Freedom - A Normative Principle of Democracy

Freedom features in most democratic discussions. Diamond and Morlino invoke it as a substantive dimension (Diamond and Morlino, 2004, p. 20), seen in the "rights to vote, to stand for office, to campaign, and to organise political parties" (p. 26) or, as a series of specific freedoms such as freedom of speech (Stefanelli, Abts and Meuleman, 2025, p. 1629). What we see is freedom reduced to a set of specific outcomes, which lend themselves to a degree of measure. This reduction is useful, if we want to measure the quality of a democracy. Freedom, as a normative principle, is an existential condition we have regardless of whether we live in a democracy or any other political arrangement. Democracy does not create our freedom. Introducing qualities morphs freedom from an existential condition, something we are regardless of where we are, into a political object, something that can be extended, measured and selectively applied or withdrawn. With varying success, democracy accommodates or restricts the outcomes of how we exercise our freedom. Stefanelli, Abts and Meuleman, in their exploration of populism and freedom of speech, illustrate this tendency clearly. Their distinction between normative and instrumental support for freedom rests on a concept of freedom that is already empirically defined before the analysis begins. It is not the purpose of this article to explore existentialism or the methods of successful democracy, but to argue that freedom is a fundamental, normative and defining principle of democracy. A principle that resists reduction to outcomes, however useful that reduction may be.

This tension between freedom as a condition and freedom as a measurable political object has philosophical roots. Berlin's distinction between negative freedom, freedom from interference, and positive freedom, the wish to be a subject rather than an object of one's own life (Berlin, 2023, pp. 20, 28), provides a useful baseline. Negative freedom maps naturally onto the specific liberties which Diamond and Morlino catalogue and Stefanelli, Abts and Meuleman measure. Positive freedom moves us toward something closer to my existential stance, freedom not as a right conferred by institutions but as the irreducible condition of being human. Berlin himself was uneasy with positive freedom, fearing its capture by those who claim to know what true freedom requires of others (Berlin, 2023, p. 13). In stepping back from it, he provides ground for the empirical, measurable concept of freedom that we see in democratic theory now. This tension has later echoes in Marklund, Förell and Fischer, 2026. Whilst they make clear they are taking an empirical stance, they understand freedom as a moral value that, by indicating normative direction, shapes politics and governance (Marklund, Förell and Fischer, 2026, p. 4). Situating their exploration within a specific case study of climate change politics, they provide empirical substance to the classification of freedom as normative. The two broadly defined sides in their study both claim to be exercising freedom as a right. This strategic use of freedom presupposes that it carries moral authority, which is the defining feature of a normative concept. Their use of Berlin is clear and acknowledged (Marklund, Förell and Fischer, 2026, p. 9). At this point we can pause to consider whether both sides, in their focus, are correct in their claim to the moral right to exercise their freedom. They are. What is happening is the simultaneous display of positive and negative freedom. Both sides are expressing what might be called their existential condition, the irreducible human fact of being free and having to act. It seems almost trite to observe that the exercise of freedom will impact others. This is, perhaps, the core tension in any discussion of applied or measured freedom. When freedom is reduced to a political object, removed from normative discussion, the consequences have an impact on society and the quality of democracy. Failure to recognise freedom as a normative condition fuels the rise of populist movements. The mechanism is not simply one of political opportunism. When freedom is defined as a group or list of specific liberties, rather than a prior condition of being human, there is no principled ground from which to insist that those liberties must be extended equally and without ideological selection. Freedom becomes, in effect, a resource to be allocated. Like any resource, it can be directed toward allies and withheld from opponents. Contemporary populist actors did not invent this logic. They inherited it from a democratic tradition that had already made freedom measurable, tradeable and therefore manipulable. The normative vacuum was there before they built their manifestos.

