What question did this study set out to answer?

The paper examines the challenges liberal parties face in maintaining political relevance amidst changing societal dynamics and their historical context.

June 3, 2026Open Access

The Don Quixote Problem of Liberal Parties

Key Points

The paper examines the challenges liberal parties face in maintaining political relevance amidst changing societal dynamics and their historical context.
Developed a conceptual interpretation addressing the difficulties of liberal parties, particularly in Sweden.
Analyzed shifts in political distinctiveness relative to adversaries like social democracy and market forces.
Discussed broader phenomena including individual autonomy, social risk, and political capacity in liberalism.
Argues that liberal parties may misidentify unfreedom in individualised societies, despite defending important ideals.
Highlights the weakening of political distinctiveness as social democracy becomes more liberalised and market-oriented.
Indicates a shift in political problems from individual choice to the capacity to manage imposed choices.

Abstract

This working paper develops a conceptual and heuristic structural interpretation of the contemporary difficulty facing liberal parties in advanced European democracies, with particular reference to the Swedish Liberals. The central argument is not that liberal values have become obsolete, nor that threats to liberal democracy have disappeared. Rather, the paper proposes that liberal parties historically organised around negative liberty may lose political distinctiveness when many of their older adversaries have been institutionally defeated, absorbed, or displaced. Using the metaphor of the “Don Quixote problem,” the paper argues that liberal parties may continue to defend real and important ideals while misidentifying the historically operative form of unfreedom. In highly individualised societies, citizens may formally possess extensive choice and autonomy while experiencing weakened capacity, insecurity, debt-mediated access, housing pressure, educational mismatch, recognition scarcity, and the downward transfer of social risk. Under such conditions, the political problem shifts from whether individuals are allowed to choose to whether they possess the material, institutional, cognitive, and social capacity to bear the consequences of the choices imposed upon them. The Swedish case is treated as a concentrated instance of this broader problem because Swedish social democracy historically constructed an unusually strong collective and institutional architecture. Liberalism could once function as a corrective to that order. As the social-democratic architecture itself became increasingly liberalised, marketised, decentralised, and governance-oriented, the distinct party-political function of liberalism became harder to sustain. The paper positions the argument in relation to negative and positive liberty, party-system change, cleavage transformation, post-material politics, populism, democratic discontent, and the heterogeneity of European liberal parties. It is intended as a conceptual preprint and working paper rather than an empirical prevalence study.

The Don Quixote Problem of Liberal Parties

Key Points

Abstract

Cite This Study