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CONVERGENCIA

Luis Antonio Córdoba Gómez, Liberalism and democracy


from Norberto Bobbio’s perspective
Revista de Ciencias Sociales

Liberalism and democracy from Norberto


Bobbio’s perspective

Luis Antonio Córdoba Gómez


Universidad del Cauca, Colombia / lacordoba2004@yahoo.es

Abstract: In the present article an analysis is developed, approached from the political philosophy, on
the conception the Italian philosopher Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004) outlined about two of the most
important political traditions produced by the western culture and which are, without a doubt, pillars
upon which modernity has been built: democracy and liberalism. From this perspective approaching
and encounter points are identified, the same as the tensions that energize the relationship between
democracy and liberalism as well as some contradictions that spur Bobbio’s thought.
Key words: Democracy, liberalism, political liberalism, liberal State, liberal democracy.
Resumen: En el presente artículo se desarrolla un análisis, abordado desde la filosofía política, en
torno a la concepción que el filósofo italiano Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004) planteara acerca de dos
de las más importantes tradiciones políticas que ha producido la cultura occidental, y que son, sin
duda alguna, pilares sobre los que se ha edificado la modernidad: la democracia y el liberalismo. Desde
esta perspectiva se identifican aproximaciones y puntos de encuentro, lo mismo que las tensiones que
dinamizan la relación entre democracia y liberalismo, así como algunas contradicciones que permean
el pensamiento de Bobbio.
Palabras clave: democracia, liberalismo, liberalismo político, Estado liberal, democracia liberal.

ISSN 1405-1435, UAEMex, num. 48, September - December  2008, pp. 19-38

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Introduction1
When we refer to the relationship between liberalism and democracy we
commonly suppose or suspect that both political categories are close to each
other, either because they are too familiar to us or because, in other words,
they are very common. The intertwinement that we suppose between them
is nourished, obviously, by any discursive and ideological charge that, in the
daily life acts, is spread having as source different origins (mass media, political
speeches, demonstrations, et cetera). Don’t we even mention a democratic-
liberal Weltanschauung? Don’t we even refer nowadays to a liberal democracy
that not only stands triumphantly, but which is also pompously said to be
healthy?
Obviously, one thing is to take for granted that this relationship between
liberalism and democracy exists, and another one, as it corresponds to the
intellectual work that the political philosopher has to perform, is to demonstrate
and clarify its meaning, to clarify at which historical moment and how the
fusion took place, which divisions can be determined, what tensions arise,
which bridges or ideological rapprochements ease establishing a conciliation
that we could call effective, as well as which conditions of the political
environment in the society encourage controversy. It is necessary to tackle
these and other concerns given their significance and complexity. The analysis
and reflection on these two political practices around which the current social
and economic life revolve becomes a more important situation after the fall
of the real socialism that left liberal democracy without its natural antagonist.
After all, such task involves the knowledge aspect, both in the ethical
imperative that encourages us to continue speaking about things that have
already been said, a part of it which is to assume detachments or controversies
with ideas or points of view that are not shared, and with regard to the
expectations that arise based on what is expected to be said. To take part in
the theoretical debate as well as in the production of knowledge, whichever

1
The present article is part of the research project the author develops inside Culture and
Politics Group (Grupo Cultura y Política), which he belongs to. Said group is ascribed to the
department of Philosophy of Universidad del Cauca and is recognized by Colciencias in
Category B.

