Democracy Versus Liberalism: A Global Historical Analysis.

In his writings, Fareed Zakaria distinguishes between democracy (in terms of free and fair elections) and constitutional liberalism (that is, the rule of law and basic human rights). He emphasizes that today there is clearly more democracy than liberalism in the world. Using an original data set with five key components - and treating the right to vote as a separate dimension - it is shown that this is not empirically true: if one considers suffrage as a third dimension, then globally the world shows a bit more liberalism than it does democracy. However, what is true is that the recent surge of electoral democracies has meant that there are now more illiberal democracies; that said, illiberal democracies are not new; indeed, the contrasting reality of a fully liberal democracy has only been around since the late 1800s. Finally, Zakaria's notion of liberal autocracies are discussed, and it is argued that almost all of these should really be called "semi-liberal" autocracies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]