Economic Liberalization versus Political Pluralism in Sri Lanka?
- 1 May 1990
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Modern Asian Studies
- Vol. 24 (2), 341-383
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x00010350
Abstract
Is there a positive symbiosis between the liberal economy and the liberal polity? From the time the question became meaningful, mainstream Western social theory and doctrine has tended to give a positive answer. It has generally been possible convincingly to argue an intrinsic causal connection between the dispersal of economic (and thus political) power inherent in the competitive market economy and the pluralism which is central to all definitions of the liberal polity. At a ‘broad-brush’ level the historical evidence is supportive. There is a strong empirical association between liberal democracy and (successful) capitalist market systems. While there are a number of quite plausible arguments indicating some potential deep and long-term causal connections between capitalism/the market economy and political unfreedom, the balance of long term historical evidence appears to support orthodoxy.Keywords
This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
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