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the topic is, does not set us in the position of neutral or dispassionate subjects,
but in the position of individuals who cannot establish radical detachments
to the concerns that the political flux poses, an issue of utmost importance
if we bear in mind the future of our societies.
For instance, when we have the belief that we have just spoken little a
about a specific problem, that we have barely taken charge of it, not only
can we cast doubt on the roles that have been performed, but we shall also
understand that to undertake a task of conceptual clarification (extremely
necessary) is, at the same time, big and challenging. But if we consider the
opposite situation, that is, when we suppose we talk about something with
great intensity, we don’t infer that there is more clarity or that the doubts
had been cancelled once and forever. On the contrary, the invitation to
the philosophical debate, as open and lasting attitude, leads us to continue
asking questions, to continue persisting in finding new ways to comprehend,
to continue looking for new alternatives of interpretation, because political
philosophy definitely cannot be understood as a reason clause.
In any case, a debate about liberalism and democracy cannot be considered
settled. This fact brings us face to face contemporarily with the presence of
two political traditions that despite tending to be universalized,2 as in the
economic field capitalism globalizes, and nevertheless (that is, despite its
almost unquestionable supremacy) its achievement stops being exempt of
risks, difficulties and incoherences. As an example of this we could mention
that democracy, understood as a way of intervention in the decisions of the
society according to equity and participation principles, is being undermined
by neoconservative and neoliberal tendencies in our countries. Tendencies
that not only put on the same level the political struggle for power and the
economic logic of the market and the individual calculation (MacPherson,
2005), they have also launched the preventive politics of the government of
the elites.3

2
This universalization would be equivalent to the expansive waver of the democracy that
Huntington explains (1994).
3
Antonio Ocaña (1991: 39) speaks about the democradura to make reference precisely to the
configuration of the democracy as the government of elites.

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Based on this ideological resource, what is indeed pursued is the


neutralization of the democracy of the masses and, therefore, the
domestication of the harmful effects caused by the overflow that are ascribed
to the people when they act as the main political character (the risks of
tyranny and despotism of the majorities). So, the observance of the political
practice, especially at the level of the Latin American countries where
democracy is weak, seems to lead us to a naturalization of the dissolution
process of the majority government’s principle in hands of the selected
minorities’ government; a matter that does not go unnoticed if we consider
the consequences brought about in relationship to the loss of legitimacy of
the liberal democratic regimes in Latin America, and the tortuous evolution
that they have had (including the denaturalization caused by the political class
and its disruption, a task in charge of the armed forces)
On the one hand, a certain state of mind of disenchantment is reinforced
in the people’s imaginary, insofar as the participation is perceived as an
unimportant act (useless, inefficient), regarding the incidence that the citizen
may have in the final decisions; that is, in the main decisions that have the
congresses as scenery, where the demo-liberal political theory has shown
to gather and renovate, in a representative way, the unity of the nation (as
collective body). This kind of political demoralization is fed by the distancing
that operates between the parliamentary assemblies, in whose members
the popular sovereignty is delegated, with regard to the direct compromise
that there should be with the voter, as well as with the rhetorical character
that democracy embodies in reference to the materialization of the power
of the people, no matter that those called to take part recast themselves in
tactics such as the empty promises and vote poaching, with its corruption
consequences (promising a post in the government in exchange for votes,
exchange of privileges, etcetera).
After all, it will be said that these and other faults are attributable to the
fact that modern democracy cannot correspond to a direct exercise, which
apart from being non-viable turns out to be very strange (if one wants,
extremely) for us. Much to the regret of Rousseau’s ideal that yearned for
the direct democracy of the Greeks, real democracy of modern men, as
Bobbio will affirm, is only possible through the presence of diverse scales

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of mediation and compromise. But even if the primacy of the political


