Dani Rodrik and Sharun Mukand — The Puzzle of Liberal Democracy

Good analysis of some of the paradoxes of liberalism resulting from conflicting rights. But the authors fail to mention the US as a prime violators of civil rights, previously of the powerless but increasingly of anyone that is regard as a threat by dissenting from the status quo, for example, by asserting political rights and civil rights over property rights through organization, protest and potential civil disobedience, not to mention violations of international law, including torture as a policy both inside and outside the nation's borders. Nor does it mention the complicity of other so-called liberal democracies in carry out rendition and torture.

Moreover, the authors cite neocon Fareed Zakaria and Freedom House as sources. Freedom House is a US sponsored NGO that carries out neoconservative clandestine operations in foreign countries.

Freedom House, a U.S. government-funded pro-democracy organization founded in 1941, describes itself as "an independent watchdog organization that supports the expansion of freedom around the world. Freedom House supports democratic change, monitors freedom, and advocates for democracy and human rights."[1]

Best known for its annual "Freedom in the World" survey as well as its clandestine support to opposition groups in countries like Cuba and Iran, since the 9/11 attacks and the onset of the "war on terror" Freedom House has devoted considerable energy to assessing the impact of "radical Islam" both in and outside the United States, including promoting policies in countries that have been targeted as part of U.S. anti-terrorism campaigns.

Although in recent years the organization has appeared to relax its close association with hawkish U.S. policies, its leadership remains heavily represented by individuals affiliated with neoconservatism and it has continued to support projects aimed at bolstering aggressive U.S. foreign policies.... — Institute for Policy Studies

But the part about the conflict among type of rights is right on. Liberalism as a social, political and economic theory is beset with internal contradictions.

Liberal democracy rests on three distinct sets of rights: property rights, political rights, and civil rights.

They don't mesh very well and so liberal democracies either find themselves grinding gears in the effort to progress, or becoming illiberal to avoid emerging challenges as contradictions in principles rather than face them as paradoxes to be resolved, which is much more difficult and unpalatable to the powerful.

This is the howler through.

The main beneficiaries of civil rights, by contrast, are typically minorities that possess neither wealth nor numbers. Turkey’s Kurds, Hungary’s Roma, Russia’s liberals, or Mexico’s indigenous population ordinarily command little power within their countries. Their demands for equal rights therefore do not have the potency that demands for property and political rights have.

Russian liberals are repressed minority like Turkey’s Kurds, Hungary’s Roma, and Mexico’s indigenous population. What are these guys smoking. No mention of US minorities that have been repressed for centuries, those of African descent, whose ancestors were enslaved, and Native American descent whose land was expropriated, and who still make up an underclass numbering in the millions.

Project Syndicate
The Puzzle of Liberal Democracy

Dani Rodrik is Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, and Sharun Mukand, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study and Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick