Not to be confused with liberal democracy

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...

, democratic liberalism aims to reach a synthesis of democracy

Democracy

Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...

 which is the participation of the people in the power, and the rational

Rationalism

In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...

 liberalism

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

, which declines the emotional populism

Populism

Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...

.

It arose accepting general suffrage after World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, and its main question is how to ask people between elections, or should they be asked at all? In 2004, James Surowiecki

James Surowiecki

James Michael Surowiecki is an American journalist. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes a regular column on business and finance called "The Financial Page".-Background:...

 published The Wisdom of Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better...

, in which he argued that small groups exhibit more intelligence than isolated individuals and that collective intelligence

Collective intelligence

Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....

 shapes business, economies, societies and nations.

The Liberal Democrats (UK) describe their ideology as giving "power to the people"; they are against the concentration of power in unaccountable bodies. They propose decentralisation of power out of Westminster, and electoral and parliamentary reform, to create a system of tiered government structures to make decisions at what they see as the right level, including regional assemblies, the European Union, and international organisations. Lib Dems want to protect civil liberties, and oppose state intervention in personal affairs.

Craig Duncan says in his Democratic Liberalism: The Politics of Dignity that:

External links

• Liberal Democrats (Party of Britain)
• Craig Ducan's Home Page