guardianship of the rulers and elected over the people is argued, taking for
granted the impossibility of the direct democracy (given the expansive process
and the increase of the societies), it is not enough (nor convincing) to reduce
democracy only to procedural-political or procedural-electoral phenomena.
Despite the fact that the electoral democracy contributes to reinforce the
conviction in the civilized (and successive) dispute for power that parties and
political organizations start under the leadership the State provides, it is true
that it can’t be indifferent to us the concern on their social effectiveness, that
is, on its capacity to meet the demands and protests for justices that come
from great layers of the population, which nowadays live in Latin America in
marginalization and exclusion conditions. Can one consider that a governance
exercise is effective, however as democratic as it might be, that dodges, that
turns deaf ears to the practical controversy on the construction of more
dignifying and fair ways of life for the members of the society and, especially,
for the excluded majorities?
The debate set out by Norberto Bobbio on liberalism and democracy
Despite the fact that in the current political and daily use of the words
liberalism and democracy they seem to be equivalent, Norberto Bobbio, taking
the ideas of Benjamin Constant as a support (1820), establishes a historical
distinction between both political forms: While democracy is previous to
liberalism, in the sense that the ancient Greeks practiced it, liberalism follows
the former, being characterized as a modern phenomenon. In any case, and
despite the acknowledgement of the existent complexity, Bobbio points out
that the liberal and democratic ideals would start to go hand in hand, insofar
as freedom (as common destiny of men) and equality (as intervention of the
people to define the orientation of the society) become compatible with them.
This exposition is supported by resorting to the explanation of a double
differentiation: that it is not only about political categories that have different
historical times, but that the separation that there is between them has to do
at the same time with the conception and experience of freedom, an aspect
which represents a distance between ancient and modern civilizations, but it
also has to do with the conceptual meaning that political liberalism and democracy

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have. While the first stands in the lands of the restoration of the sense of
individual independence, the second makes it from egalitarianism.
Based on this, Bobbio considers that the ancient understood (and lived)
liberty as direct participation of the citizens in public affairs and in the
distribution of power, which would give rise (in practice) to the obedience
and subordination of the individual to the political community (that is, the
negation of the liberty by handing it over). In contrast to them, what the
moderns did was exactly the opposite: the final end is the defense of the
individual liberty, as guarantee of the private life, which corresponds, also,
to the adoption of ways of life framed in broader territorial contexts. In this
respect Bobbio refers to that which Constant expressed and says:
As a thoroughgoing liberal, Constant held that these two aims were mutually
incompatible. Where everyone participates directly in collective decisions, the
individual ends up being subordinated to the authority of the whole, and loses his
liberty as a private person; and it is private liberty which citizen today demands
of public power (Bobbio, 1993: 7).*
So that liberalism, in general sense, emerges then as a philosophy of
change, as a kind of thought that causes (or fosters) transformations and that
adopts progressive positions that are able to break all the factors that tend
to paralyze the thought and the society (progress ideology). But in a more
specific sense, that is, more political, liberalism will become a philosophy on
the individual (as subject), and human liberty (as principle) an institutional
philosophy on the form of the State. For Bobbio this is a shape that is
symbolized in the regulation of the exercise of the power, in the subordination
of the public powers to the controls (limits) established and defined in the
written norms.
So that when Bobbio mentions the liberal State he refers to a doctrinal
point of view, according to which power, understood in neutral sense, that
is, independently from who exercises it, has to be limited (in its use and
functions).4 In these terms, the identification of the liberal State as limited

* Source: Bobbio, Norberto (2005) “Liberalism and Democracy”, London: Verso TN


(Translator’s Note)
4
For Norberto Bobbio this aspect marks a distinctive feature of the ancient civilizations, as
for they did not set out the obligation of setting limits to the political power, as they did
not also developed a theory about the rights.

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State is materialized in the  State of Law (or constitutional State), which is ruled by
the laws, by the supremacy of the norms with higher rank (the fundamental
laws) created by men and that are contained in the political Constitutions
(according to a positivization that is extensive to the natural rights);
[…] ‘liberalism’ denotes a particular conception of the state, in which the state
is conceived as having limited powers and functions, and thus as differing
from both the absolute state and from what is nowadays called the social state
(Bobbio, 1993: 7).
Liberalism refers us to limits both in the power and in the functions of the state.
In respect of the limits of power one speaks currently of the rights-based, while
the term minimal state is used in reference to the limit on function. Even though
liberalism conceives the State as both lawful and minimal, one can have rights-
based, non-minimalist states (as with the social state today), and also minimalist
states which are not rights-based (as in the case of Hobbes’s Leviathan, in the
economic sphere: a state which is at one and at the same time absolute in the
fullest sense of the term, and liberal in its economics (Bobbio, 1993: 11).
As it can be seen in the exposition of these comparisons, the liberal State,
as an ordainment that accepts constitutional pluralism (which results in the
division of powers and their limitation by means of the law) in order not to
conceal freedom and individual rights (and therefore, emancipation), which
liberal society considers significant, becomes a minimal State. According to
Bobbio, this minimal State is the opposite of a maximal State, that is, the
Absolutist State, and by extension to the totalitarisms and to the State of
social intervention.5
Nevertheless, one must observe that said categorization of a minimal
State used by Bobbio responds in fact to the historical emergence of the
classic liberal State (leave to do, leave to pass: laissez faire, laissez passer) that,
in the interests of the defense of the economic freedom, will welcome the

