2
I. THEORY
The Regime
The belief that liberal democracy moderates has been argued in three
distinct ways.
The first draws on liberalism. A stream of political theory from John Locke
and John Stuart Mill to Robert Dahl asserts that freedom of expression and
freedom of association lie at the core of political freedom. Political order and
happiness begins, they argue with basic toleration. Political toleration is more
fundamental to the moral decency of a regime than political participation.
“Negative” freedom from state repression (Berlin 1969) is more important than
universal suffrage. This is a conception of liberal democracy, in which “liberal” is
more important than “democracy.”
This negative theory of liberty makes an empirically testable claim: The
denial of basic political freedoms will radicalize opponents of the government
4
(Luebbert 1991). This can be argued as a rational response to restrictive rules
under fixed preferences and as a process of psychological adjustment of
preferences (Tilly 1978).
Assume a moderate reformer who wants nothing more than to change a
law.
5
But his nearest means—to speak out and organize—are suppressed. He
needs therefore to change the lawmakers. Under repression, this will require that
he change the regime itself. From this standpoint, radicalism is reformism under
external duress. Rules regarding liberties constrain oppositional options towards
radicalism or reformism.
Social-psychologists find that political repression rouses feelings of
deprivation and resentment (Gurr 1970). Injustice in the society is likely to be felt
all the more acutely when those subject to it are explicitly denied the chance to
defend themselves through their own organizational efforts.
These expectations are echoed in the comparative literature. The chief
hypothesis put forward in Seymour Martin Lipset’s Presidential Address to the
American Political Science Association is that “cross-national variations in
working-class political activity were . . . affected by differences in the extent to
which the proletariat was legally free to form class-based organizations and
participate in the economic and political life of their societies” (1983, 6).
Freedom of combination, that is freedom to form trade unions, follows the
same logic. Workers who were denied legal unionism were denied the ability to
improve their working conditions through their own collective efforts. They
were induced, instead, to change the law if they wanted to form unions, and this
led them to ally with radical political parties intent on changing the regime
(Marks 1989).
4
This is not to deny that totalitarian repression may be able to eliminate opposition groups. At
stake here is not the size of opposition groups, but their political orientation.
5
Our reformer has a preference for political action which overpowers passive defection.
Convention