Liberal Constitutionalism-Between Individual and Collective Interests

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Date
2017Author
Bień-Kacała, Agnieszka
Csink, Lóránt
Milej, Tomasz
Serowaniec, Maciej
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Modern democracy is not a simple and immediate
realisation of an abstract idea of democracy2. After the
experiences of World War Two ‘what emerged instead
might best be described as a new balance of democracy and
liberal principles, and constitutionalism in particular, but
with both liberalism and democracy redefined in the light of
the totalitarian experience of midtwentieth-century
Europe’3. The model of democracy functioning in the socalled
western states can be defined after F. Fukuyama as a
combination of the principle of democratic accountability
and participation, and the liberal principles of the rule of law
* Wojciech Włoch – Assistant Professor, Nicolaus Copernicus University,
Toruń, Poland, wloch.wojciech@gmail.com.
1 The article has been prepared as part of the grant ‘Law-making delegation in
representative democracy’ financed by the National Centre of Science, contest
Opus 11, registration no. 2016/21/B/HS5/00197.
2 Cf. R. A. Dahl, On Democracy, New Haven-London 1998, pp. 35-43, 84-99.
3 J.-W. Müller, Contesting Democracy. Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century
Europe, New Haven-London 2011, p. 129.