On the Political Structure of a Liberal Democracy

On the Political Structure of a Liberal Democracy Mrinal Datta Chaudhuri THERE is a major difficulty in having a serious discussion around important political concepts. The difficulty stems from the fact that these concepts have constantly been used and abused over a long period of time in the battle-grounds of actual political conflicts all over the world. Such a process necessarily simplifies, obliterates and emasculates the meanings of complex, many-sided concepts. At the end, what often remain are certain vague associations of ideas. Such associations of ideas are then mercilessly exploited by political combatants in creating 'brand-names1 for the packages they want to sell or in attacking the opponents they want to fight. Thus we have in the world today some extremely illiberal regimes managed by rigid self-perpetuating oligarchies being labelled as 'democratic', and some extremely inegalitarian political groups calling themselves 'socialist'. 'Fascism', of course, has plainly become a term of abuse.