The development of political reality in Western Europe and North America determines the importance of understanding the true meaning of the phenomenon of liberal democracy. Every influential political movement claims to implement the principles of democracy, but often the real activities of such movements are very far from the true goals of democracy.
Historical essay
Liberal democracy - a concept that has been so often used in our time and therefore has become familiar, once was an inconceivable and impossible phenomenon. And this is due solely to the fact that until the middle of the XIX century the ideas of liberalism and democracy were in some contradiction with each other. The main discrepancy went along the line of determining the object of protection of political rights. The liberals sought to ensure equal rights not for all citizens, but mainly the class of owners and the aristocracy. A person with property is the basis of society, which must be protected from the arbitrariness of the monarch. The ideologists of democracy deprived the poor of suffrage as a form of enslavement. Democracy is the formation of power on the basis of the will of the majority, the whole people. In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville's work, Democracy in America, was published. The model of liberal democracy presented by him showed the possibility of building a society in which personal freedom, private property and democracy itself could coexist.
