Legitimating Liberal Democracy

Abstract

In this chapter we ask just how well in theory, and more importantly, in present practice, liberal democracy measures up to the legitimation challenge. We raise the disquieting suggestion that it is not doing very well. We think a case can be made, plausible if still tentative, that the liberal conjunct in "liberal democracy" is losing its legitimating power, and that increasingly democracy has nothing to prevent its slide into a populism which is co-joined not with liberalism, but with a distinctively illiberal and transcendent conception of politics.