The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy

Liberal democracy is liberalized democracy: that is, democracy defined and structured within the limits set by liberalism. The paper outlines the constitutive features of liberalism and shows how they determined the form and content of democracy and gave rise to liberal democracy as we know it today. It then goes on to argue that liberal democracy is specific to a particular cultural context and cannot claim universal validity. This, however, does not lead to cultural relativism as it is possible to formulate universal principles that every good government should respect. The paper offers one way of reconciling universalism and cultural diversity.