When freedom is reduced to a political object, removed from normative discussion, the consequences have an impact on society and the quality of democracy. Failure to recognise freedom as a normative condition fuels the rise of populist movements. The mechanism is not simply one of political opportunism. When freedom is defined as a group or list of specific liberties, rather than a prior condition of being human, there is no principled ground from which to insist that those liberties must be extended equally and without ideological selection. Freedom becomes, in effect, a resource to be allocated. Like any resource, it can be directed toward allies and withheld from opponents. Contemporary populist actors did not invent this logic. They inherited it from a democratic tradition that had already made freedom measurable, tradeable and therefore manipulable. The normative vacuum was there before they built their manifestos. These movements are of particular importance in discussions of freedom in that they, mostly, seek power through democratic means. Whilst not exclusive to Europe and North America, and by no means a new phenomenon, populism has grown in ways that expose the exercise of freedom when it lacks normative grounding. In his exploration of backsliding in the UK, Kippin highlights specific freedom areas — press freedoms, interference in the courts and electoral system (Kippin, 2025, p. 8). Such behaviours are not unusual and apply equally to left and right facing ideologies. What is significant, in respect of the UK particularly, and Europe and the USA in general, is the foundation it has provided for more extremist and illiberal approaches to gain traction: Reform and Restore in the UK, the AfD in Germany, the Front National in France and the MAGA movement in the United States all claim to be defending freedom whilst systematically restricting it for others. The consequence is freedom has its normative foundation removed. If we view freedom as a series of actions we can and cannot take rather than a condition of being human, then it can, and is, manipulated to fit political convenience and ideology. The issue is one of categorical confusion before it becomes political. What Stefanelli, Abts and Meuleman document at the citizen level, populism advocating for freedom of speech to ideologically sympathetic voices whilst denying it to others, is the same logic operating at the leadership and institutional level. Those exploring democratic erosion and backsliding rarely ask why freedom is so vulnerable to this treatment. The answer this article proposes is straightforward. Freedom is vulnerable because it is rarely grounded as a normative principle in democratic theory. It arrives in frameworks like Diamond and Morlino's already reduced to outcomes, malleable and manipulable.

What is needed, then, is not a different catalogue of freedoms but a different understanding of what freedom is before it enters any catalogue. The question is not which liberties a democracy should protect, but what kind of thing freedom is such that it demands protection at all. Freedom's vulnerability requires an approach that functions as a normative principle rather than a measurable outcome. Empirical approaches rely, successfully, on versions of rights. Invoking rights in defence of a normative theory might appear to return us to the same empirical problem: rights are routinely catalogued, measured and manipulated in exactly the ways explored above. The question is not what rights contain. It is what gives them normative authority in the first place. Forst's discourse-theoretical account provides a foundation. For Forst, the ground of basic rights is the right to justification, the irreducible moral claim of every person to be recognised as an equal normative authority, to whom the norms governing their life must be answerable (Forst, 2016, p. 8). This standing is not given, or removed, by democratic institutions. It is their precondition. Democracy is, in Forst's terms, the attempt to give institutional expression to a moral status that individuals already possess. Where that justificatory ground is absent, rights do not simply become less secure. Cut from their normative ground they are often turned into a means of domination, with ideology clothing itself in the language of libertarian freedom (Forst, 2016, p. 27). Forst's account does not replace the existential claim proposed earlier, it confirms it. The right to justification is only intelligible if persons are already free in a prior sense, capable of reason, judgment and self-determination before any institutional arrangement acknowledges them as such. To be a justificatory equal, to have standing to make and respond to normative claims, presupposes the very freedom whose grounding we are seeking. This is not a circular argument. It is a recognition that freedom is the condition of moral agency itself, not something moral or political arrangements can bestow. Democratic institutions can acknowledge that condition, protect the space in which it is exercised, or suppress it. What they cannot do is create it. Freedom is not what the right to justification delivers. Freedom is what makes the demand for justification possible in the first place. Rights require freedom as their condition. Democracy requires freedom as a foundational principle.

The argument proposed here is not that empirical approaches to democracy are wrong. They are necessary and valuable. Diamond and Morlino's eight dimensions, Stefanelli, Abts and Meuleman's survey work, the backsliding literature, all matter. Without monitoring the quality of democracy, we risk the conditions in which extremes flourish. The problem is not the measurement. Measurement implicitly assumes that freedom is worth defending. That assumption is normative. It cannot itself be derived from the empirical frameworks it underlies. Measurement that cannot account for its own normative foundations becomes circular. The rubric assumes the value of what it measures without being able to defend it. That circularity is not just a theoretical inconvenience. It is the opening through which regimes and movements hostile to freedom enter, armed with their own selective accounts of what freedom requires and for whom. A democratic theory that has reduced freedom to a political object has no principled resources with which to resist those accounts. It can document the restriction of specific liberties. It cannot explain why freedom, as such, demands defence - including the freedoms the framework itself purports to protect. This requires a prior commitment: the recognition that freedom is not one value among several that democracy happens to protect, but the condition that makes the demand for democratic protection intelligible in the first place. Democracies that cannot give a normative account of what freedom is before they begin measuring it are vulnerable to those who are willing to manipulate it. Freedom in relation to democracy will not be resolved by better measurement. It requires, first, the recognition that freedom is what we are before it is anything that democracy can give or take away.