Luis Antonio Crdoba Gmez, Liberalism and democracy

CONVERGENCIA
from Norberto Bobbios perspective
Revista de Ciencias Sociales

Liberalism and democracy from Norberto Bobbios perspective

Universidad del Cauca, Colombia / [email protected]

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 Bobbios thought. Key words: Democracy, liberalism, political liberalism, liberal State, liberal democracy. Resumen: En el presente artculo se desarrolla un anlisis, abordado desde la filosofa poltica, en torno a la concepcin que el filsofo italiano Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004) planteara acerca de dos de las ms importantes tradiciones polticas 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 relacin entre democracia y liberalismo, as como algunas contradicciones que permean el pensamiento de Bobbio. Palabras clave: democracia, liberalismo, liberalismo poltico, 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). Dont we even mention a democraticliberal Weltanschauung? Dont 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 Poltica), 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 dont 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
This universalization would be equivalent to the expansive waver of the democracy that Huntington explains (1994). 3 Antonio Ocaa (1991: 39) speaks about the democradura to make reference precisely to the configuration of the democracy as the government of elites.
2

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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 governments 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 peoples 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 Rousseaus 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 cant 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 (Translators 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 rightsbased, non-minimalist states (as with the social state today), and also minimalist states which are not rights-based (as in the case of Hobbess 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
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 Bobbios 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:
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.
6

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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 Bobbios 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 citizens 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 cant 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 Bobbios 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 Jos Mara Gonzles Garca, 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 80s), 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 Hobbess 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 Chvez, 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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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 Bobbios 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 Bobbios 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 (Crdoba Gmez, 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

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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 Bobbios 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. Bibliography Anderson, Perry (1992), La evolucin poltica de Norberto Bobbio, in Gonzles, Jos Mara and Fernando Quesada [coords.], Teoras de la democracia, Barcelona: Anthropos, Coleccin Pensamiento Crtico, Pensamiento Utpico. Anderson, Perry (1993), Liberalismo, socialismo, socialismo liberal, Caracas: Nueva Sociedad. Bobbio, Norberto (1978), Existe una teora marxista del Estado?, Mexico: Universidad Autnoma de Puebla. Bobbio, Norberto and Michelangelo Bovero (1985), Origen y fundamentos del poder poltico, Mexico: Grijalbo. Bobbio, Norberto and Michelangelo Bovero (1986), Sociedad y Estado en la filosofa moderna. El modelo iusnaturalista y el modelo hegeliano-marxiano, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica. Bobbio, Norberto (1987), La teora de las formas de gobierno en la historia del pensamiento poltico, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica. Bobbio, Norberto (1989), Estado, gobierno y sociedad: por una teora general de la poltica, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica. Bobbio, Norberto (1989), Perfil ideolgico del siglo XX en Italia, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica. Bobbio, Norberto (1992), Thomas Hobbes, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica.

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Bobbio, Norberto (1993), Liberalismo y democracia, Bogot: Fondo de Cultura Econmica. Bobbio, Norberto (1994), El futuro de la democracia, Bogot: Fondo de Cultura Econmica. Bobbio, Norberto (1995), Que alternativas a la democracia representativa?, in Santana Rodrguez, Pedro [comp.], Las incertidumbres de la democracia, Bogot: Foro Nacional por Colombia. Bobbio, Norberto (1995), Las disoluciones de la democracia, in Santana Rodrguez, Pedro [comp.], Las incertidumbres de la democracia, Bogot: Foro Nacional por Colombia. Crculo de Lectores (1984), Historia Universal. El siglo del liberalismo, volume II, Bogot. Constant, Benjamn (1820), De la libert des anciens compare celle des modernes, in Collection complte des ouvrages, vol. IV, part 7, Paris: Librera Bchet. Cordero, Rolando (1995), Socialismo y liberalismo: Qumica o alquimia?, in Santana Rodrguez, Pedro [comp.], Las incertidumbres de la democracia, Bogot: Foro Nacional por Colombia. Crdoba Gmez, Luis Antonio (2006), El desencanto poltico con la modernidad: las razones interpretativas de una crisis, in Filosofa poltica: Crtica y balances, Popayn: Universidad del Cauca. Bobbio, Norberto (1995), La democracia como valor universal, in Santana Rodrguez, Pedro [comp.], Las incertidumbres de la democracia, Bogot: Foro Nacional por Colombia. Dahl, Robert (1993), La democracia y sus crticos, Barcelona: Paids. Dahl, Robert (1994), Despus de la revolucin?, Barcelona: Gedisa. Dubet, Francois (1995), Democracia poltica y democracia social: ruptura de un vnculo, in Santana Rodrguez, Pedro [comp.], Las incertidumbres de la democracia, Bogot: Foro Nacional por Colombia. Dussel, Enrique (2006), 20 tesis de poltica, Bogot: Siglo XXI, CREFAL. Farrel, Martn Diego (1997), Utilitarismo, liberalismo y democracia, Mxico: Fontamara.

