The promises of democracy have been broken

Santiago

LIBERAL democracy is under siege. Populists of the right and left are not only lashing out at globalisation or stagnating middle-class incomes; they are calling into question the legitimacy of the institutions of liberal democracy and of the political elites who manage those institutions.

It is facile to blame the politics of post-truth practised by populists. Lies and exaggerations would not work if current democratic practice were without problems. We must re-examine and, if possible, redress what the Italian democratic theorist Norberto Bobbio called the "broken promises of democracy".