5
For the classic liberals (and today for the neoliberals) the aspiration of the State of well-being
of controlling the whole society, through the enlargement of its intervention capacity, hand
in hand with high doses of dirigisme and paternalism, not only is to the detriment of the
freedom, but it becomes the cause of the social problems and in a source of ingovernance
of the democracy itself.

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protection of the individual initiative and free competence.6 In doing so, it


will contract the state intervention in the police matters, that fall in the realm
of the public order and citizen security, which will situate the workers in a
defenselessness labor situation towards the employers’ abuses and to the
worsening of that which Marx calls the exploitation of the men by men
Notice that Bobbio’s assessment is only correct despite the fact that that
model of minimal State could be covered with constitutional robes (as State
of law), and it would not necessarily make it democratic. We must bear in mind
that he so called “rules of the democratic game”, through which individuals
take part in the democratic life, were not fully developed, that is, within the
reach of all citizens. What are those rules which characterize democracy as a
distinctive political regime, and even different, from liberalism?
According to Bobbio, while liberalism7 refers more to the role played by
the State in relationship to the regulation of power and social coexistence,
democracy (in its minimal sense) refers more to the mode in which power
is shared and distributed, to the exercise of the governance; to the capacity
of the people to take part in the decisions taken in the society, according to
operational proceedings inspired in the principles of popular sovereignty,
political equality of participation and, mainly, the prevalence of the ruling of
the majority within the electoral systems. To that respect, Bobbio mentions:

6
These are assumptions of the economic liberalism, with which the productive processes, trade,
generation of wealth and, therefore, the well-being and the prosperity of the societies
are conceived. The starting point consists in sustaining that what drives individuals is not
the solidarity desire, but, on the contrary, egoism, the satisfaction of the needs and most
immediate and close desires (the private interest, the search for wealth). For Adam Smith,
his greatest exponent, no matter how these tendencies are constituted into natural laws
(while they are decided freely by men, in their ways of behaving and thinking) they do not
need the intervention of a regulating power (that of the State).
7
He accepts the antagonism between the individual and society as something that not only is
necessary but favorable, as long as it inspires competence and in the sense of the emulation,
just as economic liberalism states. When applied to the political sphere it stimulates the
political pluralism, understood both in the sense of the presence of the variety of organized
political groups, that contend for power, as the existence of a variety of points of view and
opinions that encourage the public controversy and the collective debate.

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[…] ‘democracy’ denotes one of the many possible modes of government,


