Democracy and the Order of Recognition: A Review of Norberto Bobbio’s Liberalism and Democracy

According to Ian Shapiro, “the democratic idea is close to non-​negotiable in today’s world.”¹ Democracy is often taken for granted in its association with liberalism, with liberal democracy seen as the aspirational political form. Just so, Norberto Bobbio begins Liberalism and Democracy²—whose English translation by Verso marks its twentieth anniversary this year—with an observation. Although many liberal democracies exist, where “only in democratic states are the rights of man protected,”³ the relationship between liberalism and democracy is complex. It cannot be one of mere continuity or identity.

Liberalism and Democracy is largely a work of intellectual history, written by an eminent Italian historian of political thought and philosopher of law. Bobbio’s work should interest readers concerned with whether democracy furthers or suppresses individual liberty, particularly within the history of political thought. But it is also a constructive work. Informed by the political theories of Tocqueville and Mill, Bobbio seeks to vindicate the possibility of liberal democracy through a procedural account of democracy as the natural extension of liberalism. Procedural democracy focuses on rules and institutions such as elections. And it contrasts with substantive democracy’s emphasis on equality.

While similar to James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock’s procedural theory of liberal democracy, Bobbio’s work is distinguished by its foundation in the history of political thought. He excels in his reading of thinkers like Tocqueville, Mill, and Giuseppe Mazzini, providing a productive complement to works based in analytic philosophy. Engaging classic texts of political thought, Bobbio insightfully reckons with the tensions between political ideas underlying liberalism and democracy—liberty and equality—and their basis in philosophical anthropology. Furthermore, his procedural focus commendably draws attention to the necessity of rules and institutions for popular sovereignty. Ultimately, however, this proceduralism undermines the case for democracy, whose vitality is found in experiences of recognition. While important, democracy extends beyond elections. It involves the culture of the demos—its relational recognition of equal rights and dignity. This vitality aligns with liberalism’s spirit of individual liberty and dignity more than rules alone.

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In articulating the problem he seeks to address, Bobbio identifies three approaches to the relation between liberalism and democracy: possibility, impossibility, and necessity. These concern whether their relationship is possible but not inevitable, impossible, or necessary and intrinsic. Bobbio favors a relation of possibility, noting that both liberalism and democracy valorize the individual, but in different ways. Liberalism is compatible with democracy, he argues, and democracy in its character as popular sovereignty is the natural development of liberalism. But this is only true if we interpret democracy in a procedural sense. What interests Bobbio is not the substance of democracy as equality, but its juridical form—and he contrasts his approach with that of Tocqueville, who failed to distinguish between the two senses.

A major conceptual strength of the work lies in Bobbio’s analysis of the tension between liberty and equality. If liberalism and democracy approached these ideas differently, in what sense “can democracy be seen as the extension and proper realization of the liberal state”?⁴ A liberal negative liberty exists in tension with a democratic “economic equalization, an ideal foreign to liberal thought.”⁵ Indeed, Bobbio argues that “liberty and equality [of outcome] are antithetical values,” aligned with Tocqueville’s insights into liberalism and democracy.⁶ This tension evinces a deeper conflict between contrasting accounts of liberty, negative and positive, where positive liberty is oriented more strongly to equality.

Further engaging the theme of equality, Bobbio compellingly addresses the aim of democratization. “If … the process of progressive democratization was bound inevitably to lead to socialism, then could it be supported by liberals?”⁷ Should that be the case, liberals would have reason to be cautious. Hayek and Tocqueville were, finding in democracy the seeds of majoritarian excess that suppress individual liberty.⁸ Accordingly, Bobbio notes Hayek’s critique of the valorization of democracy. As Hayek writes in The Constitution of Liberty, democracy is not an end in itself; it must be evaluated in relation to liberal ideals. For Hayek, “The prospects of liberty depend on whether or not the majority makes it its deliberate object … [beyond] the mere existence of democracy.”⁹

Bobbio argues against an unaltered concept of democracy in the movement from liberal democracy to social democracy. For liberals, democracy means universal suffrage, while for socialists, democracy means the egalitarian ideal. His approach suggests that the notion of democracy in the liberal sense is entirely procedural, characterized by rules, while the notion of democracy in the social sense is substantive, committed to universal equality. This interpretation has merit. Socialist theories indeed have an ultimate end state in mind, while liberal theories instead favor neutrality. Yet Bobbio’s dichotomy does not hold empirically, as history testifies to a synthesis of substance and procedure.

Empirically, the recent history of liberal democracies attests to social movements driving the struggle for recognition, often employing the democratic language of equality. Hence liberal democracy cannot be solely procedural. Furthermore, Bobbio’s proceduralism ultimately undermines the case for liberal democracy. Scholars of the Middle East note that a program of democratic minimalism could support autocrats so long as they were democratically elected. But this outcome would be inconsistent with liberal ideals. What then becomes of liberal democracy? Bobbio overly valorizes democracy for its rules rather than for its substantive ideal: recognition of equal rights and dignity. He grasps democracy’s form, but absent is its spirit. And this spirit of recognition reflects liberal ideals of liberty and dignity in a way that he does not discern.

This tension between democracy’s substance and procedure has precedent in intellectual history. Bobbio himself draws a theoretical distinction between a regime with formal democracy but no equality and a regime with despotic government but widespread equality. On this subject, Domenico Losurdo shows how Jean Bodin, a theorist of absolute sovereignty, supported an absolute monarchy that would abolish slavery. Adam Smith, too, found that slavery could more easily be abolished under a despot than in a free state.¹⁰ While not without issues, such intellectual history undermines Bobbio’s support for a procedural democracy that could nevertheless result in injustices of equality.

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Beyond ideas of substance and procedure, liberty and equality, Bobbio’s distinction between organicist and individualist approaches to philosophical anthropology refines Constant’s distinction between ancient and modern liberty, locating the sources of sovereign power in accounts of the human subject. In particular, organicism centers relationality, where the individual is subordinate to an organic whole. Individualism, instead, views the individual as an end in themselves, not as an instrument in service of a totality such as the nation.

Bobbio’s distinction has significant implications for conceiving of the common good. This idea, central to the history of political thought, is noticeably absent from his analysis. Yet it provides a counter to his argument that democracy’s power issues from below, while organicism’s power issues from above, tending toward autocracy. Anchored in history, liberal thinkers note that a totalizing commitment to the common good—an organicist concept arguably present in democracies—could lead the state to sacrifice individual rights for the common good, in tension with liberalism.

Nevertheless, Bobbio does address the individual elsewhere. He contends that the reciprocal relation between liberalism and democracy is possible because they share a common starting point—the individual—and struggle uniquely against different modes of organicism. Liberal individualism gradually corrodes a totality, reducing state power to a minimum. Meanwhile, democratic individualism dissolves a unified global composite from within, reconstituting state power as the sum of particular powers. But most would associate democracy with the demos, not with the individual—especially as popular sovereignty. And Bobbio seems to contradict himself when he states elsewhere that democracy joins the individual together with the people—an organicist conception.

Further complementing his proceduralism and disputed focus on the individual, Bobbio’s argument prioritizes popular sovereignty. Yet one wonders whether the people are genuinely sovereign in a procedural democracy. They may be sovereign in a formal sense, through elections, but not in a concrete sense that drives universal recognition and hence equality. Drawing on Hegel, Axel Honneth has thematized democracy as a social order that institutionalizes recognition,¹¹ an insight Nancy Fraser critically engages in her concept of participatory parity.¹² Both theorists move beyond proceduralism toward the spirit and culture of the demos. Due to his formal emphasis, however, Bobbio prizes the political at the expense of the cultural dimension: recognition.

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Altogether, Bobbio’s work in Liberalism and Democracy is worthwhile for those invested in the relation between liberalism and democracy. Bobbio’s history of political thought clarifies how key theorists departed on ideas of liberty, equality, and philosophical anthropology. And his procedural account of democracy has merit: popular sovereignty cannot endure without rules and institutions. But in its proceduralism, Bobbio’s theory valorizes democracy as an end, failing to see the limits of rules and the threat organicism poses to individual liberty. Democratic minimalism’s record suggests otherwise. Procedures can fail to further the justice of recognition, grounded in equality, that is vital to liberal ideals. Liberalism and democracy may exist in relation, but not by rules alone.