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Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 11 November 1947. 1 No. Illiberalism has not yet brought the West to the brink of collapse. But the populist radical right surge that has hit both sides of the Atlantic in recent years has revealed failures of and weaknesses in
Introduction The first thing to say about liberal order is that it hasn’t been that liberal. Since the Second World War, the production of subjects obeisant to the rule of liberal institutions has depended on illiberal and authoritarian methods – not least on the periphery of the world system, where conversion to Western reason has been pursued with particularly millenarian zeal, and violence. The wishful idea of an ever more open and global market economy has been continuously undermined by its champions, with their subsidies
crises. Resistance aside for now, what’s often left out of this narrative is precisely how the organisation of violence takes considered financial and material investment to ensure its sustainability over time. Indeed, the very idea of a liberal peace that emerged through this progressive account of human cohabitation proved to be a complete misnomer, as it wilfully and violently destroyed illiberal forms of planetary life. Violence is the Result of Difference The idea of racial violence is part of a broader schematic that connects to competing claims to
challenged. The ground gained by so called ‘illiberal democracy’ is prodigious, not merely in terms of the number of countries where illiberal politics is alive and thriving, many of which are in the West (the US, much of the EU, the UK) but in terms of the creeping legitimacy that attends right-wing solutions to ongoing social and political problems. This is nowhere truer than in the major new power in the international system, China, where a version of state-controlled capitalism co-exists alongside a principled rejection of liberalism. The
The West of which we speak is defined by the values of liberal democracy, individual freedom, human rights, tolerance and equality under the rule of law. This book explores how Islamist terror and Russian aggression as companion threats to the West when terrorists target Russia as well as the United States and its allies. The threats posed by Islamist terror and Russian aggression present themselves in very different ways. In the time of transatlantic traumas, the Islamist terrorist threat and the Russian threat have worked diligently and with some success. The book examines the hatred of Islamists towards Western democracies, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union for their involvement in the Middle East politics for several decades. There is no single explanation for the rising popularity of illiberalism in the Western democracies; a combination of factors has produced a general sense of malaise. The book discusses the sources of discontent prevailing in the Western countries, and looks at the rise of Trumpism, Turkey and its Western values as well as the domestic tensions between Turkey's political parties. It suggests a radical centrist populist Western strategy could be applied to deal with the threats and challenges, reinvigorating the Western system. The book also touches upon suggestions relating to illiberalism in Europe, Turkey's drift away from the West, and the Brexit referendum.
interrelated challenges to the existing human rights and humanitarian regime: illiberal states and ideologies; failed states; and globalization and business. It highlights that there are more vehicles for individuals to participate in human rights and humanitarian diplomacy and that diplomacy should be judged, not by how close it meets a particular ideal, but whether at a particular place and time, human dignity was preserved. As long as the status of human dignity is better than it was before, then diplomacy was successful. Illiberal states and ideologies
from the right – were inclined to print banknotes to solve their short-term budget problems. It led to unsustainable inflation, which undermined the long-term development of the French economy. Between 1973 and 1982 inflation was never under 9.1 percent per year. 4 This changed radically when, in 1993, the French government decided to follow the German example and to make the central bank independent. Since that time inflation in France has never exceeded 2.8 percent, reached in 2008. 5 “Illiberal democracies” Independent bodies fulfill important functions in
himself from liberal democracy. “We have to state,” he said, “that democracy does not necessarily have to be liberal. Just because a state is not liberal, it can still be a democracy.” 16 Orbán continued: “We must break with liberal principles and methods of social organization, and in general with the liberal understanding of society,” concluding: “And so, in this sense the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.” 17 Orbán’s remarks did not come as a complete surprise. In May 2014 the European Court of Human Rights
liberal democracy. Such politicians and parties have thrown around their political weight in several countries, exercising power in some, including the United States, Hungary, Poland, Switzerland and Turkey. Sources of discontent There is no single explanation for the rising popularity of illiberalism, but a combination of factors has produced a general sense of malaise. The Great Recession, starting in 2008, left millions of Americans and Europeans without jobs and in debt. While the job market has recovered, real wages have not, and a significant portion of
towards women, immigrants, non-whites or homosexuals over the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries to see that the observation of the consequences of associated human behaviour is open to the same error and illusion as the perception of natural objects. The emergence of a public can also not be equated with an a priori expression of correctness or justness. As highlighted above, publics can emerge in response to other publics or often come into conflict with one another due to incompatible interests. This process itself can lead to the emergence of illiberal