Restoring Normalcy during Involution
Chih‐yu Shih · Policy Press eBooks · 2024
Chapter 2 presents the critical logic that social science’s methodological individualism restrains liberal democracy from recovering from involution. It also explains why socialist and Confucian autocracy might recover. Two features of liberalism and Confucianism distinguish the ways in which they cope with involution. First, regarding their imagined origin being a transcendental norm or law-like inevitability, contemporary socialist/Confucian autocracy and liberal democracy cope with involution in different ways. Second, the Confucian norms mainly prepare the autocrats to practice (counter-)governmentality, but liberalism must be preached to all individuals. Deliberative democracy and the mass line are compared as the remedies to involution for each system. After all, liberalism’s normative governmentality is not binding. The democratic transition to new leadership costs no one their life or property as a result. Moreover, the losers can rally at the next election and might win. Recovery is unnecessary for liberal leadership to consider a survival strategy. Put succinctly, liberal leaders do not care.