"Liberal Democracy V.S. Authoritarian" is a hotly debated topic especially while China and Russia involving their peer alliance non-democratic nations intensively interfere in various foreign affairs nowadays. In the meantime, both the words "Democracy" and "Liberal" are frankly quoted as the counterpart nations of these authoritarian nations ruled by an iron fist of one party or any other autocratic figure. Therefore, it is suspicious to define whether or not these so-called Liberal Democratic nations are truly liberal as well as democratic as what these original words' definition implies.
The point to be critically evaluated here is that almost all those nations are administrated under indirect democracy which selects the limited number of representatives controlling over the political affairs. Perhaps, Switzerland might be only the democratic nation involving the majority citizens actively participating in their political affairs nowadays. Politics of the other "democratic" nations is handled by the chosen elites called politicians self-proclaiming to represent the majority citizens. However, it is often questionable to define as truly representing the majority individual citizens.
Technically, these citizens are entitled to cast their vote to select these politicians as their representatives. Nevertheless, in reality, indirect democracy hardly represents the majority citizens. In particular, those with the constituency based electoral system seldom represents their majority citizens proportional to their population. Even by adopting the proportional representation to their electoral system, it is still difficult to satisfy elected politicians proportionally representing the citizens. Politicians may manipulate their fellow citizens for their own favour rather than what these citizens really need and want. Politicians often form their factional group which selects opinions matching with this group interest while excluding each individual's own will.
At the same time, it is also critical to evaluate that democracy does not always imply fulfilling individual liberty. There is a risk that some institutionalised citizens from their own peer group to marginalise the other individual citizens for their favour propped up by their peer pressure as same as the aforementioned politicians. In order to secure liberty for each autonomous individual's sovereign, it may require an invincible ethical principle promoting their decision-making process as a guideline while enabling politics to represent their opinion. This sounds like a religion, but this should be the morally neutral principle not favouring any particular religious organisation.
The modern complex institutional structure demands the centralised bureaucracy requiring the elites highly trained with a complex skill as well as the friendly connection and apprenticeship with the elders of this established structure to administrate the entire politics. Therefore, this inevitably needs to select those specialising in political organisational skills and connections with their factional peer groups whereas the rest majority are often ostracised from these influential peer groups. The true nature of the modern indirect democracy is much closer to that aristocracy or oligarchy rather than what democracy really means. All in all, the modern indirect democracy tends to be diverting from what both democracy and liberalism attempt to accomplish.
Nowadays, instead of relying on the centralised political organisation such as nation state government, it will be more efficient to adopt a decentralised administration system propped up with the spontaneous interferences among individuals as as the peer-to-peer (P2P) system. Due to the current remarkable information technological (IT) development, it is more possible to organise the decision-making process at each non-scheduled scattered time period than the past relying on the congregations of representatives gathered at a scheduled time. It is really questionable to insist on the need of replying on the representation by politicians and bureaucrats nowadays.
Both (the modern indirect) democracy and authoritarian can be obsolete already. Each individual will be able to directly reflect their opinion over the networks of where they want to reflect it upon The furthermore developed IT will help sorting out individuals' opinions and efficiently optimising resource-distribution plans. It will even no longer require a political congregation of direct democracy seen in the ancient Athens because each political decision-making is processed at each spontaneous time, place, and occasion by means of its need and want. This new ideal is a combination of anarchism by individuals and technocracy by the IT resources.
The new alternative to religion will emerge to fulfil the ideal of liberalising each individual in the world. As all the individuals are connected to each other across the borders more than ever, their spontaneous interactions will bring up the shared objectives and guidelines not bound to their distinctive traditional religious, ethical, and social norms and values. As Aristotle said, human being are naturally social, the naturally derived spontaneous interactions of human individuals will induce them to voluntarily create their own minimum required guidelines and rules necessary to prevent them from unnecessary conflicts and miscommunications. Then, even without a paternalistic intervention, they will find their own optimum method of forming consensus through their own try and error.
Sum up, describing the modern indirect democratic nations as "Liberal Democratic" is questionable. These indirect democratic nations are not quite identical to the true characteristic of what the word "Liberal Democracy" should be derived from. The border splitting individuals out itself is already an obsolete element disrupting the true liberal democracy spontaneously formed among individuals. Hence, the dispute over "Liberal Democracy" and authoritarian is not essential to consider accomplishing the true ideal of liberal democracy in general.
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