Democracy and morality: a liberal-egalitarian perspective

Book section : Chapter

The connection between liberal democracy as a political practice and liberal egalitarianism as a philosophical theory is very close.  Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that it was the democratization of liberal societies, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that transformed earlier versions of liberalism into their current more egalitarian form. Of course liberalism had always embraced certain forms of equality, such as the idea that every human being possesses alienable natural rights and the idea that societies should be governed by the impartial rule of law. But when it came to political rights, and especially the right to vote, classical liberalism took a different turn. These rights were to be reserved for those who were competent to hold them, which was interpreted to mean, at different times, those who held certain forms of property (landed property in particular), those who could demonstrate their economic independence, those with sufficient education, and so on.  Citizens were divided into two classes, so-called passive citizens who enjoyed only civil rights, and active citizens who possessed political rights as well.  Later liberals took a somewhat softer line: John Stuart Mill, for example, recommended that the franchise should be extended more widely (though not universally), while still entrenching the power of the more educated by a system of plural voting that awarded different numbers of votes to different people, with those at the top — lawyers, doctors, university graduates — having five or six votes, while unskilled laborers would receive only one.  (Almost uniquely among older liberals, however, Mill argued that both sexes should be treated in the same way.) ...

Authors: Miller, D

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Host title: Democracy and Morality: Religious and Secular Views
• Pages: 107-130
• Chapter number: 5
• Series: The Ethikon Series in Comparative Ethics
• Place of publication: Washington, DC
• Publication date: 2024-02-14
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.5040/9780815752783.ch-005
• EISBN: 9780815744870
• ISBN-10: 1538188910
• ISBN-13: 9781538188910
• Language: English
• Subtype: Chapter