namely that in which power is not vested in a single individual or in the hands
of a few, but lies with everybody, or rather in the majority. Democracy is thus
differentiated from autocratic forms such as monarchy and oligarchy (Bobbio,
1993: 7).
[…] A ‘democratic regime’ is first and foremost a set of procedural rules for
arriving at collective decisions in a way which accommodates and facilitates the
fullest possible participation of interested parties (Bobbio, 1994: 9).
I warn that the only way to understand each other when talking about democracy,
with regard to its counter position to all modes of autocratic government, is
to consider it as characterized by a set of rules (primary and fundamental) that
establish who is authorized to make collective decisions and under which procedures
(Bobbio, 1994: 14).
These definitions, that hold that which is formal and procedural, allow
highlighting the relationship that operates between the modern democracy
and liberalism, being the development of the former a consequence of the
presence of the latter, that is, a result of the legal acknowledgement carried
out by the constitutional State (rights-based State) in relationship to the
individual liberties. The convergence also occurs as for democracy will end
up restoring the fundamental rights, the freedom of opinion, of expression
and participation (by means of the vote).
The favorable conditions for the citizen, as political subject of the
democracy, to take part then in the election of its rulers or in the expression
of opinions, will be complete with the universalization of the suffrage and
with citizen guarantee, that goes beyond the private identities or certain
specific conditions that determine the individuals (beliefs, political opinions,
gender matters, sexual preferences, economic situation, ethnicity, etcetera).
As well as the fact that for Bobbio democracy is not possible without a
legal framework, it is also invalid if it is not accompanied by political pluralism,
that is, the presence that diverse political alternatives shall have, for the sake of
being communicated to the citizens in order to make possible their deliverance
and election, according to a majoritarian participation. But despite Bobbio’s
insistence in the fact that democracy is a method, the procedural rules that
contain it do not safeguard democracy from the contrasts with reality, that in

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the end are in charge of showing the contradictions into which democracy
has fallen (the so called broken promises).
We shall remember that Rousseau (1993), for instance, is suspicious of
the representativeness of the democracy as materialization of that which can
be called true democracy. In his opinion, the sense of the liberty is distorted
when popular sovereignty ends up delegated in the elected, in order for
them to decide for the people. To that respect he will answer saying that
direct democracy, so praised by the Genevan philosopher, is non-viable
and unfeasible (unreal); while, by contrast, the strength of representative
democracy lies in the judgment capacity that the elected have:
Representative democracy was fostered also by the conviction that the citizen’s
elected representatives would be better able to judge the common interest than
the citizens themselves, whose vision would be too narrowly focused on their
particular interests (Bobbio, 1993: 36).
Despite the preached wisdom of the representatives, insofar as virtue
that is attributed to them, unlike the primary concerns that supposedly
characterize the masses, that does not free them from committing lack of
political responsibility with the elector, nor inoculate them towards the fact
that those representatives before being obligated to the nation as a matter of
fact choose to establish strictly particular covenants and compromises. Neither
is the representative democracy unaware of phenomena such as that in which
decisions are focused in organizations, elites or in transnational corporations,
just as it happens nowadays under the neoliberal model, which is unaware of
the indifference of the citizen, of the corruption of the political customs,
of the presence of uninformed and non-politically educated citizens, of the
formation of several circles of power,8 et cetera.
We can’t forget that in the base of the articulation operated between
liberalism and democracy lies the contradiction (and, therefore, the problem
of complementarity) between the individual and the social, which reflects the

8
The allusion to the fact that democracy has not represented previously a unique center of
power (a centripetal society), but that it has given place to a plurality of powers (a centrifugal
or polycentric society as Bobbio calls it), is called by Dahl (1993) as the formation of a
poliarchy.

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conflict stated between individualism and organicism, to which Bobbio refers.


Liberalism acknowledges that conflictive and egoist nature of the human
being and insists in the primacy of the liberty, in the vigilance of the power
of the State to preserve the individual independence, in order to organize
the coexistence in the middle of the multiplicity. In turn, modern democracy
planned as initial orientation, from its origins, the extension of power to the
greater amount of people, the concerned directed towards the common good
and the collective order, the maintenance of the social unity, the demand of
results in the exercise of the governance.
At this level of the debate proponed by Bobbio, it seems then that we
are pegged to the floor or anchored to a fixed position. On the one hand,
because even though we can well accept that liberal democracy is not immune
to the crisis, without disregarding that it has survived to many, it does not
seem convincing (nor credible) to say that it enjoys good health, although
we also coincide in saying that it is not dying. The main difficulty lies more
in the standstill into which Bobbio comes: If the representative democracy,
which is said to be in a constant state of transformation, has no alternatives
(at least no better ones, but worse), how can one preach the natural state
that it owns, when the evidence that reality provide us with indicates that
democracy does not seem willing to reform itself ?
The risks of Bobbio’s position refer us to, on the one hand, the idea
that democracy, in terms of political form, has a kind of internal strength
wherein its dynamics and vitality rest. But insofar as it tends nowadays to
become dominant, without natural contraries in sight (as it would be the case
of socialism that encouraged political antagonism in the world), the task of
transformation looms within a clear horizon, but it is framed more within
a grey firmament. After all, representative democracy nowadays, brought to
power by the political neutrality of the liberal State criterion, has taken sides
on the side of the defense of the status quo and the dominant power.

