vote. Despite its laudable pioneering efforts, the Tubman era is remembered for the suffocation of democracy as reflected, among other things, in the creation of a de facto one-party state after the purging of opposition parties and politicians in 1955. President Tubman died in office in 1971, after ruling Liberia for twenty- seven consecutive years. His vice president, William R. Tolbert (1913–1980), replaced Tubman as president. On his ascendancy, President Tolbert pledged to reform the authoritarian political system in Liberia. In this vein, he eliminated several of the dreaded security services and took measures to liberalize the polit- ical system. However, amid the rise of various reformist political interest groups, like the Movement for Justice in Africa and the Progressive Alliance of Liberia (later the Progressive People’s Party, which was banned in 1980), the Tolbert regime betrayed its political liberalization agenda by taking measures to restrict political participation and criticism of the regime. For example, various dracon- ian and antidemocratic laws such as the Sedition Law were enacted. At the core of the retreat to authoritarianism during the Tolbert era was the pressure from Download 4.77 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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