Niklas Lönn

19931215-5956
SF2221 V19 Global Security and Democracy
Gothenburg University

What is meant by the ‘hollowing out’ of liberal-democracy?

The liberal-democracy has been said to hollow out. It can definitely be said that there is a
compelling amount of changes happening in the world at the moment. Problematic tendencies
for the liberal-democracy has occurred the last years. Liberal-democracy is defined by free
markets, free movement and representative democracy (Krastev, 2016, p.88).
Liberal-democracy has served the european people well as Europe at the moment is the
second biggest economy in the world after the United States of America. The last couple of
years the Brexit referendum occurred and the Brits has voted for a british leave from the
European Union (EU). Russia has evolved their foreign policy and annexed the Ukrainian
territory of Crimea (Ikenberry, 2014.p.83-84). There is also nationalistic and
rightist-populism on the rise in many of the European parliaments.

On the other hand

The economy is skyrocketing and business is going very good for companies generally at the
moment. The brexit has created a strong european unity in the sense that member states inside
the EU might be critical against certain policies of the European Union such as migration
agreements or common policies on the labor market. However, since the brexit negotiations
has been everything than flawless for the British government officials. The european
parliament liberal group also claim that the support for the EU has never been stronger
(European parliament, 2018). The European Union is advancing their military cooperation
and 2016 EU High Representative Federica Mogherini presented the new Global Strategy of
the European Union which now has more concrete guidelines in the military cooperation than
before (European Union, 2019). The last years tremendous investments in the European
defence has occurred, Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), which is a military
enhanced cooperation with the EU member states(EEAS, 2018). This military cooperation is
probably created because that the EU member states see a need of increased military
capabilities and because of that alls countries in the EU don’t rely completely on Nordic
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for their security. The EU is also creating a system
called Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD) which exists to make the military
contributions more ​well invested ​among the member states, if one country focuses on missile
defence and another on maritime defence together it will evolve into a more evolved military
force. It's in a nation's economic interest to coordinate military spendings due to it's expensive
nature, the same can be said about the NATO cooperation. It is today unlikely that the
European defence community will replace the well developed alliance completely since the
majority of EU members are a part of NATO and remain positive towards the current
infrastructure where the US are the main defenders of the European Union since they spend
extensive amounts of money on military domestically and abroad. These huge cooperative
ambitions are a part of the liberal world order but they definitely has problems regarding
some aspects. At the moment NATO is going through challenges since the big military
contributor Turkey is waging war against the kurdish forces in Syria which can be
problematic for other NATO members.

The scope of the global politics are evolving in different ways at the same time. Nationalism
and liberalism is evolving besides each other and offers different narratives of the world for
it’s followers. In Poland there has been huge discussions regarding both the European Union
but also on replacing certain judges of the supreme court in Poland. This was heavily
criticised by the European Union and later on judges came back to office after first being
replaced (Euronews, 2018). At the same time as the EU is standing somewhat strengthened in
the negotiations regarding Brexit there is definitely other more nationalistic tendencies
evolving in the European Union. The five star movement in Italy together with Viktor Orbán
party Fidesz with other nationalistic parties around Europe has changed the agenda in regards
to how the EU will look like after the European parliament elections coming up in may this
year.

How the European parliament together with the European commission will look like later on
this year will be very interesting for any politically interested individual. If an analysis on the
swedish election is done it can be concluded that there are some different approaches to
politics that are popular at the moment. Typical social democratic parties still has the power
in the swedish politics, however this is not the case in many countries of Europe were some
of the social democrats has collapsed. At the same time conservative parties like the moderate
party in Sweden and the European people's party (EPP) in the EU probably will do a pretty
good election if they spread the policy of more nationalist parties. This is something that is
dividing the embracement of the conservative-liberal parties in Europe since the
constituencies of the parties are very large. It is not impossible that after the European
parliament the result will be a parliament built on self critique regarding some aspects of
european cooperation, this will probably lead to a more hollowed out liberal democracy with
less agreements on how to take care of migrants coming from the Middle East and North
African countries since the critics of deals on that has been big.

Conclusion
As stated here, there is both liberal and nationalist agendas around in the US and in Europe.
Maybe we will see a more nationalistic world the upcoming years, with more focus on every
country for themselves, possibly with trade deals with other countries. Another alternative is
that this is the final test for the European Union, perhaps Brexit will make the union more
strengthened. The most interesting thing of this year is the European parliament elections
together with the new European Commission, this can probably change the direction of the
European cooperation a great deal.

Reference list
European External Action Service. 2018. Permanent Structured cooperation. Retrieved:
2019-01-28 from:
https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-Homepage/34226/permanent-structured-coo
peration-pesco-factsheet_en
Euro News. 2018. Poland reserves Supreme court reforms after EU criticism. Retrieved:
2019-01-28 from:
https://www.euronews.com/2018/11/22/poland-reverses-supreme-court-reforms-after-eu-criti
cism
European Parliament. 2018. Eurobarometer survey shows highest support for the EU in 35
years. Retrieved: 2019-01-25 from:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/20180522STO04020/eurobarom
eter-survey-highest-support-for-the-eu-in-35-years
European Union. 2019. A Global Strategy to Promote European Citizens interests. Retrieved:
2019-01-25 from:
https://europa.eu/globalstrategy/en/global-strategy-promote-citizens-interests
Ikenberry, G. John (2014). The Illusion of Geopolitics: The Enduring Power of the Liberal
Order. ​Foreign Affairs​ 93, pp. [i]-91.

Krastev, Ivan 8 (2016). The Unraveling of the Post-1989 Order. ​Journal of Democracy​ 27
(4), pp. 88–98.