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The contradictions and disagreements between liberalism and


democracy
The intellectual personality of Norberto Bobbio9 is located within the scene
outlined by the discourses produced, after World War II, around democracy,
understood in the modern sense. His though is nourished by the political
experience associated to the struggle carried out against the fascist regime of
Mussolini, by its identity with the need of moralizing politically the Italian
Socialist Party (PSI) and by the influence received initially from Marxism, with
regard to the rescue of the role that the proletariat plays as political force of
transformation and change.
From his resignation to the direct political life and his admission to the
academic world, within the undertaken reflection on liberalism, democracy
and socialism, Bobbio started to highlight in one of his main theses that
accompany and characterize his political philosophy: that Marxism, despite the
innovation that it provided to the comprehension of the political life (from
which conflict, antagonism, violence and domination are not uninvolved),
fell short at the moment it underestimated the meaning that democracy and
liberalism as political conquests have, that cannot be ignored if one thinks
in the consensus on the desirable society (and on the idea of social justice
and better life).
That underestimation that Bobbio attributes to Marxism turns against
the Italian philosopher. Marx did not believe in the ideals of the bourgeoisie

9
Italian philosopher and jurist (1909-2004) that since his youth took part in the antifascist
resistance, initially as member of the Justice and Liberty (Giustizia e Liberta) movement,
lead by brothers Nello and Carlo Roselli, and later in the National Committee for the
Liberation of Papua, as a consequence he was arrested two times. He was professor in the
Camerino, Siena, Papua and Turin universities. He joined the last one in 1948, heading the
Philosophy of Right chair, once the Action Party was dissolved and from which he was a
member since its creation in 1943. In 1984 he was appointed life senator by Alessandro Perini.
According to José María Gonzáles García, in Norberto Bobbio one can observer three
stages: in the first one he will highlight the differences between the Western democracies
and the socialism established in the old USSR; in the second, the debate is focused in the
debate with Marxism; in the third one (from the 80’s), the reflection will have to do with
modern democracy.

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liberty, not because they did not represent the ideological strength of human
emancipation, but because it implied the emancipation of some men (the
bourgeoisie) to the detriment of the negation of the liberty of other (the
proletariat). Neither Marx believed in the neutrality assumption of the
liberal State and its unbiased capacity to referee in the society, according to
which all citizens are treated equally. So that, as Bobbio reaffirms, liberal
democracy supposes a consensus on the political order, it ruins (eliminates)
the antagonism, the conflict and the constraint that are natural to power, the
political hegemony and domination.
It shall be highlighted that the defense of the demo-liberal institutions
supposed by Bobbio has an Anglo-Saxon longing. Regarding the emphasis
set in the conception of man and social life, the Italian thinker is supporter of
making them gravitate in the pragmatics (the offered results and advantages)
for the individual rights, the political pluralism, the universalization of the
suffrage, the constitutionalization of the State, among other referents. Some
of them exude in Hobbes’s works (1996) or in those of Locke (1973). To
drink in the fountains of classic liberalism allows Bobbio to make a political
displacement (from initial left positions to a latter centrism) and to state a
conciliation with the original Marxism under the form of the liberal-socialism.
But behind this conciliatory position, what Bobbio really does is to warn
about the dangers of the extrapolations, the radicalisms and the political
overflows that derive from the practical application of the Marxist principles
such as that of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as for the fact that it would
configure a power without limits, located on the sidelines of regulation. It
would also suppose a questioning of the opening sense that Machiavelli gave
to politics (as for pure passion, pure personalized power game according to
the usage of techniques for its conquest or preservation), which allows Bobbio
to set politics in the field of its relationship with the State.
It is certain that the proposed conciliation (the liberal-socialism), which
is not exempt from contradictions, despite the fact that it works better in
the theoretical plane than in the practical, has the virtue of proposing a
line of analysis that tries to escape from the interpretative logics of the
political tensions, seen as irreconcilable given the unavoidable antagonism
that motivates them, which would seem that set us in the way of a certain

