The View | Why populist democracy is wrong for Hong Kong

Liberal democracy and populist democracy differ primarily in their conception of liberty. In a liberal democracy, liberty is freedom from constraint in one’s activities, especially constraint by government. In a populist democracy, liberty is the realisation of the “general will” through participation in democratic political processes.

As the student-led Occupy Central pro-democracy protests continue to reverberate around Hong Kong, it is worth analysing the brand of democracy that would best suit the city.

In my view, there are nine reasons why Hong Kong should not embrace populist democratic ideas. Three of them can apply to all nations and communities, the rest are unique to Hong Kong.

The first reason is a matter of beliefs. The idea that there is a “general will” of the people presumes everyone in a community shares a common set of beliefs about their own condition and interests.

But people do not have common beliefs under normal circumstances. The enormous diversity of beliefs we observe everywhere is a general and permanent condition of all societies and certainly of modern pluralistic ones.

The second reason is fear of the historical record. The great liberal intellectual, Isaiah Berlin, reflected that the “positive liberty” underpinning populist democracy was the root of 20th century tyranny.