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Luis Antonio Crdoba Gmez, Liberalism and democracy

from Norberto Bobbios perspective

Fernndez Santilln, Jos (1988), Hobbes y Rousseau. Entre la autocracia y la democracia, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica. Fernndez Santilln, Jos (1997), Filosofa poltica de la democracia, Mexico: Fontamara. Gargarella, Roberto (1997), Bases ideolgicas del sistema poltico representativo, in Crisis de la representacin poltica, Mexico: Fontamara. Gargarella, Roberto (1999), Las teoras de la justicia despus de Rawls, Barcelona: Paids. Gonzles, Jos Mara (1992), Lmites y aporas de la democracia representativa en Norberto Bobbio, in Gonzles, Jos Mara and Fernando Quesada [coords.], Teoras de la democracia, Barcelona: Anthropos, Coleccin Pensamiento Crtico, Pensamiento Utpico. Hobbes, Thomas (1996), El Leviatn. O la materia, forma y poder de una Repblica eclesistica y civil, Madrid: Alianza. Huntington, Samuel (1994), La tercera ola: la democratizacin a finales del siglo XX, Barcelona: Paids. Locke, John (1960), Tratado sobre el gobierno, Madrid: Aguilar. Locke, John (1973), Tratado sobre el gobierno, Madrid: Aguilar. Macpherson, Crawford (2005), La teora poltica del individualismo posesivo: de Hobbes a Locke, Madrid: Trotta. Maestre, Agapito (1992), Reflexin para una tica en democracia: discurso tico y utopa, in Gonzles, Jos Mara and Fernando Quesada [coords.], Teoras de la democracia, Barcelona: Anthropos, Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana. Montesquieu, Charles-Louis (1963), Del espritu de las leyes, Barcelona: Altaya. Mouffe, Chantal (1995), La democracia radical, moderna o postmoderna, in Santana Rodrguez, Pedro [comp.], Las incertidumbres de la democracia, Bogot: Foro Nacional por Colombia. Mouffe, Chantal (2001), La poltica y los lmites del liberalismo, in revista La Poltica, num. 1, Barcelona. Ocaa, Antonio (1991), Las apuestas de la democracia, in Estudios. Filosofa, Historia, Letras, num. 24, Mexico: Instituto Tecnolgico Autnomo de Mxico.

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Occheto, Achille (1995), Sobre el concepto de democracia mixta, in Santana Rodrguez, Pedro [comp.], Las incertidumbres de la democracia, Bogot: Foro Nacional por Colombia. Rosetti, Giancarlo (1993), Ahora la democracia est sola, in Anderson, Perry, Liberalismo, socialismo, socialismo liberal, Caracas: Nueva Sociedad. Rousseau, Jean Jacques (1993), El contrato social, Barcelona: Altaya. Ruiz Miguel, Alfonso (1983), Filosofa y derecho en Norberto Bobbio, Madrid: Centro de Estudios Constitucionales. Schumpeter, Joseph (1971), Capitalismo, socialismo y democracia, Madrid: Aguilar. Luis Antonio Crdoba Gmez; 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 Filosofa poltica: Crtica y balances, Popayn (2006). He is author of the articles Municipio colombiano y clientelizacin poltica local: apuntes para un balance, Popular Development of Cali Foundation (2000); Contribuciones al debate sobre descentralizacin, apertura poltica y clientelismo en el municipio colombiano, unpublished, Popayn (2000). Sent to dictum: 08th October, 2008 Approval: 6th July, 2008

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