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political idealism. In the same way, it make us ask ourselves if in the direct
politics that articulation he proposes is directed in the sense of the recovery
of the social democracy or if, in future terms, it would be related more with
the possibility of considering an advanced socialism (renewed), built with
the political significance that not only comes from the working class but in
general from the excluded and subordinated, and who nowadays, in Latin
America, seem to show signs in the political experiences of Hugo Chávez,
Lula da Silva and Evo Morales.
It is necessary to make several clarifications on the last aspect. The first
is that I refer to a socialism of new lineage, insofar as it is a distinction label, as
a political experience that, from being or becoming real, would differentiate
itself, at least in the scale of time, from vivid socialism, for instance, in the
countries of the Iron Curtain. The second is that I refer to a probability, that
is, to something that cannot be understood as an accomplished fact or better
said, in the best of the circumstances, as something that would appear to be
a consolidation process, in a manner of speaking.
The third is that speaking on a new socialism would imply to refer to a
tendency and/or political alternative that certainly leaves room for, in the
broad sense, although also diffuse, the mobilization of imaginaries and
representations, where it is possible to think the realization of justice and the
redistribution of wealth, as well as reconcile what historically seems to have
become an irresolute tension: the individual freedom and the collectivism,
the private interest and the general interest. This babbling tendency would
be framed, apart from that, within the conflicts, the contradictions, the
ambiguities and the features that make Latin American societies more dynamic.
The fourth is that despite the responses to the several questions and
expectations that one bears considering the possibility of a new socialism in the
future, they correspond more to the scrutiny of history, we see ourselves in the
need of turning to the previous political experiences that the Western world
has seen, and which nourish the disenchantment with modernity. It is from
its political pedagogy that certain mistrust and suspicion derives with regard
to the new political promises made from other shores, in which reconciliation
is stated as that which up to the current moment turned irreconcilable.

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from Norberto Bobbio’s perspective

In fact, fears and challenges, both theoretical and practical, come to the
fore. Just consider how the exacerbation of the political empowerment of
the masses, nourished by a rampant populism and in significant doses of
authoritarianism and power concentration, could imply leaps and abstractions
with regard to the democratic constitutional order and, therefore, of their
values and principles, just as the liberal theory has postulated. These threats
come either from several sides, beyond the location of forces and actors in
the political spectrum that is, both from left and right.
Now then, after these clarifications, we shall say that a part of the questions
that arise have to do with the reading that can be done on the implications
around the Bobbio’s conception on the logic of the dominant power, that
is, with regard to their justifications and legitimacy. Is his point of view, his
criticism, conservative? Is it a reflection of a political stance that, in the
defense of the status quo, aims at perceiving the consequences derived from
the political decadence of the liberal institutionality, when it shows to be deaf
and reluctant to listen to the social outcry of change?
Does Bobbio reflect a kind of moral conscience that calls for a containment
of the change, to the alert, to the prevention of dangers related to the political
excesses and incompetence that are attributed to the masses, when they extol
the democratic egalitarism? Or, on the contrary, it is a brilliant invitation to
think in the political transformation of the democratic societies, from the
primate of the moderate and gradual change instead of the revolution? Is
it a call to settle the debt that democracy has with society, that is, to achieve
what up to now is a non-fulfillment history or, on the contrary, what is aimed
is to think in what democracy should provide?
We can also ask if the analysis that deals with the proceduralism of the
representative democracy, as one of the outstanding notes in the minimal
definition of democracy that Bobbio suggests (and for which it is more
important to analyze who holds the domination instead of who exercises it,
with which legal tools it is made), introduces an important note, and distinctive,
in reference to the conception of power. And if the answer is negative, then
is it that we assume that the issue is a whim introduced for the delight of
academic and intellectual agents?

