Aurelian Crăiuțu, Indiana University Bloomington
Alcoa Room
The crisis of liberal democracy and the question what we should do to save it would have been hardly conceivable three decades ago, when the Berlin Wall was falling, and we hailed the triumph of liberal democracy around the entire world. The mood is very different today: around the world liberal democracy is in crisis. The agents and causes of democratic decline are many. They range from antiliberal populist movements of the far-right which damage democracies internally through their dismissive attitude toward core civil and political rights, to radical movements on the far Left whose push for radical reforms and endorsement of the controversial cancel culture erode the belief in the legitimacy of key liberal norms and values such as free speech and equality under the law.
This presentation, based on a book manuscript in progress on liberal democracy that Crăiuțu is co-writing with Dan Cole and Michael McGinnis at Indiana University, explores the reasons for which liberalism is under attack and revisits the diversity and eclecticism of the liberal family, with emphasis on the relationship between liberalism and political moderation. They show that the doom industry has a long history and discuss the conceptual fluidity of liberalism and its implications for students of liberalism. They argue that by acknowledging the polysemantic nature of liberalism we can better answer its critics. After examining a few tropes in the anti-liberal literature, the presentation concludes with a few practical recommendations for defending liberal democracy and rethinking liberal governance by drawing on the ideas of Karl Popper and the Bloomington School created by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom.