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114 | Anna Unger the source of the contemporary disenchantment with democracy. Disappointment is an almost inevitable consequence of a distrustful citizenry. (Rosanvallon 2008, 254) These endogenous problems of liberal democracy are excellently summarized by Timothy Snyder in his book The Road to Unfreedom. He explains that the then-fashionable idea of the end of history and the supposed ultimate victory of liberal democracy at the millennium also created the politics of inevitability, a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of the progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done. In the American capitalist version of this story, nature brought the market, which brought democracy, which brought happiness. In the European version, history brought the nation, which learned from war that peace was good, and hence chose integration and prosperity (Snyder 2018, 7). The politics of inevitability means that “there is no alternative” (Snyder 2018, 15), social and political development has a single way to proceed, and progress is literally inevitable. This echoes the idea and practice of technocracy, where the skilled and educated elites are responsible for the complex governance, but also points to its democratic deficit: there are no alternative means and there is no need for democracy, as there are no choices — options to vote for and against - anymore. b. Exogenous challenges of liberal democracy: illiberalism and populism As with populism, illiberal tendencies have also been widely studied in contemporary political science. The famous article The Rise of Illiberal Democracy by Fareed Zakaria has been followed by a huge number of writings about democratic decline, democratic backsliding, and the hybridisation and autocratisation of politics. Many different aspects of these tendencies have been elaborated on. Here, instead of summing up all of these, which would be mission impossible, we will focus on a single stream in this debate, which hopefully reveals the different aspects of the matter. In his well-known article, Zakaria stated that “constitutional liberalism has led to democracy, but democracy does not seem to bring constitutional liberalism” (Zakaria 1997, 28). In his view, many developing democracies became illiberal, where liberties and the rule of law are less respected than in developed ones. Though he does not state that American-, or Westernstyle liberal democracy is the only possible democratic system, he claims that this is the most developed one, as no other system guarantees the same kind of balance between the peoples will, which must be the platform of popular government, and securing civil liberties.