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If we coincide in the thesis that human life would lack sense if we


renounce to the idea of freedom (in the classic liberal sense) or to the
demanding right to equality of the oppressed (in the Marxist sense), in the
same way that to avoid making the terrible mistakes caused by the despotic
and totalitarian experiences, that is, in order to avoid the abuses of power,
their exercise requires the design and existence of regulatory mechanisms,
the task of thinking the construction of a democratic political order (where
the practices can be socialized to the whole society, instead of reducing it
to closed spaces) a challenge continues being built for the political thought.
I think that Bobbio’s challenge, according to the co-constructive
proposal, of advancing towards a “liberal-socialism”, that does not destroy
(but integrates) the best part of the liberal democracy and the demands for
change, hand in hand, up to where it is possible, of the empirical evidence
that provide us the political reality, will consist in being able to achieve an
break-even point in the antagonism that is unleashed when conservadurism
is exacerbated (which accompanies liberalism) and the revolutionary
radicalization (that accompanies the longing for change). Nevertheless,
Bobbio seems to commit an abstraction as for the fact that said effort of
conciliation cannot be considered if a leap in the vacuum is made, that is, on
the sidelines of a capitalism that nowadays, under the ideological leadership
of the economic liberalism, finds itself in a globalizing process (expansive
to the whole planet), hand in had with the ideological sacralization of the
competence, the individualism and the market, the latter seen precisely as the
mother of all democracies (Córdoba Gómez, 2006: 132).
This, of course, sets on trial the vitality itself of the political philosophy
so long as it requires the restor of creativity in order to be able to arrange the
enlightening discourses of the political practices that outline new orientation
routes and new courses of action, in spite of the risk of making mistakes.
Political philosophy has to continue being an open forum to dialogue, to the
critical debate, if we want to interpret well the spirit of our days, marked by
the increasing complexity and uncertainty. We are compelled to do so given
the ingovernance and ineffectiveness of democracy to solve social problems,
th edistortion of equality and the participation in hands of the multiplication
of political mediators, of the political oligarchies, of the struggle started

34
Luis Antonio Córdoba Gómez, Liberalism and democracy
from Norberto Bobbio’s perspective

between the elites (Schumpter, 1971), of the technocrats and bureaucrats.


We could only renounce to that task if we end up accepting certain
historical fatalism that derives from Bobbio’s exposition. It consists either on be
satisfied with the democracy we have (as we know it), because essentially there
are not choices before us, there are not desirable options or, in other words,
because any other alternative is unthinkable; or we shall continue dealing
with a democracy that refuses to be improved (to go deeper), because it, in
an inexorable way, is trapped within its own contradictions and labyrinths,
which not only deny it in itself, but that do not allow it to come out of that
whirlpool that imprisons it.

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Luis Antonio Córdoba Gómez; candidate to Doctor in Contemporary


Anthropologies, within the agreement subscribed between the University of
Caua and the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH).
He holds a position as professor of the department of Philosophy at the
University of Cauca, Colombia. His main research lines are: democracy
and political parties, democracy and liberalism, and political culture,
representations, discourses and imaginaries. He is coauthor of the texts “Las
vueltas del presidente”, Cali (1994) and “Filosofía política: Crítica y balances”, Popayán
(2006). He is author of the articles “Municipio colombiano y clientelización política
local: apuntes para un balance”, Popular Development of Cali Foundation (2000);
“Contribuciones al debate sobre descentralización, apertura política y clientelismo en el
municipio colombiano”, unpublished, Popayán (2000).

Sent to dictum: 08th October, 2008


Approval: 6th July, 2008

38

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