自由憲政民主之當代挑戰：典範衰退之分析

從1989年柏林圍牆倒塌至1991年蘇聯解體之後，自由憲政民主的蓬勃發展，而有日裔美國學者福山發表歷史終結論的看法。然根據自由之家統計，全球民主已出現連續16年的衰退，尤其中、東歐民粹主義興起及美國民主的衰退，使人開始懷疑自由憲政民主所建立起來的典範，似已衰微。其次，威權主義的崛起，如俄羅斯及中國，並沒有因民主化浪潮而走向自由民主，反而利用本身韌性而能與自由憲政民主體制抗衡，甚至造成威脅。本文的核心問題意識是：當代自由憲政民主典範，是否面臨衰退？如其典範衰退為真，主要面臨之挑戰為何？本文的論證邏輯如下：首先釐清自由憲政民主典範之內涵；其次說明其典範危機之浮現；再者，為求聚焦，本文採「內部挑戰—外部挑戰」分析架構，從內部主要挑戰之民粹主義及外部主要挑戰之威權韌性，分別進行探討；最後，分析自由憲政民主典範對前述挑戰之回應。本文的研究發現如下：第一，自由憲政民主除了開放性之外，尚具有動態不穩定特性，從而由內產生具非自由民主理念之民粹主義，侵蝕了自由憲政民主的常規；其次，威權大國（如中國）為維護政權所展現之韌性，不但對內能維持統治穩定性，還能與自由民主國家進行抗衡，從而由外威脅到自由民主典範。因此，自由憲政民主典範同時面對來自內、外部之挑戰。本文認為，有識之士有必要從其理論及制度盲點缺失，進行診斷進而加以更新改良，俾能在典範競逐中保有主流典範地位。

關鍵字

典範；自由憲政民主；民粹主義；威權韌性

並列摘要

From the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, liberal constitutional democracy flourished, and it was the context that Francis Fukuyama, expressed his arguments on “the end of history”. However, according to the statistics of Freedom House, global democracy has experienced 16 consecutive years of decline, especially the rise of populism in Central and Eastern Europe and the decline of American democracy, making people doubt that the paradigm established by liberal constitutional democracy seems to have declined. In the next place, the rise of authoritarianism, such as Russia and China, did not transfer their authoritarian regime to liberal democracy as the wave of democratization prevailed. Instead, rising authoritarian countries used their own resilience to compete with the liberal constitutional democracy system and even constitute a threat to the latter. The core problem consciousness of this article is: Is the contemporary paradigm of liberal constitutional democracy facing decline? If the paradigmatic recession is true, what are the main challenges? The argument logic of this article is as follows: firstly, clarify the connotation of the liberal constitutional democratic paradigm; secondly, explain the emergence of crisis of paradigm; furthermore, for the sake of focus, this article adopts the framework of analysis of “internal challenges-external challenges,” Discuss separately from the internal main challenge of populism and the external main challenge of authoritarian resilience; finally, analyze the responses of the liberal constitutional democracy paradigm to the aforementioned challenges. The research findings of this article are as follows: firstly, in addition to openness, liberal constitutional democracy is also characterized by dynamic instability, which in turn produces populism with illiberal democratic ideas, which erodes the norms of liberal constitutional democracy; secondly, the resilience shown by authoritarian powers (such as China) for maintaining the regime can not only maintain the stability of the rule internally, but also compete with liberal democracies, thereby threatening the paradigm of liberal democracy from the outside. Thus, the paradigm of liberal constitutional democracy faces both internal and external challenges. This article argues that it is necessary for people to diagnose the blind spots of their theories and systems, and then to renew and improve them, so as to keep the dominant status in paradigmatic competition.