The Crisis of Liberal Democracy in the 21st Century hakkinda deneme - 1.202 kelime

The End of History Revisited: The Fragility of the Liberal Consensus

At the close of the 20th century, the triumph of liberal democracy appeared not merely likely, but inevitable. Francis Fukuyama’s seminal "The End of History" thesis posited that the combination of market economics and representative government represented the final form of human sociopolitical organization. However, the first two decades of the current era have fundamentally challenged this teleological optimism. The crisis of liberal democracy in the 21st century is characterized by a systemic "democratic recession," a term coined by Larry Diamond to describe the global retreat from democratic norms and the rise of authoritarian populism. This crisis is not merely a series of isolated political setbacks; rather, it is a profound structural decoupling of the two components that define the regime type: the "liberal" protection of individual rights and the "democratic" expression of the popular will.

As politics and government structures face unprecedented pressure, the consensus that once underpinned Western stability is fracturing. This decline is driven by the resurgence of majoritarianism, the erosion of institutional gatekeeping, and a profound sense of economic and cultural displacement among the citizenry. To understand this crisis, one must examine how the internal contradictions of the liberal project have been exploited by actors who seek to replace pluralism with a more exclusionary, plebiscitary form of rule.

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