Rearticulating Liberalism - I: How Liberalism Lost the Majority

Liberalism’s own principles have sown the seeds of its decline. To speak to the majority again, it must evolve

This essay opens a four-part series on rearticulating liberalism for today’s world. Liberalism once thrived as a creed of emancipation, breaking shackles imposed by communities and states. But as contexts have shifted, its own principles have sown seeds of its decline. To regain its power to inspire majorities, liberalism must evolve. In the coming essays, I will explore three areas where I believe renewal is most urgent - the nation, governance, and culture - to sketch a possible framework for liberalism’s future. This is meant as a discussion series, so I welcome your comments and reflections.

Just decades after Francis Fukuyama declared the "end of history" - suggesting liberal democracy had achieved ideological victory - liberalism is now on the backfoot worldwide. It has lost legitimacy, and liberal parties have lost state power. In response, liberal political actors have become consumed by tactical maneuvering to regain office without rethinking the liberal platform to regain relevance and mobilise the masses. In the urgency to win immediate fights, liberals are in danger of losing the larger war of ideas.

The tactical focus is, of course, vital. One of liberals' core critiques has been their disconnect from people's lived realities, so grounding in local concerns offers valuable lessons. All ideologies rely on state power for propagation, but liberalism is especially tied to state institutions - leaving liberals particularly bereft when confronting aggressive populist governments. Winning elections, with all their minutiae, remains essential.

The problem with tactics alone

However, an overriding focus on tactics hurts liberalism both short and long term. People want their lives to have meaning and to feel part of something bigger than themselves. For a time, liberalism was able to provide that, underpinned by uneven but genuine progress. It offered a vision of free citizens living together under equal law, with governments accountable to the governed and power transferred peacefully through elections. It balanced individual freedom with diversity, protected minorities, and restrained arbitrary rule.

This remains a vision worth defending. But today, liberals struggle to articulate it in a way that resonates. To recover the capacity to inspire, liberalism needs a coherent ideological rearticulation - not just a mishmash of local tactics or tired calls to "resist" and "save democracy." It needs a story that ties ground-level maneuvers to a shared vision. This story must marry universal liberal principles with locally resonant moral purpose - connecting the personal to the political, and giving citizens not only rights but a shared vision of the society they should help build.

In a reversal of sorts, the Right offers a global framework where each country can plug into the larger rubric of place-based nationalism, tradition, majority culture, and respect for authority and order. These provide identity and community across countries. Liberalism, by contrast, offers universal principles - but this very universalism, coupled with the economic and social dislocations of globalisation, financialisation and technological developments, has undercut its local resonance and discredited the appeal to institutions and procedures.

Why liberalism lost ground

Liberalism itself emerged as a response to particular contexts. It took shape first in reaction to religious wars and later as a way to restrain the absolute power of the state. Over time, political liberalism twinned with economic liberalism and positioned itself as an ideology designed to break shackles: to restrain oppressive communities, to check overbearing states and ensure accountability, and to create space for individual freedom and self-expression.

When social cohesion was relatively strong, the public sphere unified, and institutions trusted, liberalism functioned as an emancipatory ideology. Principles like free speech and individual rights expanded freedom without destabilising society, because other actors - social, religious, community, professional - acted as moderating (gatekeeping) influences. Liberalism could afford to be radical about emancipation because society provided its own forms of restraint, even if at times unreasonable.

But the context has changed dramatically. Globalization, financial capitalism, and technological disruption have eroded communities and fragmented the public sphere. Institutions have lost credibility. Gatekeepers - from editors to party organizations - no longer command respect or control. Markets fuel innovation but also massive inequality. The same liberal principles that once were emancipatory now contain the seeds of fragmentation, mistrust, and concentration of economic power.

Free speech still enables dissent and accountability, but it also enables misinformation, polarization, and hate. Individualism still empowers autonomy, but it also accelerates atomization and drift. Capitalism has shifted from decentralised competition to active concentration of power.

The liberal elite did not adapt to these changes. They kept reiterating original articulations, often dismissing and disparaging those who argued otherwise. Too often, it seemed that they defended institutions less to preserve fairness than to preserve their own standing.

Beyond proceduralism

This is why institutional and procedural defenses of liberalism ring hollow. To the public, it is not always clear if what is being defended is fairness and expertise or elite privilege. This is especially so because liberals are hesitant to take clear positions on issues the average person understands - identity, community, aspiration, public order - for fear of marginalising sections of society. They are most direct in opposing rightwing leaders and regressive traditions, conceding grievances only when cornered - such as the impact of globalisation and technological advancements on affected communities. On most issues, liberals retreat to process, as if neutrality can substitute for values. The result is that liberals appear effete and self-dealing, unable to say what kind of society they seek to build.

Individual freedom, rule of law, peaceful transfer of power etc all remain essential. But they are not sufficient to mobilize mass support. People rally around outcomes and moral clarity, not rules.

The need for rearticulation

Liberalism’s decline is in part due to its own failure to evolve and moderate itself. Principles that serve liberation also require self-restraint. Rights that secure pluralism also need to be balanced with responsibilities of coexistence. Individualism and self-expression can be emancipatory but can also lead to loss of meaning and drift. Economic liberalism that fueled innovation is now leading to extreme inequality and concentration of power.

Outrage and opposition to populists are ineffective. It is no use arguing they are undemocratic when they came to power mobilising grievances that the liberal establishment presided over.

What liberalism needs today is rearticulation. That rearticulation must preserve liberal principles while embedding them in frames that resonate locally and give meaning to people’s lives.

A new beginning

Liberals have followed a tactical array of outrage against populists, defense of institutions and a basket of welfare policies. However, these are inadequate. Institutions cannot survive without imagination, and procedures cannot endure without purpose. Liberalism will recover its strength only when it regains the ability to inspire majorities and meet the deeper yearnings for meaning, belonging, and order that populists have tapped into. This means accepting that liberalism cannot just keep repeating its original articulation in the present tense. If it wants to be more than a rear-guard defense, liberalism must rearticulate itself for today’s realities.

Liberalism thus needs to refresh its platform on issues like the kind of society it seeks to build, governance, identity and opportunity in ways that resonate locally. In subsequent essays I will argue that liberalism must reconnect to nation, governance, and culture if it is to capture public imagination again.

Next essay on Liberalism and the Nation

A small note: I’ve been considering moving more of my writing to this blog. While newspaper op-eds offer wide reach, they also come with constraints - the need for a news peg, word limits, and delays between writing and publication. Writing here allows greater flexibility in form, timing, and tone.

If you’ve found any of these pieces valuable, I’d appreciate your sharing them with others who might find them worthwhile as well.

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