ch 5 essentials
A Brief History of Human Liberty
Fareed Zakaria explores the emergence of liberty and freedom throughout history, starting with the rise of the Christian Church. It is important to note that power struggles enabled the formation of individual liberty in Western Life. The first step to ensure liberty, as illustrated by the fall of the Roman Empire, is embedded in the institutions within society that is independent of the state. The Catholic Church was the first institution that was willing to challenge state authority and establish the growing of individual liberty. After that came the challenge of monarchies by Europe’s elite, in which the demand for rights and a voice provided another power struggle for freedom. The next power struggle mention by Zakaria is the Catholic versus Protestant war, where Luther challenged the authority of the church. By the seventeenth century, a challenge emerged from local authorities such as princes, dukes, and barons which set back the path to liberty by creating a strong central state. The question to why societies succeed in establishing liberty and others do not lies in the history of successful societies and the basis of their culture which differ from those in the rest of the world. The author provides an example of the East Asian model which took a different path than those in Europe to illustrate points of difference within time and space.
What Democracy is … and Is Not
The authors argue that democracy is not a single set of institutions, but many types of democracy exist that have a different variety of institutions. Each form or type of democracy is the result of a country’s socioeconomic condition, state structure, and policy practice. Modern political democracy, they argue, is a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions by civil society. Each system of governance is differently democratic in a way that one system, the liberal conception, would advocate for circumscribing the
Fareed Zakaria explores the emergence of liberty and freedom throughout history, starting with the rise of the Christian Church. It is important to note that power struggles enabled the formation of individual liberty in Western Life. The first step to ensure liberty, as illustrated by the fall of the Roman Empire, is embedded in the institutions within society that is independent of the state. The Catholic Church was the first institution that was willing to challenge state authority and establish the growing of individual liberty. After that came the challenge of monarchies by Europe’s elite, in which the demand for rights and a voice provided another power struggle for freedom. The next power struggle mention by Zakaria is the Catholic versus Protestant war, where Luther challenged the authority of the church. By the seventeenth century, a challenge emerged from local authorities such as princes, dukes, and barons which set back the path to liberty by creating a strong central state. The question to why societies succeed in establishing liberty and others do not lies in the history of successful societies and the basis of their culture which differ from those in the rest of the world. The author provides an example of the East Asian model which took a different path than those in Europe to illustrate points of difference within time and space.
What Democracy is … and Is Not
The authors argue that democracy is not a single set of institutions, but many types of democracy exist that have a different variety of institutions. Each form or type of democracy is the result of a country’s socioeconomic condition, state structure, and policy practice. Modern political democracy, they argue, is a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions by civil society. Each system of governance is differently democratic in a way that one system, the liberal conception, would advocate for circumscribing the