Divine Right aside, this idea that 'pure' democracy is distinguishable from liberal democracy is common but untrue. There's no such thing as illiberal democracy. The liberal part of it is a necessary component for the democratic part to function, and vice versa. They're two sides of the same coin.
You can't have democratic free elections without liberal free speech. You can't have liberal rights without representative government. There are no enlightened despots who respect and protect fundamental rights, and no majoritarian mechanism that can meaningfully exist outside of a free society.
Ben Schupmann just wrote a book defending militant democracy that adopts and defends exactly this position, locating the unamendable core of 'democratic' constitutions in their liberal rights. I'm reading it and it's a great presentation of the problem, not sure I'm going to be on board with his fix
You can have a sufficiently restricted franchise that most would no longer consider it a liberal democracy, while still having meaningfully free speech and voting within that privileged subset
True, and there are cases. Herrenvolk democracy, South Africa. Jim Crow. Or historically no women's suffrage, etc. But those invariably still compromise liberal rights. Speech, association, economic freedom, etc. So they're still a case of getting neither liberalism nor democracy, in large part.
Exactly. South Africa, too. And in both cases those nominally free elections among the selected franchise were not meaningfully free. Competitive, sometimes, but in a competitive authoritarianism sort of way.
Electoral fraud was absolutely insanely rampant in the Jim Crow South, too. Lyndon Johnson's 1948 Senate election is a good example, and there were more flagrant cases than that. Often they were less elections and more of a ballot box stuffing contest.
