Western liberalism creates wealthier countries

The argument

The position is that liberalism's difficulties have been mistaken for its obsolescence, and the evidence offered against that reading is the distribution of political and economic systems as they currently stand. Liberalism had been seen as the "norm" in many countries, and on this account it still is. Michael Cox, a professor of international relations at LSE, tells the BBC that "overall, we still live in a liberal world economy and most countries in the world are liberal democracies, not authoritarian ones". The observation is comparative, and that is what makes it relevant. Obsolescence is not a matter of a model encountering difficulty; it is a matter of a model being superseded by another. For liberalism to be obsolete there would have to be something that has displaced it, and by the measures Cox points to, the character of the world economy and the form most states actually take, nothing has. The distinction the argument draws is therefore between decline and replacement. A system can lose confidence, face serious criticism, and still be the system in use almost everywhere, which is a description of strain rather than of redundancy. That strain is not denied. Cox himself believes liberalism does need to work to address issues like wage stagnation and a loss of a sense of community, problems that are real, that have gone unanswered, and that supply much of the energy behind the challenges liberalism now faces. Naming them as work still to be done, however, presupposes that there is something there to do it. Western liberalism is therefore not obsolete, proponents conclude, but under threat.

Premises

Counter-arguments

A lot of people believe liberalism could be in decline - as evidenced by support for Brexit in the UK, or support for populist leaders including Donald Trump in the US, or Matteo Salvini in Italy. The financial downturn in 2008 was a major turning point, and the fact that markets were allowed to determine everything also brought about larger questions of identity and culture within the country, with people feeling that it was no longer their own.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Prevalence is not vitality, and the premise's two measures pull apart. A liberal world economy can persist while liberal politics erode, since open trade and capital movement are compatible with governments that curtail courts, press and elections. Whether "most countries are liberal democracies rather than authoritarian states" also depends on where the line is drawn, and the indices that draw it have recorded movement in one direction over a number of years. [Rejecting P2] The step from "still dominant" to "not superseded" is close to tautological: a model is not superseded until it is, so the premise cannot distinguish a system that is stable from one declining slowly. Wage stagnation and a lost sense of community are listed as problems to be addressed, but they are also the conditions the argument's opponents name as causes of the decline, so citing them concedes the point rather than answering it. [Rejecting C] The conclusion joins two claims of different strengths and defends only the weaker. "Under threat" would need an account of the threat's source and severity, which the premises never supply — leaving a position that resists refutation partly because it asserts so little.