Write approximately 150 words on Decline of Liberalism. (2024, 10 Marks)
Liberalism, the creed of individual freedom, equal rights, consent, the rule of law and the market that descends from John Locke‘s rights to life, liberty and property, became the hegemonic ideology after 1989. Francis Fukuyama called its victory the “end of history”. Three decades later the talk is of its decline, and the decline has four distinct strands.
Strands of the Decline
- Political: illiberal democracy. Fareed Zakaria (“The Rise of Illiberal Democracy”, 1997) warned that elections can outlive constitutional liberty. Viktor Orbán openly proclaimed an “illiberal state” for Hungary in July 2014. Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2026 records the 20th consecutive year of global decline, with only about 21% of humanity in Free countries. V-Dem’s Democracy Report 2026 counts nearly a quarter of countries autocratising, the USA, UK and Italy among them; the US Liberal Democracy Index fell 24% in a single year, from 20th to 51st of 179. Erosion now comes by ballot, not coup, as courts, media and oppositions are hollowed out.
- Cultural-national. Right-wing populism rejects liberal immigration and multiculturalism in the name of sovereignty and identity: the AfD’s 20.8% in Germany (February 2025) and Giorgia Meloni’s premiership in Italy.
- Economic. Identified with neoliberal globalisation, liberalism absorbed the blame for inequality and the 2008 crisis. Fukuyama’s Liberalism and Its Discontents (2022) concedes that economic freedom hardened into a cult and autonomy into a creed that emptied common life.
- Philosophical. Precursors such as Friedrich Nietzsche and postmodernists such as Jacques Derrida undercut its claim to universal truth. Patrick Deneen‘s Why Liberalism Failed (2018) argues that liberalism failed because it succeeded: freeing the individual, it dissolved the family, community and faith that sustained freedom.
The Case for Resilience
Decline is not death. Liberalism absorbed the socialist, feminist and anti-colonial critiques before; each was called betrayal and is now part of liberalism. Illiberal rule also proves reversible: Orbán’s Fidesz lost Hungary’s 12 April 2026 election to Péter Magyar‘s Tisza. Even its enemies borrow liberal forms, holding elections and invoking rights. The deeper danger is that liberalism has conceded so much that its distinctive core becomes hard to locate.
Conclusion
What is declining is liberal democracy’s institutional hold and neoliberal economics, not the liberal idea itself, which still supplies the terms of every protest against arbitrary power. Its renewal depends on recovering the social liberalism that once joined freedom to security.