Comment on the proposition that liberal constitutionalism precedes liberal democracy. (2009)
Liberal constitutionalism limits power through law, the separation of powers and guaranteed rights. Democracy lets the people choose and remove their rulers. Fareed Zakaria (“The Rise of Illiberal Democracy”, Foreign Affairs, 1997; The Future of Freedom, 2003) argued that in the West the first came long before the second, and that elections held without it produce illiberal democracy. The claim is historically sound for the West but does not hold as a universal law.
Two Different Questions
| Liberal constitutionalism | Democracy | |
|---|---|---|
| Asks | How is power exercised? | Who holds power? |
| Core | Rule of law, rights, checks | Free elections, universal suffrage |
| Alone it risks | Oligarchy of the propertied | Tyranny of the majority |
| Lineage | John Locke, Montesquieu, James Madison | Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Chartists |
The Historical Case
- England. Magna Carta (1215) placed the king under law and the Bill of Rights (1689) subordinated the Crown to Parliament. Yet, as Zakaria noted, barely 2% of Britons could vote in 1830, and equal adult franchise came only in 1928.
- United States. The Constitution (1787) and Bill of Rights (1791) coexisted with slavery and property qualifications. Women gained the vote in 1920, and Black Southerners secured it effectively only with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- Western Europe had the rule of law by the 1840s and universal suffrage about a century later.
- Robert A. Dahl (Polyarchy, 1971) reached the same conclusion from comparison. The safest route to democracy ran through competitive oligarchy, with liberalisation before inclusion, because elites learnt mutual toleration before mass politics began.
- Zakaria’s summary: constitutional liberalism has led to democracy, but democracy does not seem to bring constitutional liberalism. He pointed to elected governments from Peru to Pakistan overriding constitutional limits.
The Counter-Case
- India reversed the sequence. The Constitution (1950) introduced universal adult franchise and justiciable rights together, and the first general election followed in 1951–52 in a society about one-sixth literate. It endured. B. R. Ambedkar held that constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment but must be cultivated. It grows through democratic practice; it need not precede it.
- Democracy liberalised liberalism. The constitutionalism of 1689 protected the propertied. Rights reached workers, women and racial minorities through democratic struggle, from the Chartists and suffragettes to the civil-rights movement. In India, voters ended the Emergency in 1977 and the 44th Amendment restored safeguards.
- Marc F. Plattner (“Liberalism and Democracy: Can’t Have One Without the Other”, 1998) argued that elections generate pressure for liberties. Thomas Carothers (“The ‘Sequencing’ Fallacy”, 2007) added that autocrats seldom build a rule of law that would bind themselves.
- C. B. Macpherson read early liberalism as possessive individualism: it came first because it served property.
The Contemporary Test
- Illiberal democracy is now a declared programme. Viktor Orbán announced in July 2014 that Hungary was building an illiberal state.
- Nancy Bermeo (2016) named the dominant pattern executive aggrandizement: elected leaders hollowing out checks while elections continue.
- The V-Dem Democracy Report 2026 counts 92 autocracies against 87 democracies. It has downgraded the United States from liberal to electoral democracy, the liberal component eroding first, and classes India an electoral autocracy. That supports Zakaria, though the American case shows two centuries of constitutionalism give no immunity.
- India’s courts still defend the liberal core: the basic structure doctrine (1973) and the electoral bonds judgment of 15 February 2024.
Conclusion
As Western history, the proposition is accurate. As a prescription it fails: India shows the order can be reversed, and democracy is what extended liberal rights to all. The two are mutually sustaining. Constitutionalism without democracy is oligarchy, and democracy without constitutionalism consumes itself. What matters is sustaining both, not their order.